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1/48 ICM P-51K Mustang - £10 ***Finished***


Ravnos

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Hi Folks!

 

This is my first Group Build so be gentle 🤣, I was originally going to enter with the Vulcan kit I picked up from a charity shop a while back as it was next on my build list anyway, but sadly when I dug out the box the price tag on it was £14.99, so that was out. I went and had a look in Dave Coley's "10 quid or less" section and found this mustang kit.

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Free tweezers and pen!

 

The Moulding all looks really nice, with good detail and very little flash. I'll be giving them a good clean before I start though as theres a lot of mould release still on the parts.

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This will be my first 1/48 scale kit, all my previous aircraft have been 1/72, and it will also be the firt time I've ventured outside of the Airfix/Revell bubble so it should be fun and a new challenge.

 

I will be a little slow starting on this properly as I've just had confirmation of our mortgage being approved on our new house so I'll be in the throws of a house move in the next few weeks, chances are the moddleing gear will be packed up in a week or two when I finish the kit ive already got in progress.

 

/Rav

 

Edited by Ravnos
Updating the title
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Gentle is for the meek.  Into the deep end with ye!  :jump_fire:

 

Welcome to Group Builds.....it's the community w/in a community.  Or for some of us.....our Hotel California.  :lol:  It's a great group of people around here, enjoy your stay.

 

Looks like a tidy little kit.  You've actually just reminded me I'm supposed to build a Mustang for our local club "competition" at next month's meeting.....  Oops.

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Welcome! I've just about finished my first GB (a Panzer III) and about to dive into my second. It's all fun, but seeing what everyone else is up to will soak up all of your free time :)

 

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Hi Rav. Welcome to this group build. Great to have here for your first GB. Great looking kit too! I hope all the house moving goes well too.

Kind regards,

Stix

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Thanks Guys, Can't wait to get started, although any actual building will need to wait till after the move, I might include setting up the new work bench as part of the build log 😁 in the mean time I'll be figuring out what paint I need to get that aluminium finish, havent played around with metallics yet so that should be interesting.

Edited by Ravnos
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So as I mentioned in the first post I'm not going to be able to make any serious progress with the kit until after the house move, our current flat is a chaos of boxes at the moment and I'm trying to finish the paint on my other WiP so it and all the modeling gear can get packed away. However in the mean time in leu of a proper update I've given the parts a wash and decided on paint. I'm torn between which of the paint shemes to go for though, the options are:

 

1.  "Sunshine" as per the box art. More stripes less aluminium

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or

 

2. "Nooky Booky IV" Less stripes more aluminium.

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I'm leaning slightly towards the box art option but not totally decided yet, what do you guys think?

Edited by Ravnos
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1 hour ago, Ravnos said:

I'm leaning slightly towards the box art option but not totally decided yet, what do you guys think?

Im rather partial to Kit Carson’s “Nooky Booky” myself. Though I think the instructions are incorrect on the date ? The underwing serial shouldn't appear until may or later in 1945 ? It was added to prevent pilot's from buzzing and hot rodding the locals post war. It allowed for easier I.D. of anyone breaking the rules. 

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9 hours ago, modelling minion said:

I like the box art option, a nice scheme and we don't get nearly as many Pacific based Mustangs built as ETO ones.

You'll have to forgive my ignorance.... ETO?

 

That's one vote for each so far :P

 

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Nice choice for a tenner :) ICM's  P-51s are... let's keep it at 'inspired by' the Tamiya 1/48 Mustangs. 
A bit rougher around the edges, but with proper attention cleaning up build nicely. 

👍 good luck :) 

 

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20 hours ago, Ravnos said:

You'll have to forgive my ignorance.... ETO?

 

That's one vote for each so far :P

 

Stripy. Little different than the many bare metal or standard DDay striped ones.

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3 hours ago, alt-92 said:

Nice choice for a tenner :) ICM's  P-51s are... let's keep it at 'inspired by' the Tamiya 1/48 Mustangs. 
A bit rougher around the edges, but with proper attention cleaning up build nicely. 

👍 good luck :) 

 

Thanks :) Painting is definately where I need the most practice so this should be a good challenge. And honestly if you're going to pick a company to be "inspired" by, Tamiya is a pretty good choice 😂

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  • 2 months later...

Hi Guys, I know its been a while but I'm FINALLY in the new house with something resembeling a man cave set up, so I can get back to this and dig the mustang out of its box!

 

New desks setup in the new room, probably not its final arrangement but it will do for now!

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Last night I managed to throw a coat of primer on the first few bits for the cockpit.

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Started painting this afternoon, mostly with the revered hary stick for the moment which has reminded me how much I suck at brush painting but it's going to have to do for now, the airbrush will come back into action for the exterior once the fiddely bits are done.

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I made an bottom of the red on the dash so decided in my own headcannon that the pilot has taken a stray round that delt a glancing blow to his leg spraying blood across the instruments.

 

anyway thats all I've got at the moment, fingers crossed the rest of the build should proceed a bit quicker now ;)

 

P.S. @PlaStix can I have a ruling on something? the kit cost exactly a tenner so while theres no wiggle room would you be opposed to me adding a 3d printed stand? I want to (if the kit allows) finish it gear up and in flight, the stand wont cost me anything as I've already got the filament lying around.

 

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Hi Ravnos. Great to see you are underway and it's looking good so far! :thumbsup:

With regards a stand for your model - yes of course - that sounds perfectly acceptable!

Kind regards,

Stix

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10 hours ago, modelling minion said:

Off to a very nice start, good job on painting the pilot.

Thanks buddy :) first time painting one in this scale, all my previous planes have been 1/72, in some ways its easier but at the same time feels harder to hide the crimes 🤣

 

5 hours ago, PlaStix said:

Hi Ravnos. Great to see you are underway and it's looking good so far! :thumbsup:

With regards a stand for your model - yes of course - that sounds perfectly acceptable!

Kind regards,

Stix

Awesome thanks, got the printer out of its box and its humming away behind me, miraculously it doesnt seem to have lost any calibration in the move (touch wood)

 

Made a little more progress today, Fuse together and wings assembled:

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The gear bay was a bit of a pain, the kit was never designed for a "gear up" build, so the doors needed some tweeking to get them to fit:

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Lined them up with a small peice of bluetack as scafolding while some extra thin was run into the seams:

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Followed by a liberal application of Vallejo's plastic putty, wiping the excess away with a finger:

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filled in the black paint round the cockpit with a brush, and sprayed a coat of matt black on some of the smaller parts:

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(that small piece on the left is supposed to go at the front of the cockpit, a gunsight of some sort I think but the instructions are NOT clear where its supposed to attach)

 

Thanks for looking folks, thats all the progress for the moment, next challenge is figureing out how to run a thread through the canopy for the radio antenna. Any suggestions? Luckily the kit includes two seemingly identical canopys on the clear sprue so I'll get at least one screwup 😆

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Edit: typos

Edited by Ravnos
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Hi Guys,

 

Bigger update this time, I've managed to get the odd 5 minutes here and there on the build but haven't had time until now to put an update on the thread.

 

First up was attempting to drill a hole through the canopy to thread a radio antenna through, which miraculously worked.

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I know that the thread I've used is massively out of scale for this but its all I've got and didn't want to go buying something specifically for the build so putting up with it being too big to stay in keeping with the less than a tenner spirit. (thinking back I could probably have used a strand of hair to get a better effect but its too late now!)

 

Attached the thread to the back of the seat, creating a small loop to replicate the strain relief, this one pictured turned out to be much too big so it was redone before the canopy was glued in place.

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Masked the two sections of canopy and glued them in place with a little PVA, to begin with the masking fluid was kept away from the hole for the antenna.

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An attempt was made to open up the gun barrels with fairly limited results, might have to revisit these.

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Wings finally on! starting to look like a plane now.

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The fit around the wing root was excellent, but underneath wasn't great,

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I left this bit un glued to begin with and glued round the top of the wing roots and the back of the wing first, once it was dry I glued the front underside and clamped it overnight which had the desired effect

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I'll need to come back and sand this a bit later to get it totally flush but its good enough for now.

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Glued on the ailerons and other greeblies, the hard-points were a bit of a pain as the parts themselves have locating pins but there's no holes in the wings for them, I ended up cutting the pins off and eyeballing the position. Hopefully it still looks straight when the ordnance gets attached.

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Speaking of which, the kit comes with two different bombs to attach (I say bombs but one of them might be a drop tank) and the instructions indicate builders choice as to what gets used, the painting guide shows the same one on both schemes and in both cases only shows it on one wing. Does anyone know whats correct in this case? I'm leaning towards the larger "drop tank" type as it looks nicer and is whats used on the box art but I've no idea which one is historically correct.

 

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I've glued the radio antenna in place, I sprayed a little paint on a scrap bit of thread to see how it came out and it looks like it might take paint quite well, and look a bit more like a steel cable. once it was glued in place I ran some PVA glue over the thread with my fingers to smooth down some of the fuzzy bits of the thread. Also used a tiny blob of PVA to plug the hole around the antenna thread, once it was dry more masking fluid was added to make sure the canopy was totally covered.

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Next up will be drilling some holes to accept a stand and then on to paint! looking forward to using the metallic paint properly, the wee bit I sprayed on the inside of the fuselage went on really nicely.

 

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That's all for now, really liking how this is coming together, cant wait to get some paint on it!

Edited by Ravnos
fixing typo's
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Morning folks, a wee bit more progress last night.

 

Stand printed. Haven't got a permanent home for the printer yet so its on the floor behind my desk for the moment

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holes drilled in the underside, that was nerve wracking, turns out my pin vice drills are super blunt (either that or the kit is made from marble) and even when chucked into the battery drill it took some serious pressure to make it through.

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Mounted on the stand. when its done I'll probably pose it something like this and then lock the ball joint with a little CA glue.

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For now its held in place with a wee blob of bluetac for painting

 

First coat of primer on, not as glossy as I would like in places but should do the job, I'll get another coat on today and then with any luck the next time you see this it will be shiny metal :)

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15 minutes ago, modelling minion said:

Looking very good 👍. Don't worry about not having a 100% gloss coat all over as it will help give some variety to the metallic finish. 

Great job on the stand, thats turned out really well. 

 

Thanks :) I'm pretty pleased with it so far, I sprayed another coat of primer this morning anyway, when the daylight hit it I realized I'd barely covered the underside of the wings, really need to get some better lighting in here 🤣

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Short update today, first coat of aluminium on!

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This stuff is actually amazing, it covers so fast and evenly, I think I might need to get a second airbrush set up for it though if I end up doing a bigger job, mine is currently set up to spray model air and primer and I think this could do with a smaller needle and less pressure to stop it burning through the paint quite so fast.

 

Thanks for looking, thats all for now though, gonna give this a good 24 hours to dry before the next stage as I want to mask some areas off so it needs to be really dry.

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Little bit of painting today, I kept to the underside to experiment as I really wasn't sure if this was going to work.

 

Masked off the underside leaving some panels exposed, I realized pretty quickly that I should have done the colours the other way round and dramatically reduced the amount of masking required but i

I'm just gonna have to deal with it now. "Dull Aluminium" sprayed on.

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Followed by more masking and "Dark Aluminium". This was the real risk, the Dull only had a few hours to dry before more masking was applied over it and I wasn't sure how it or the previous coat would survive having masking over it (or more specifically removal of the masking)

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It does however look like I've got away with it! lighting on my bench sucks so moved to the windowsill to try and capture the effect properly but the camera doesn't really do it justice. I'm pretty happy with the result so will go over the rest of the plane next.

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That's all for now, thanks for looking :)

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