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Tamigawa 1/72 Dual Build


Andwil

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So December 14 has arrived and everyone has started before me.  In the interests of stash reduction I have decided to build two Mustangs, one Tamiya and one Hasegawa, and to build them concurrently.   Here they are:

 

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and the sprues, Tamiya:

 

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and Hasegawa:

 

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the general parts breakdown of the two kits, while not exactly interchangeable are almost the same.  The Tamiya offering is later and more detailed, especially in the cockpit.  I will be building OOTB with maybe an added tweak or two.  The Tamiya will be built as Maj. Leonard “Kit” Carson’s Nooky Booky IV, and the Hasegawa as Col John Lander’s Big Beautiful Doll.

 

The parts have been given a good wash and I’ve started on cleaning a few parts up, not that there is much or any flash to remove.  With a heat wave in the offing with temps forecast for up to 41C next week and then the Chrissie  whirl of social engagements to follow I don’t expect much progress to be made until after Christmas.

 

AW

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7 hours ago, Andwil said:

the Chrissie  whirl of social engagements to follow I don’t expect much progress to be made until after Christmas.

Same for most of us I guess, mate. Have a good one! 

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Managed some bench time this afternoon and did a little work on the Mustangs.  I got the idea of dropping the flaps on Big Beautiful Doll to match a photo Ihsve, so I cut off the flaps from the Hasegawa wing with a view to fitting spare Airfix flaps left over from an earlier build.

 

2019-12-22 07:25:22

 

With a bit of fettling I think I can get the Airfix flaps to fit.  The Hasegawa wheel wells, while nicely detailed are rather shallow, I decided to disguise this by having the main gear doors closed, this also matches the photo of BBD.  The kit is not designed to have the doors closed and the parts needed to be reduced in all dimensions and thinned to fit in the wells.

 

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Yuk, filler will be required.

 

The Hasegawa kit also lacks any radiator detail, which is no big deal as not much will be seen once the fuselage is put together, but a dry fit showed a large gap that would be impossible to fill.  Using a technique inspired by @giemme I covered over the join with a thin piece of plastic card.  While at it I added some small strip to suggest the radiator.

 

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Final thing today was to slap some Mr Surfacer 500 into the panel lines on the wings of both kits.

 

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Thanks for looking, comments etc welcome.

 

AW

Edited by Andwil
Typo corrected
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1 hour ago, Andwil said:

with a view to fitting spare Airfix flaps left over from an earlier build.

Great idea :). Depending on the pair of Airfix you use, you will need a fair bit of fiddling, sanding, etc to them to fit, but they will :). 

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  • 2 weeks later...

An update on progress with my Mustangs.  Work has continued off and on at a snails pace with nothing really worth photographing.  A reasonable session today saw the cockpits nearing completion.

 

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Fuselage halves were primed with Stylynrez grey then sprayed with Vallejo Metal Colour Aluminium.  The cockpit area was brush painted with Lifecolour Interior Green and details picked out in black with some spots of white, red and yellow for various switches.

 

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Cockpits painted, a light dry brushing of Lifecolour wood was applied to the black floor to represent scuffing.  To add a bit of interest to the rear section I painted the radio set RLM 66 dark grey and the battery gloss black to differentiate from the Matt black fuel tank.

 

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Seats, IPs, control columns and Tamiya radiator painted.  The radiator has received a black wash to bring out the detail and although it does not show, the Hasegawa IP (left) has been glossed ready for a decal and the Tamiya IP has some gloss dropped onto the dials.  The seat cushions had some creases scribed into them, painted Lifecolour tan and given a burnt under wash.

 

Next step will be to make up the seat harnesses and give the internal a dark wash and light silver dry brush to bring up the detail.

 

Thanks for looking, and Happy New Year 🎉

 

AW

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Bit more done today.  Decal added to the Hasegawa IP and a silver dry brush on the Tamiya  one:

 

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Seat belts made up from Tamiya tape, dry fitted here into the cockpits.  Not so good perhaps but they look ok in real life.

 

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Thanks for looking.

 

AW

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Cockpits finished today and attached to the starboard fuselage halves. 
 

Hasegawa:
 

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Tamiya:

 

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As the Tamiya Mustang will have the canopy open I have left the seat out for now to facilitate masking.

 

Fuselages closed up.  Unfortunately the Hasegawa kit requires the exhausts to be affixed from the inside which makes painting a bother.  You may notice that my initial clamping of the nose pushed the exhausts in, these had to be wiggled back into place, luckily it was possible to reach them through the nose and wing openings.
 

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Thanks for looking.

 

AW

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Got the wings on today.

 

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surprisingly I got a really bad fit on both models, which being two different kits must be down to something I have done.  With the Hasegawa I suspect it is related to me having cut away the flaps to fit the dropped flaps from an Airfix kit, but why the Tamiya has such a poor fit is a mystery, I’m fairly sure it’s not caused by the cockpit forcing out the fuselage sides as the fit is loose, not tight.  The port wing root has such a gap that a shim is required:

 

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I see filler and sanding in my future.

 

AW

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35 minutes ago, Johnson said:

You did get the right wings on the right fuselage... ? ;)

Yes, first thing I checked before I committed to glue.  Easy to do, the kits are very similar, fortunately the Tamiya plastic is a much darker grey than Hasegawa.

 

AW

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10 hours ago, Andwil said:

With the Hasegawa I suspect it is related to me

Doubtful I had nothing but trouble with my Hasegawa P-51. So much so that i eventually gave up the idea of a standard build. I wound up whiffing it into a night-fighter from Korea. 

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Trimmed the shim and sanded the wing root on the Tamiya Mustang.  No more gap:

 

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The Hasegawa one required more drastic remediation.  I didn’t take a photo of it but the starboard wing root had a massive step with the top of the wing much lower than the fillet at the wing fuselage joint.  I added a plastic card skin to the inner end of the wing and sanded this down to the correct level:

 

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A year or two ago I would probably have given up on this kit at this point and binned it but took the opportunity to try something new.  Being pleased with how this turned out I added the remaining parts to the fuselage,   chin and radiator intake and outlets:

 

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More poor fitting on the Hasegawa kit:

 

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Lining up the top of the chin with the nose resulted in a nasty step so I elected to line the part up with the bottom of the fuselage and fill the resultant gap.

 

AW

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The dropped flaps have been added to the Hasegawa P-51 with a liberal amount of CA gel and accelerator (which has caused the odd white bloom) for a strong bond and the underwing pylons added to both kits.

 

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A clean up and rub down and polish and they’ll be ready for paint.

 

AW

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In to the paint booth today for primer:

 

Nooky Booky IV (Tamiya) I am happy with.

 

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Big Beautiful Doll (Hasegawa) is horrible.

 

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A lot more sanding required.

 

Various other bits and bobs primed.

 

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One thing I have discovered is that I am going to have swap the prop assemblies between the two kits.  Nooky Booky IV is a P-51K but Tamiya only provide the cuffed prop for the P-51D.  Hasegawa provide both prop types in their kit and luckily the parts are compatible so a straight forward swap is possible.  I think this would be easier then trying to get the  Hasegawa nose check decals for BBD to fit the Tamiya kit.

 

AW

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