I came back to the workbench to finish the FJ-1 the day after painting the Sea Blue. Even though comments said the blue was good, to my eyes, it just looked like a black blob. Scale color really needed to come into play.
I remembered that I had a similar issue some years back when I was with the New England Air Museum. I was building a 1/48 F4U-4 at the same time as we were restoring our XF4U-4. Restoration had purchased a custom mixed Gloss Sea Blue enamel for the plane. I went back to the workshop and took a cup of the paint for my model. Although it looked perfect of the 1:1 scale plane, the small model looked black.
I decided I needed to lighten the paint, so I went back to the Tamiya Sea Blue and added some white. I did this by eye until I felt I had a slightly lighter shade. I applied a thin coat of the new paint to the FJ and was satisfied that the model now looked more Sea Blue then Black.
On to the decals.
The decals are twenty years old. I wasn’t sure if they were still good so I tried one I wasn’t going to use. It worked perfectly. Apparently, that was the ONLY one that was going to do that!
As I was putting on the wing Navy Star & Bar (no blue, just white and red), it came apart. I managed to salvage it, then coated the remaining decal sheet with Microscale decal film. This helped.
I wanted to do the aircraft that New England Air Museum had (and Yanks Museum now has), side number 102. This was the plane that the CO of VF-5A, CDR Evan Aurand, set the speed record from Seattle to Los Angeles in February, 1948. Unfortunately, the kit comes with only markings for aircraft 101 and 115 of VF-5A. I decided that if I flipped the “5” upside down and applying it backwards, I’d have a reasonable “2”.
Most of the white marking went on with only minor difficulties except for the fuselage Stars & Bars, which became unsalvageable.
I had to remove the remnants of the decals and repaint that part of the fuselage. I then went to my decal spares box and found a correct size, standard red, white & blue insignia. I cut out the white star and bars and applied each piece separately. With the decaling done and dry, I sprayed another coat of future then a final coat of Tamiya semi-gloss clear.
My home-made, metal landing gear came next. I’m happy to say, these attached without a hitch.
I add the pitot tube to the upper vertical fin. I use a small diameter brass rod that I created the forward step-down by mounting it in a dermal and using a file to shape it. The final piece was the wire antenna from the top of the vertical to the fuselage side. I use clear nylon thread painted black.
And the North American FJ-1 Fury is done!
I happy with the final results. But now that I’m in the “Fury mode” I couldn’t resist pulling out my old ESCI 1/48 FJ-2.
13 attached images. Click to enlarge.
