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P-40N, Hasegawa 1/72


opus999

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Since work has stalled on my Flying Tigers P-40B waiting for decals, I thought I'd start another kit.  I'm still in the mood to do a P-40, so I dug this one out of the stash:

 

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I bought it because of the Burma Banshee decals it had for an alternate theme, but I decided that I really liked the markings on the box art. It all turned out great, because my quest for a Burma Banshee, led me to finish my P-40M, which frankly looks way better than the markings in this kit.

 

Not much in the way of parts:

 

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and some pretty nice looking decals:

 

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Unfortunately, being an older Hasegawa kit, there isn't much in the way of cockpit detail, and no detail on the sides of the cockpit. So, I had to make do with what I had.  I painted the sides and just scuffed them up with Tamiya weathering pastels.

 

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The cockpit came out a little better though with some Eduard PE seat belts added

 

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Now, I'm just waiting for the radiator intake parts that I glued into a fuselage half to dry so I can button up the fuselage.... 

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The nice thing about these Hasegawa kits is that they're so simple that building goes pretty quickly.  In just about a half an hour I went from only the cockpit built, to the whole aircraft put together. The first step was to glue the fuselage halves together, which went very well -- one of Hasegawa's fine kits! -- and only took a minimum of sanding on the seam to get it looking great.  They have you put the cockpit in from the bottom, and I wasn't too happy with the lack of mating surfaces:

 

vNnbF1g.jpg

 

So, I did some dry fitting of the bottom of the wing and found that some of my tube styrene, when smashed flat, made a perfect spacer for the cockpit floor to rest on:

 

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So if, for some reason, the cockpit should break lose, it will stay in place. A little paranoid perhaps...

 

The wings went on without a hitch and again only needed a minimum of sanding or filling to get it looking great.  Even the wing roots were good!  The only mis-match on the aircraft was where the front of the wing assembly meets the fuselage and it took a little bit of work to get it even, but it turned out OK.

 

pJlduFO.jpg

 

I'd say in general this is a terrific kit in terms of engineering.

 

Next up was black basing with Mr. Surfacer 1500 decanted into my airbrush:

 

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Followed by marbling with Mr. Color Dark green and Dark earth for more sun-faded areas.  Then went over the panel lines with black.  Now, when I load up the airbrush for the top coat, I will use that mix to go over the panel lines and tone them down, so the contrast won't be as much as you see here.

 

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Then finished off with a coat of Hataka RAF Dark Green

 

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Notice that the empennage is only partially finished.  That's because I was about a third of the way through when I remembered that, duh, the whole empennage is supposed to be white.  Ooops. 

 

It was off to a Hockey game with the family and a movie with the boys now, but I might be able get it masked for the brown before I go to bed tonight (since I get an extra hour thanks to the end of daylight saving time!)

 

 

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Yesterday afternoon I got the masking on for the camo:

 

0isQcGv.jpg

 

Which was followed by a black coat, some mottling with Dark Earth and Aircraft gray and some panel line tracing with black.  I go over the panel lines with the top coat so it's not a stark, but you can't see that in these pictures:

 

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I masked the leading edges of the wings and the empennage for white, but didn't get a picture.  Got a picture of the finished product though!

 

DQCUp0D.jpg

 

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I'm not totally crazy about my paint job.  I think I put too thick a top coat on.  I can probably make it look a little more weathered with some other tricks. I really like the Hataka Dark Earth, however!  This is the first time I've used it and the color seems to be much closer to the RAF Dark Earth that I've seen in photos than the Mr. Color version.  The Mr. Color Dark Earth seems a little on the red side.  This stuff, to my eye, seems to be spot on!

 

Here's a photo with my P-40B in progress to show the (intentional) difference in colors.  For those who don't know, the AVG P-40s were painted with the Curtiss company's "interpretations" of RAF Dark Green and RAF Dark Earth.  A lot of study went into the recommended Mr. Color paint colors I used (I didn't do the research myself).

 

FlECDrI.jpg

 

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Did some touch-up on some paint "oops"es last night.  Tonight I re-masked the empennage, sprayed it black and then re-painted the white.  I didn't like it before -- it was too uniform and stark looking.  This time it looks a lot better, although a little washed out in the photos

 

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I gloss coated both P-40s tonight, so I may get to decals tomorrow!

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The worst thing about this kit is the misalignment in the vent holes near the nose, it's obvious and hard to un-f$%^.  The sparse cockpit is an easy fix.  The off-side guns can be ignored.

 

I built the same scheme from the kit, but I've seen some built in completely different colours than the Hasegawa profile.  I don't worry about it anymore since I painted the white tail too far forward and applied the decals accordingly before realizing the error. 

 

Like your use of the old airbrush. 

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8 hours ago, Jackson Duvalier said:

The worst thing about this kit is the misalignment in the vent holes near the nose, it's obvious and hard to un-f$%^.  The sparse cockpit is an easy fix.  The off-side guns can be ignored.

 

I built the same scheme from the kit, but I've seen some built in completely different colours than the Hasegawa profile.  I don't worry about it anymore since I painted the white tail too far forward and applied the decals accordingly before realizing the error. 

 

Like your use of the old airbrush. 

Thanks!

 

Fixing the vent holes is a little beyond my skills (or patience, frankly :) ).  I've seen this scheme in different colors too, but a lot of my research on 7th FS, 49th FG P-40s seems to show that they had a couple of paint schemes and the biggest change was how they painted the white tail -- I don't know if it varied from aircraft to aircraft or if they changed it as a squadron, but the white is different in many photos. 

 

A lot of books I've looked at show this scheme for Joel Paris's plane, so it could be right for at least part of his career with the 7th FS. Well, too late to change it now! :D  

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I've been researching weathering and wear on Joel B. Paris's plane.  Georgia Public Radio has a nice set of interviews with him at http://www.gpb.org/wwii/joel-paris.  He retired a Major General.  They have some photos of him with his P-40 but most are terribly washed out so that you can't see any detail of the aircraft.

 

The only one I could find that was any good was:

 

FndOgY2.jpg

 

which shows quite a bit of wear in front of the windshield.

 

I expanded my search to all 49th F.G. P-40s and found a lot of historical photos.  The vast majority were close ups of the nose (for the nose art).  Still, it was pretty obvious that there wasn't a ton of chipping on their P-40s, only a little.  I'd expect the nose to be the most worn part because of removing panels for engine work.  I never found any good photos of wing root wear.  So, I think in general the chipping will be pretty light on this build. There is some dirt and grime visible in the photos I found, though.

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Felt a little under the weather today, so I didn't spend much time at the bench.  After a 2nd gloss coat this morning and a little research, I decided I would repaint the deck behind the seat.  I found some color pictures of P-40Ns from WWII and they definitely didn't have Zinc Chromate on that deck.  So I matched the photos as best I could, settling on FS34079:

 

Bj6NoY3.jpg

 

I tried to find definitive evidence about the wheel well color and came up short.  So I followed the instructions and painted them Zinc Chromate.  Since there's not detail in there, I will have to get creative to dirty up those wheel wells.

 

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Tonight I was able to put the decals on as well.  There weren't many so it went fairly quickly.  I like how it looks! :) 

 

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Tomorrow I need to paint the canopy and the spinner, which will be a challenge to get a white stripe on it and make it even!

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Hello heres the info on Wheel wells and other bits. 
 

“Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk/Warhawk

Unlike some other manufacturers (like Boeing), Curtiss painted their aircraft directly at the factory.

The cockpit of the P-40 was Curtiss Cockpit Green, which was the Berry Brothers' (a local paint vendor) approximation of Interior Green. Reportedly it was a little browner than Interior Green.

The scalloped cutouts inside the fuselage windows aft of the cockpits on P-40D to M models were usually painted the same as the camouflage colour. As the rear windows could be easily detached for re-painting, most field repaints were also performed this way.  Earlier P-36 Hawk production practice and some photos of the early P-40D and Es indicate that Curtiss could initially have used a different colour for the cutouts. It could have been the same as the cockpit colour, but the author was not able to find any positive confirmation of this.
Rear view windows behind the cockpit of the P-40 could be easily detached for painting. Consequently, the  majority of images show the camouflage pattern to continue under these windows. 

The wheel wells had canvas covers similar to that on the Bf 109E. These were in drab canvas colour with brass zips and fasteners.”


From this website. 
 

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/02/stuff_eng_interior_colours_us_part2.htm

 

I hope it helps ? 
 

Dennis

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9 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Hello heres the info on Wheel wells and other bits. 
 

“Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk/Warhawk

Unlike some other manufacturers (like Boeing), Curtiss painted their aircraft directly at the factory.

The cockpit of the P-40 was Curtiss Cockpit Green, which was the Berry Brothers' (a local paint vendor) approximation of Interior Green. Reportedly it was a little browner than Interior Green.

The scalloped cutouts inside the fuselage windows aft of the cockpits on P-40D to M models were usually painted the same as the camouflage colour. As the rear windows could be easily detached for re-painting, most field repaints were also performed this way.  Earlier P-36 Hawk production practice and some photos of the early P-40D and Es indicate that Curtiss could initially have used a different colour for the cutouts. It could have been the same as the cockpit colour, but the author was not able to find any positive confirmation of this.
Rear view windows behind the cockpit of the P-40 could be easily detached for painting. Consequently, the  majority of images show the camouflage pattern to continue under these windows. 

The wheel wells had canvas covers similar to that on the Bf 109E. These were in drab canvas colour with brass zips and fasteners.”


From this website. 
 

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/02/stuff_eng_interior_colours_us_part2.htm

 

I hope it helps ? 
 

Dennis

Yes, it does.  In many ways!  First, this is another great resource that I've seen, but haven't been able to delve too deeply into.  Second, It's helped me change my plan of attack... I searched for P-40 canvas wheel wells and was able to find several pictures (I just wasn't being specific enough, it seems).  It's a shame that manufacturers mold the detail in the wheel bays as if there is no cover in there (like the Airfix kit).  I read a discussion on another forum about these covers and they made some very good arguments about why they would keep these covers on  most of the time. Although there was some evidence that they were removed from time to time.

 

Since the Hasegawa has smooth wheel wells, that is as closest to a canvas cover I can imagine, so I will repaint it brown.

 

The discussion about the scalloped cutouts above is something I've wondered about.  A lot of people (including those that restore warbirds) paint these Zinc Chromate.  I imagined this made sense only because I didn't realize those side windows were removed easily. Doh! Kind of bums me out that I didn't know this before the P-40M. Oh well, I know it now! :) 

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Not a lot of work on this one yesterday because I was focused on the P-40B and waiting for the clear coat on this one to cure. Still, last night I was able to finish off the decals and then used dot filtering with oil paints to add a little more fading to the the aircraft, since the pre-shading didn't turn out quite the way I wanted.  I used Yellow Ocher oil paint on the green parts of the camouflage and white oil paint on the brown parts.  I used a toothpick to add random dots of the oil paint, then took a broad (1/4"), soft brush and rubbed it around to blend in the oil paints.  The oil paint is easily removed with a tightly wadded paper towel, so there is quite a bit of control over where it goes and where it doesn't go.

 

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Does it look over done?  Yes it does!  There is a reason for that.  I found on the last build that the dullcoat diminishes the effect by quite a lot.  So this time I purposely overdid it so that (hopefully) it will be just right after the dullcoat.  Being a cautious person, my plan is to put dullcoat on the tip of the starboard wing to make sure that the fading will look the way I want. If for some reason it still looks over done, the dullcoat can be removed with paint thinner since the camouflage is protected by a thick layer of acrylic clear coat.

 

I also painted the spinner in preparation for masking.  The spinner is supposed to be dark blue with a white stripe.  The only dark blue I have is an acrylic, which I have had terrible luck masking over, so I painted the lacquer first. This should be interesting...

 

tdX7Idp.jpg

 

Don't know if I will finish today or not.  It seems so close, but there are so many tiny details that tend to really suck up the time....

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I completely forgot that SWMBO had purchased tickets to a local theater production today and made plans for dinner.  So that wiped out my model-making plans (as well as my fix-the-derailleur-on-my-bike plans and my update-the-operating-system-on-my-laptop plans.  That's what I get for procrastinating. :()

 

Still, I had a little time to pop down to the bench for a little oil wash on the control surfaces and dull coat on the wings.  I just had to see if my sun fading turned out the way I wanted, and it did!

 

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So I think a good rule of thumb is: when using oil paint dot filtering, the way it looks when you first put it on (i.e. fresh paint) is how it will look when it is dull coated. 

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She's looking good!

 

Re. the Curtiss interior green: for the sake of artistic variation and highlighting, I'll typically mix "Interior Green" by adding another green to Tamiya XF-4 yellow green rather than using a premixed Interior Green (they mostly have too piney a tint to my eye).  For the dull brownish shade Curtiss favored Tamiya's Olive Drab or Khaki Drab works well.

 

You might wish to fill the gaps on the underside of the flaps before the painting gets much farther along.  Not sure why Hasegawa tooled them with that split.

 

I used Tamiya's flexible vinyl (?) tape to mask that dodgy stripe on the spinner.  I'll bet a thin strip of electrician's tape would do in a pinch.

 

Hasegawa's wheels are too large in diameter IIRC, to put a bug in your ear the SBS resin wheels would really set off your excellent paintwork.  

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14 hours ago, Jackson Duvalier said:

Re. the Curtiss interior green: for the sake of artistic variation and highlighting, I'll typically mix "Interior Green" by adding another green to Tamiya XF-4 yellow green rather than using a premixed Interior Green (they mostly have too piney a tint to my eye).  For the dull brownish shade Curtiss favored Tamiya's Olive Drab or Khaki Drab works well.

Thanks for the advice, I'll tuck it away for my other P-40s (5 more in the stash).  I only found out this weekend that Curtiss had a different interior color (I like how I find stuff like this out too late...), otherwise I would've tried to figure out the right color to use before actually assembling the fuselage.  :) 

 

14 hours ago, Jackson Duvalier said:

You might wish to fill the gaps on the underside of the flaps before the painting gets much farther along.  Not sure why Hasegawa tooled them with that split.

Ugh... how did I miss that?  Should be a fairly straightforward fix.  

 

14 hours ago, Jackson Duvalier said:

Hasegawa's wheels are too large in diameter IIRC, to put a bug in your ear the SBS resin wheels would really set off your excellent paintwork.  

This is timely! Yesterday I was looking at the kit wheels and wondering why they weren't spoked. I wondered if they knew something about J.B. Paris's plane that I didn't, so I went looking and found a photo of him taxi-ing "Rusty" and.... sure enough, wheels with spokes. So thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction because I was wondering at work today who might make the right wheels!

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44 minutes ago, opus999 said:

I only found out this weekend that Curtiss had a different interior color (I like how I find stuff like this out too late...)

Sadly you aren't the first to get tripped up by that. We all do at some point find this kind of thing. It happens and know one will really call you on it. 

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Glad I could be of assistance.  The SBS wheels really are quite beautiful.  I'll try to get some pictures of my "Rusty" attempt together to share; busted antenna mast, wonky canopy masking, misplaced markings, splayed landing gear and all!  

 

In the interest of total correctness, when I mentioned Tamiya's olive and khaki drab WRT Curtiss Interior Green earlier I neglected to be totally clear that they must be mixed with Tamiya XF-4 Yellow Green.

 

1 hour ago, opus999 said:

 

Edited by Jackson Duvalier
goofy fumble fingers on the son-of-a-b%*^$%ing laptop pad
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On 11/11/2019 at 9:48 PM, Jackson Duvalier said:

Glad I could be of assistance.  The SBS wheels really are quite beautiful.  I'll try to get some pictures of my "Rusty" attempt together to share; busted antenna mast, wonky canopy masking, misplaced markings, splayed landing gear and all!  

 

In the interest of total correctness, when I mentioned Tamiya's olive and khaki drab WRT Curtiss Interior Green earlier I neglected to be totally clear that they must be mixed with Tamiya XF-4 Yellow Green.

 

Ok, this is the right thread to mention that the wheels are on their way!  

 

And thanks for the assist on the colors -- as I mentioned, I have more than a few P-40s in the stash, so this information helps a lot!

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You're going to love them, I promise.  I've got loads of aftermarket cockpit bits and I'm starting to wonder why, very few people will ever notice the significance of all that photoetch and resin down in a dark 1/72 hole.  But good resin tires, on the other hand, can do so much to visibly improve an otherwise simple OOTB build.

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Didn't have time this week to work on this, but today I had a couple hours so I decided to face my fear and work on that spinner! :worry:

 

I started off with a rough template -- I wrapped tape around the spinner and then used a pen to mark the tape where I wanted the stripe to be.  Luckily, there was a panel line that would be on one side of the stripe, so it served as a guide.   Then, I unwraped the tape and flattened it out on my cutting board.  I have a circle cutter I bought a few months ago (one of my best model-related investments!), and I adjusted it until I could cut the circle along the marked lines.  This took quite a bit of trial and error.

 

RLNcJc1.jpg

 

Once the first circle was cut, it was just a matter of setting the circle cutter the width of the stripe and cutting a new circle.  The toughest part of that was getting it centered properly.  but I ended up with this:

 

cHpslrj.jpg

 

As it turns out, it wasn't perfectly centered so that when I put this stripe on the spinner and the two ends met, one end was slightly wider than the other.  So I needed some creative masking to make that look right.  But it worked out OK and I ended up with this:

 

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A little Tamiya Royal Blue later and....

 

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I am so happy about this!  It really worked out!  

 

So, next on the list is to fix those seams in the under side flaps. :( Won't be tonight as we've got a kid with a scout pack meeting and another kid with Drama practice. But maybe tomorrow!

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22 hours ago, billn53 said:

I’ve been looking for a good circle cutter. Where did you find yours?

 

- Bill

I found a thread here at BM where I got the name of the cutter.  I could only find it at MegaHobby.com.  It's called a "Flex-i-file super precision cutting compass".  It works very well, but needs some practice because (as you might imagine) if the center point drifts while you're cutting, then the circle gets progressively smaller or bigger as you go around (i.e. spirals). I found that it works best for my if I hold the compass steady and spin the cutting mat -- its just much easier.

 

Here's a link to where I bought it:

 

https://www.megahobby.com/products/super-cutting-compass-w-titanium-blade-for-precision-circle-radius-cuts-flex-i-file.html

 

On 11/16/2019 at 12:10 PM, Courageous said:

Nice work on the spinner.

 

Stuart

Thank you! I'm pleased I got it on the first try. :) 

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