A 1:72 Mustang trio, a B, a Mk III and a Mk IVa - No lets add another B and make it 4 Mustangs instead- All Now Complete

[Cheshiretaurus]

1 hour ago, Johnson said:

 

She looks lovely CT. Excellent work. I think your masking method is better than the complicated way I did the white background.

 

You say 'test piece' - is that the final rendition of the lady in the red swimsuit?

Thanks.  Yes it's the test proof of concept and seemed to work first time.  Hope it goes just as well on the actual build. 

[Ventora3300]

A lot of excellent modelling going on here, CT. Well done. All this detail is engrossing and proving a big help for my own 'ancient' build. All the best. Mike

[Johnson]

20 minutes ago, Cheshiretaurus said:

Hope it goes just as well on the actual build. 

I hope so too. But you may want to check her precise position, her legs are completely within the engine panels. Have a look at photo 6 on this link showing one of the ground crew standing just in front of the plane.

 

And I just noticed the little 'centre of gravity' cross on the fuselage above the wing - that I forgot to add to my build - doh!

 

 

[Cheshiretaurus]

23 hours ago, Johnson said:

I hope so too. But you may want to check her precise position, her legs are completely within the engine panels. Have a look at photo 6 on this link showing one of the ground crew standing just in front of the plane.

 

And I just noticed the little 'centre of gravity' cross on the fuselage above the wing - that I forgot to add to my build - doh!

 

 

Good spot and thanks for pointing it out, The test piece was just to see how the decal would fit to the masked silhouette and how it would look. I did use that picture you refer to as an aid for the positioning, Ive cut the mask for the actual model with a matching shape to to the panel lines.

 

I cut it onto Tamiya masking sheet along with couple of other masks and used a bit of clear Frisket film to lift the whole thing and apply it to the model useing a couple of strips of tape applied against the panel lines to help positioning then once in position I removed the outer masking.

 

 

 voila!

 

The scoreboard on the Airfix decal sheet for the Hunter isn't very well done so I''m going to paint it instead, think it should be red anyway.

 

The score board on the Hunter went on in the same way

 

I used MRP RAF marking red as the Hunter was actually painted RAF dark green so stands to reason that RAF paints were available at the unit. That's Cheshiretaurus logic.

 

 

again voila!

The whole board will now be masked off for the rest of the painting and the swastikas will go on later as an inkjet decal.

 

Going dotty with that unmasking!

 

 

few more codes cut, the 12" C goes on the top of the rudder.

 

The Queens nose and spinner was painted insignia red, I also did the fuel filler caps the same. 

 

Then I decided I was going to do the same for the red 'L' s on the flap. this is also a decal on the Academy sheets but it goes over some lovely recessed rivet detail and the rivets didn't show through very well on the the previous build. So I;ll paint them on.

 

Bands all masked off, and I'll mask the red later.

 

regards

 

CT

 

 

 

 

[Courageous]

Some good masking work going on here CT, in 1/72 too.

 

Stuart

[Johnson]

54 minutes ago, Courageous said:

Some good masking work going on here CT, in 1/72 too

Yes, its great work.

 

I have to ask CT, how are you achieving such accurate mask cutting with the girl and the codes?

[Cheshiretaurus]

27 minutes ago, Johnson said:

Yes, its great work.

 

I have to ask CT, how are you achieving such accurate mask cutting with the girl and the codes?

Ah, I'm cheating 

 

[Johnson]

Hmmm... nice.

 

I want one!

[Cheshiretaurus]

36 minutes ago, Johnson said:

Hmmm... nice.

 

I want one!

 

Ive had that about 6 years and its defiantly been worth the investment. hadnt used it for a while until this mustang build though. They are not overly expensive either.

[Cookenbacher]

Inspiring work CT!

[Cheshiretaurus]

 

Fuel filler caps and red 'L's on the flap were the last things to be masked.

 

 

More painting.

 

First the overspray from the masked off white and red area was marbled back with black paint so as not to be conspicuous and blend in with the rest of the black basing. 

 

 

Grey first

 

 

I've used the AK putty to mask the line

 

 

Olive drab upper, Ive used MRP 138 for aircraft after 1943

 

Un masking

 

 

 

 

 

Think she came out well.

 

I'll let all that paint dry properly for a few hours before starting the gloss, 

 

On the Hunter I've started the underside I'm going to do a few shades of Alclad on different panels so first bit is white aluminium, I'll mask that later and then put another shade on.

 

 

Break time and dinner. 

 

Regards

 

CT

[Courageous]

Now't wrong there CT, looking good.

 

Stuart

[Cheshiretaurus]

Started to gloss the Queen tonight. 

 

For the Hunter I used 3 shades of Alclad for the underside.

ALC 106 White aluminium. Ailerons, flaps, panels forward of radiator intake,  undercarriage doors, fuselage, tail. 

ALC 116 Semi matt aluminium, main area of wing.

ALC 102 Duraluminim, wing tips, elevators.

 

Difficult to photograph but this one shows it best.

 

Photos of the hunter seem to indicate it had in the past a white band on the tail, this would have been a 12" band set 18" from the top of the tail. I had put this on along with the other stripes earlier. I've unmasked it now so when I do the green it should show though depicting a repainted area. I've not tried this trick before so see how it goes.

 

 

 

Thats all for today, I'll have some more Apple Jim Beam and chill

 

Goodnight

 

CT

[Cheshiretaurus]

Looking at pictures of the Hunter it seem that that demarcation line was a sharp edge but done a bit roughy.

 

So to try to recreate this I decide to draw the line on using the Molotow masking pen

 

 

 

The star & bar outline is just to help get the demarcation line in the right place as it seems to follow the edge as it passes.

Ive used MRP 110 RAF Dark green as I understand the Hunter was painted with RAF paints.

 

 

Unmasking the Molotow bits was a bit fiddly and a bit of rework needed with the airbrush again in a few places. but overall this is the result.

 

 

Wonky 'C'

 

 

 

 

 

Gloss next ready for decals.

 

CT

[Johnson]

Interesting demarcation CT, not gradual sprayed on transition as was usual. But as you say, they used RAF paint so presumably done 'in the field'. I'd say you've got it just right.

[Cheshiretaurus]

Really wasnt happy with that wonky 'C' on the Stbd fin of the Hunter

 

Had been playing on my mind all day so had to change it

 

 

1 Wonky C.

2 Cut a new mask shaped to top of the tail to aid fitting.

3 Obliterate old 'C' with RAF dark green.

4 Fit new mask to fin as a whole.

5 Weed out the inner of the mask and seal the edges of the fin and mask surrounding area.

6 Spray white.

7 Unmask

8 Finished

 

OCD satisfied.

 

Now started the gloss work, and put few more coats of gloss on the Queen.

[srkirad]

I like the painting quality, and demarcation line work succeeded too - it is sharp but rough.

[Dansk]

Brilliant work throughout - so cool!
the overpainted white stripe on the tail came out great 👍 

[Cheshiretaurus]

Sunday Morning progress report for the last week. Working away last week so only had yesterday and today for the GB and not enough pictures taken.

 

The Queen has all her main decals on, The lady in red went on very well and looks very good. Much better that the depiction on the Academy sheet (She looks a bit p..sed off really)

 

 

 

The Rebel Queen name was gut from the original decal. first one I dis seemed a bit misaligned so cut it from the other sheet and chose the best before the first one set into place.

 

When it came to the stars and bars I tried to use the ones from the Academy sheet and they just simply started falling apart and disintegrating. eventually to an unrecoverable. state, same when I tried from the second sheet (I have 2 identical sheets) they were discarded and I got them from the Airfix P51D sheet instead.

 

I did try to cut masks and paint them but I discovered I need more practice at that and the completion deadline is not really far away. They are not quite as neat as i would like them.

 

So here is the Queen this morning.

 

 

 

 

The Hunter has been decaled too and as with the Queen the stars and bars fell apart so another Airfix P51D in the stash was opened and the decal sheet used.

The swastikas decal was printed and applied, however it shrunk ever so slightly as it set, only a little but enough so that some swastikas were no longer aligned with the white circles. I tried several more times getting the same result before resorting to cutting it into 3 sections and applying those to reduce the effect of the shrinkage.

This was just the start of the dealing problem for this, The 'Hun Hunter Texas' name on the old Airfix P51B sheet went on ok but the white is not very strong and was too long for the panel on the Academy kit. When I came to put on the yellow decals I found that Airfix had not bothered to print a white background before the yellow so I was like using one printed on clear inkjet sheet and the decal was pretty much invisible once applied. I scanned a paint sample from the MRP paint I used and used this for the background colour for an inkjet decal onto white sheet with a resized hun hunter name. I had trouble matching the green so after several attempts I decided to just use the yellow ones from this and use the white ones from the Airfix sheet.

 

 

 

The results are not too bad if you don't look too closely.

 

 

 

The Dooleybird has been untouched for a few weeks so yesterday I Sprayed it with several tones of Alclad using the same tones as I used on the underside of the Hunter. also the undercarriage bays got MRP Zinc chromate primer and the nose painted white ready for the Checks to be painted on. later. More on this later today I think.

 

 

Finally the Current status of the Quad Mustang build.

 

 

 

Regards

 

CT

 

 

 

[Toryu]

It looks like the flight is nearly ready to go - great job!

[Cheshiretaurus]

Dooleybird nose checks,  The white nose band being 4mm wide was first further masked into two 2mm strips. Rear line to spray first

 

Using the AK cutting template I cut lots of 1mm x 5mm strips of masking tape and using them as pairs masked off the 2mm rear line of checks with some strips temporary applied as spacers to get the next check in the right place. I worked from the top centre line of the cowl downwards on either side to keep things parallel. with luck they met perfectly at the bottom. once complete I painted my own mix of blue (65% MRP Insignia blue and 35% MRP white) 

 

Next I unmasked the little strips and the forward line of the nose checks to reveal the blue checks. I now used more of the little strips of tape over the blue checks and extend foreword to the front line of the nose band. Then the rear blue and white rear band was masked over.  Spray blue again.

 

Unmask all to reveal the checks.

 

This might explain the process.

 

Rear line

 

 

Foreword line

 

 

Done, a little touching up here and there but overall I like it.

 

 

 

 

 

CT

[Johnson]

Great stuff CT!

 

Rebel Queen looks lovely. I obviously follow this with interest have travelled the same road. I agree about the Academy swimsuit girl, yours looks much better. I wonder if we might have used the same source?  I also think also you were right to re-use the Academy 'Rebel Queen' name. I made my own but it was really too much trying to get the white underneath the lettering on the decal.

 

The Hunter looks great too, I especially like the different Aclad applications on the underside.

 

And a good method for Dooleybird's nose checks. I wish you'd done it earlier, having just done my second set of red/yellow 357th checks on the front of Old Crow, I would have tried your method. But the tricky part of these is where it all narrows down and converges underneath.

 

Cheers,

 

[Cheshiretaurus]

18 minutes ago, Johnson said:

I wonder if we might have used the same source?  

Did you need to change some colours?

 

20 minutes ago, Johnson said:

But the tricky part of these is where it all narrows down and converges underneath.

Just trying to rework this area right now. Its tricky. 

[Johnson]

P.S.

 

So now would probably be a good time to ask how you are going to do Dooleybird's spinner?

 

Having cocked mine up yesterday! 

[Johnson]

1 minute ago, Cheshiretaurus said:

Did you need to change some colours?

Funny you should ask, I used colour-replacer in Paint Shop Pro