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Airfix B-24J Liberator 1/72


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You may want a coffee or a beer for this one!!🤣🤣
This is my B-24J Liberator from the old tooling from the ‘Blueprint’ era boxing.

I originally had the same kit but it was in the 1975 box 

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Along with the other models it had suffered storage and house moving with guns, propellers, tail planes and one main gear broken. When it was originally built, only the vertical stabilisers were painted and  box art decals applied - that mouth one was a right P.I.T.A.!! - both side broke up into 4-5 pieces applying them - I dint know about setting solution then!

I decided It needed a revamp to took it apart - again the polystyrene cement broke apart easily and I cleaned up the parts where possible. Most of the windows had excess glue on them and were bin fodder. One of the tail plane elevators were missing as was one wheel/tyre (don’t know how as I still had the broken landing strut!)

I decided to look for replacement windows on eBay with no success at first - then I lucked out completely!!

Somebody was selling the blueprint box which actually had 2 kits in it although they couldn’t be certain that there were enough bits to build 2 Liberators. I managed to win the bid thinking I would use the parts I needed and sell the kit(s) on again.

Upon closer inspection of my original wings and fuselage, I found damaged spots so I decided to make a chart 3 columns wide and tick off what parts were available out of the three kits against a printed off copy of the instructions.

There definitely was one complete kit, the second was mostly there and the third was fit for the odd part only.

I made sure the complete kit would go in the box along with the third kit(my original). I re-listed it and got about the same as I had paid for it in the first place.

I then built this one only having to scratch build the turret guns and repair the propellers (I had 2 complete and found the broken off blades in the spares tub which was in the same box as the models were kept in.

I used an old cd case fo the flat windows (which were clearer than the originals) and replaced the square plastic waist gun ports (never liked them anyway).

I was going to paint it silver but that mouth decal put me off so I painted it Tamiya olive drab. Only thing was the olive drab looked too dark so I added some white to lighten it up a bit and resprayed it.

Only one set of decals were in the box so I scanned them and printed my own (for the first time).

They came out ok bit I need to work a bit on my cutting out.

I was looking at it and decided it needed nose art. I found ‘Bomb Toting Mama’ but the pictures were black and white and I couldn’t successfully colourise it. I then saw ‘Diamond Lil’ on a B-24D?. I thought ‘Well - it’s still a Liberator and I little artistic license wont hurt’ so I printed it out - on clear sheet first which looked okay until I put it on and it almost disappeared. While speaking with a friend on Xbox who’s in the printing trade, he pointed me in the right direction saying it needs to be printed on white decal paper, so I reprinted it and the tail numbers with a green background and applied them. 
I’m happy with the result even though it looks factory fresh.

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I hope you like it

Edited by Brigbeale
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2 hours ago, Brigbeale said:

I hope you like it

Very much so, hard to credit it is the old Airfix one, a very fine job. A for it being factory fresh, that's mainly the way I try to make things.

Steve.

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Nicely done  and a smart turn out for an old kit. Shame you missed the sink mark dimples to the upper fuselage that could have done with a smear of filler.  That aside , good work.

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Very nice job! i like a Liberator .. did this kit myself earlier this year. OOB is fine. I agree the decals are fragile , mine was circa 1985 box if i recall. I bought it in 2004 from a shop sadly going out of business.. have had some discussions on BM about Airfix retooling and re-issuing this kit. Not a lot of options for Libs these days unless you want to pay £100 upwards! It's a fine aircraft in my opinion and worthy of a new 1:72 offering.. Well Done!!!

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Gret show,

 

I love it! I started mine so long ago... OK, no comment.

You've done a great job, congrats! On your next model though, try and get the seams on the fuselage top and bottom to disappear. You will gain a lot in realism.

 

But I love the final result!

Keep having fun!

 

JR

Edited by jean
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On 30/07/2020 at 12:15, Paul J said:

Nicely done  and a smart turn out for an old kit. Shame you missed the sink mark dimples to the upper fuselage that could have done with a smear of filler.  That aside , good work.

Yes I know. The camera makes them look twice as bad as they really are. Like you say, a smear of filler would have made the difference but I’d only just returned to modelling and had forgotten most of the tricks

Edited by Brigbeale
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4 minutes ago, jean said:

Gret show,

 

I love it! I started mine so long ago... OK, no comment.

You've done a great job, congrats! On your next model though, try and get the seams on the fuselage top and bottom to disappear. You will gain a lot in realism.

 

But I love the final result!

Keep having fun!

 

JR

Thanks for your comment.
As stated above, I’d only just returned to modelling and had forgotten some of the tricks. I think I was over cautious about removing the rivet detail.

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4 minutes ago, Brigbeale said:

 I’d only just returned to modelling and had forgotten most of the tricks

I know only too well what that feels like. You'll discover that the old tricks will come back and you'll learn a host of new ones, some of which you'll invent yourself!

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1 minute ago, SAT69 said:

I know only too well what that feels like. You'll discover that the old tricks will come back and you'll learn a host of new ones, some of which you'll invent yourself!

Trouble is they always come back when it’s too late do do anything about it

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Maybe I should write to them and complain about the sink marks??😂😂😂

Edited by Brigbeale
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2 hours ago, Brigbeale said:

Trouble is they always come back when it’s too late do do anything about it

I think this is called life!!!!!

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I had this kit when I was a kid. The box art was the hook for me.  Forty-plus years later, I think I could use another one.  The rivets on the wing would probably make for a

nice back scratcher, or maybe an exfoliator for the hair on my back 😂.  By the way, I chose the beer for this one and it shows.  Nice job on the old beast.

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22 hours ago, TheyJammedKenny! said:

I can't imagine how Airfix ever expected young people of the era to put this one together.

Back then we were happy to get it together in two weekends as opposed to the single engine ones we did practically overnight :P

Perfect seamlines were somewhat lower on the agenda those days.
One tip on dealing with those on old kits: just focus on the ones that will be most visible (i.e. top) when on landing gear and work from there.

 

Kudos for the paintwork, self-printed decals,  scratchbuilding, and proper weighing as she's very likely to tailsit :goodjob:

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