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B-24 Assembly Ship - First Sergeant


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Here is my first posting of one of my models. It took about 4 months to completion,, most of that was spent on the spots.

 

The viewing cupola in place of the dorsal turret was cut of from the top of a spare Hasegawa B-24 turret.

 

Enjoy the pictures.

 

Regards Toby

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Wow! I got dizzy looking at the photos, but it's one heckuva build- those old, war-weary assembly ships were all quite distinctive. I once read that the late actor Jimmy Stewart took his group's assembly Liberator almost all the way to the target one time and got a royal reaming out by his C.O. upon his return- he had asked his crew if they couldn't just go all the way to the target since they'd practically gone all the way already,  and they said to go for it. They don't make 'em like that anymore! (Related in his biography, which is  a fantastic read about a great actor and combat pilot.)

Mike

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The Wonder Bread B-24(my name for it). Looks real good. Like the one with the progressively smaller B-24s painted on.

Edited by busnproplinerfan
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Thank you for your kind comments.

 

 Here is the spot painting procedure.

 

This started with the Hussar Assembly Ship decal sheet that was very well printed. The sheet came with an A5 sheet of closely spaced circle masks on a single sheet of Friskit film. If that had been used as planned then the plane would required painting red with a set of dot masks, blue and then yellow befofre painting the Olive Drab, greey and white. I felt that would not work because it would have needed too much white to cover the previous coats. 

 

So it was time for plan B which started well enough. The plane was painted Olive Drab, Grey and white. Decal sheets of blue, red and yellow were ordered from the big H. The red and blue were Superscale sheets, the yellow was Aeromaster. The Academy kit allows the wings to be fitted at the wnd of rhe build as they come with spars. The fins were also loose at this time. The wings were fitted and a length of 2 mm masking tape was stretched from wing tip to wing tip. This was to be the datum line for all stripe of spots. The Hussar instruction sheet was zoomed up on the copy machine to 1/72 scale and this was used to provide the exact spot spacing. So far so good. The spot size in 1;72 exactly matches the standard hole size from common office hole punches.🙂 The spots were then punched out of the 3 decal sheets. Unfortunately, the red and blue spots disintigrated when put on water to release the backing film. Ooops. The yellow was fine so they were kept for later.

 

Time for plan C. Holes were punched in a sheet of Friskit film with a spacing of about 20 mm centre to centre. These holes were cut out of the sheet by cutting around each circle to make a small mask for each spot. Each mask was then laid along the datum line using dividers to give the correct spacing using the scaled up instruction page copy. When all were in place the 2 mm wide masking tape datum line was removed from underneath each mask one mask at a time. Humbrol gloss  red no 19 was then sprayed on for the red. To avoid a step forming, all the masks for the red were removed. Then Humbrol matt Navy blue was sprayed for the blue spots and the masks removed. I now had one line of spots. The plane was left to dry overnight and the procedure repeated for the other ‘ stripes of spots’ across the wings.

 

After the wings were done the spots on the fuselage were masked and sprayed.  This was done one section at a time. To get the same shade of red spots on the olive drab background, each spot was masked and given a white undercoat. All the red spots on the olive drab section were painted before the yellow spot decals were applied. This was to avoid the masks removing the yellow decal spots. There was some overspray outside the masks. To correct this, the round circles of Friskit film were removed from the hole punch, applied to the plane and then white, olive drab or gray was misted over the offending area. 

 

This took a long time but I think it was worth it. The 448 Bomb Group had a second Assembly Ship painted up with spots after First Sergeant met a firey end due to a flare accident on the ground. The second Assembly ship, Spotted Axx Ape, has been modelled a few times but this is the first time I have seen First Sergeant modelled.

 

 

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Wonderful! I'm very impressed with both your model (and paintwork!) and the care and thought behind your approach to the spots. It's really paid off as all are precisely spaced. The overall effect is very convincing.

 

Would have driven me mad trying to achieve that!

 

SD

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Superb! Great work and the patience of a saint!

Very fond of this one as it hails from RAF Horsham St Faith (now Norwich Airport) just the other side of town from here.

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Thank you gents for the kind words. Since completing this I needed a rest from planes so I have started figure modelling instead.  Hand painted acrylics behave very differently than air brushed enamels.

 

Happy summer

 

Regards Toby

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On ‎7‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 2:38 PM, Planebuilder62 said:

This took a long time but I think it was worth it.

Yes it was worth it!

I admire your perseverance in the face of the setbacks you described.

Well done!

:clap:

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