Thanks David ! I appreciate the compliments my friend.

Tonight I did some more work on the P-40, and made one other little change that will hopefully look a little better in the long run...

It involved the kit supplied gun sight. Which doesn't look all that great to me.

I had a few extra sights left over from the Hasegawa F6F Hellcats from my "Year of the cat" GB project.

So I removed the gun sight that was installed. Here you can see it on the left, while the new clear Hasegawa par is on the right.

I glued it in place...

and painted it black, all except for the clear reflector part that is... However it doesn't show up too well in this picture... Trust me it looks 100 percent better.

Then I turned my efforts on finishing up all of the little parts that were installed on the underside of the plane.

The drop tank / ordnance fuselage center line braces were added, as were all of the main landing gear doors. I also buttoned up the bottom of the resin nose plug with the cooling flaps and fuselage fairing.

The last item added were the tail wheel doors.

This one should be ready for some camouflage paint soon...

As usual...

"Comments are Encouraged"

Another nice build series Louis. I’ve done the same thing with that resin nose on the AMT kit. Very scary to cut it out and fit it. Also triples the weight of the model!
Mark

That is a work of art and no mistake, Louis. Really amazing.

Thanks David X2 ! 🙂

Tonight I sprayed on a base coat of Model Master Dark Tan.
FS 30219 to be exact.

Something just didn't look quite right to my old Mark 1 eyeball. The color looks off. It looks a little bit too red. It would probably be just right if I was going to spray on some green as the secondary color like they sometimes used in the Pacific theater on these planes.

So I did some more research on this while it was drying. Dana Bell in his excellent series of books on Air Force Colors said that the planes delivered to North Africa for the 325th, were painted with RAF colors from the Curtiss factory.

So you know what happened next ...

Out came the ANA 615 RAF Middlestone. Here's the results.

Here are the colors I'll be using to finish this one.

And the same colors as seen from the bottom of the jar. Granted these will not look the exact same as what you see here. This gives you a general sense of what to expect.

In case anyone is wondering what the two little specs are on the bottom of the Azure Blue...

Years ago I started adding regular BB's into the paint jar and used them to help mix the pigment while the paint was being shaken.

If this dries in time, I may try to spray some Dark Earth in a few. I guess I'll have to re spray the canopy parts.

As usual comments are encouraged.

I'm happy with this one too my friend. The more I do with it, the more I want to do... Thanks for the compliments David !

The paint dried sufficiently so I took a stab at free hand spraying the camouflage pattern.

Here's the results.

Now I'm really stoked !

Calling it a night for sure. Closing up the Iron Works for the night.

As usual comments are encouraged.

That's a really nice free hand paint job Louis. Apparently no coffee was utilized during this process.

I like the way you think, Bernie. It has occurred to me many times that for all the irksomeness of of our craft to those we love, it sure does keep us off the streets, doesn't it?

Thanks Gents for the kind words... No Tom, no coffee before painting. 🙂

Yes Bernard, I did some online research as dug into my book collections to see about the U.S. equivalents to RAF paints. I was even lucky enough to find some references to some very cool Dupont color numbers that were used by Curtiss. All of this was definitely cheaper than playing the horses ! 🙂 You guys crack me up sometimes... Love it.

I have been sick over the past few days. I didn't feel like building anything...

I went to the Mecum Auto Auction in Kissimmee and that was it... when I got back home I was done for. Down for the count. I saw a doctor and got some medicines. I'm starting to feel better now, so I couldn't help myself...

Tonight I did some work on "Light House Louie"...

First thing was masking off the squares on the stabilizer / elevator assemblies in preparation for some black paint ...

Which was sprayed on as soon as the taping job was done.

Remember the new replacement resin wheels ?

While waiting for the black to dry I drilled out the center hub to fit the axles. Next I sprayed the wheel cover with "Insignia Red".

By then the black had dried sufficiently... so off came the tape. Looks like the checks will need a little touch up paint in a few spots, where the black bled under the tape. I had the paint too thin.

The last thing was to glue on the freshly painted parts.

It's starting to look like a P-40...

Calling it a night at the Iron Works.

As usual, comments are encouraged.