A great save!

Greetings everyone.

Tonight isn't much progress, but I'll take it. While waiting for the overall Gloss Sea Blue to dry more thoroughly, I decided to paint the cockpit since the original paint was pretty much destroyed by the oven cleaner. I had expected that to happen, and in a brief flash of sanity, I had removed the seat prior to spraying on the oven cleaner. I have been using the stand to hold the plane stationary, and I haven't touched it with my hands. I want to let the paint dry completely before I even think about touching it. This will take a few days or so more before I feel comfortable with handling it.

Here's how it looks with some fresh paint in the office... and the seat out.

I decided to temporarily place the seat back in for photographic reasons only... as it is much easier to paint the details with the seat out. These next two pictures give you an idea how it will look once the seat has been permanently installed.


There are some more cockpit parts that need installation, (like the gun sight) and the side walls and IP will need some more detail painting.

While I was spraying the GSB, I decided to spray the canopy and windscreen, along with the dive brakes and landing gear doors.

But so far I am happy with how it's turning out. especially when I think about how horrible it looked a few days ago.

The more work I do on this one, the more I want to build up the Banshee in the stash... I also have several of the 1/48 scale Trumpeter F9F's that have been calling out to me as well. The Panther is such a beautiful plane... it really is.

These thoughts however will have to wait until we start the Korean War group build. I have several builds that I have been wanting to do for ages, and this will be the perfect opportunity.

Among these are Jesse Brown and Thomas Hudner's F4U's from the Chosin Reservoir, an F-84 that was flown by one of my Dad's childhood friends who was shot down and killed, then listed as MIA for decades until just recently. Then there's a few F-51 Mustangs, a Modelcraft F-82 ( because I'm a glutton for punishment), a F-80 or possibly two, and possibly even a Sabre jet (or two)... I definitely have two more MIG-15's and a Yak-9 coming down the assembly line as well...There might even be a few Sherman's, M-26 and M-46's, who knows ?

Hey we will have 3 years to do this stuff in ! So why not dream big ?

If I can get my hands on another 1/48 B-29 Superfortress, that one will be on the build list also.

Right now I have one in my stash with a set of decals for "Joltin Josie" and it will look great in Bare Metal Foil. But if I'm fortunate enough to score another one of these 1/48 scale B-29's, I will paint it with a black underside and Bare Metal Foil on the top side using the Korean War decals from my current B-29 kit.

I'm calling it an early night. As always, comments are encouraged.

Thanks for stopping by, and as you can tell, I'm getting amped up over this upcoming Korean War group build. The Japanese Group Build will also be a good one... I can feel it, and my gut instincts are almost always 100% correct.

Looking great Louis!

Phew. . .

Right out of the factory, nice!

Last night I completed the canopy. I'll have to go back and take a few pictures of it. Once I do I will post them here.

I also sprayed the white tips on the tail surfaces.

I started out by masking off the entire plane. I wrapped the entire airframe to protect it from the white over spray. I have found from previous experience that dark blue or black is a magnet for getting any sort of over spray on them. It's very noticeable too when you are spraying a light color.

Somewhere under this mess is a 1/48 scale Panther jet...

This is how the Panther looked after I sprayed the tips white on the tail surfaces.

I carefully unwrapped the paper from the jet, and this shows the masking I did on the tail surfaces. It's almost like Christmas time unwrapping a present...

After more careful un masking, the tail surfaces look very nice...

Here's the Panther Jet as it looks now. Maybe tonight I will attempt the leading edge painting on the wings and intakes.

As always, comments are encouraged.

Michael, @mrieth
Thanks for the comments on the masking. I have had exactly what you are talking about happen to me before with overspray getting where it wasn't supposed to have. It seems to get everywhere you don't want it too. Since then I have tried to make sure it didn't happen again and that's why I take such extreme measures to prevent it from happening.

Originally I had painted the tips of the tail surfaces white, and the wing leading edges aluminum color first. I had these places masked off and ran into trouble when the first attempt to spray the plane went badly.

When I removed the awful mess with the GSB paint using oven cleaner, I damaged the areas that were previously painted... so I had to start all over again from scratch. This last time I went about it in a totally different manner. Just opposite of how I normally do things.

I agree it is easier to spray the lighter colors first. Most of the time I do that. I might try using some "Matt Aluminum" Bare Metal Foil on the leading edges of the wings and wing root areas in place of painting these spots.

Hopefully I can pull this off in time...

Thanks for the feedback and I hope to hear from you again soon.