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A pair of 1/48 Tamiya Corsairs: VMF-214 Greg "Pappy" Boyington F4U-1 numbers #883 and #740

Started by Louis Gardner · 121 ≡ · ↻ 10 months ago · 1/48, Blacksheep, Corsair, Tamiya, VMF-214

Viewing 46 - 60 of 121 posts

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Spiros Pendedekas said 1 year, 5 months ago:

The intermediate blue looks great on, my friend @lgardner!
gary sausmikat said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Great progress and reporting, Louis.
Louis Gardner said 1 year, 5 months ago:

John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
gary sausmikat (@gwskat)

Thanks guys for the compliments. Today we had a few errands to run, so I didn't get as much bench time as I had originally intended to. However, I did get some stuff accomplished.

Here's a quick run down.

I mixed up some really thin Flat White, and sprayed it along the edges between the White and the Intermediate Blue. This softened it up some, and looks more like the planes did in the photos I have seen online and in books.

Here is how the underside of the nose looks on the other Corsair. It wraps around in a style very similar to how it was painted on camouflaged B-17's, using Neutral Gray and OD Green.

I think the sides of the rear fuselage turned out pretty good too. I'm happy with how the demarcation lines are between these colors now. Before they were too stark.

Next I sprayed on some flat Model Master RLM 66 enamel to represent the walk ways on the upper wing surfaces. I chose this color because it makes sense the color would have faded from a Flat Black to something similar to this in the sun, plus the constant walking on by the pilot and ground crews. Here the paint is still fresh and wet. That's why it's shiny looking.

This is how it looks once it dried. Next step will be to spray on the Dark Sea Blue. I have already masked off the upper instrument panel coaming in preparation for this.

Please stay tuned for another update once I get it painted Dark Sea Blue.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by.
Tom Bebout said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Looking good Louis.
George R Blair Jr said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Looking forward to the rest of the painting, Louis (@lgardner). I like the effect you got from the very thin paint. What PSI did you use to spray it?
Spiros Pendedekas said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Great progress and super painting results, my friend @lgardner!
John vd Biggelaar said 1 year, 5 months ago:

The demarcation lines look excellent, Louis @lgardner
Fully agree on the faded black walk ways.
gary sausmikat said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Looking nice, Louis!
Louis Gardner said 1 year, 5 months ago:
Tom Bebout (@tom-bebout)
Thanks Tom, hopefully soon I can put the decals on that you sent me.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
Thank you !

I dialed the PSI way down to 10.
1. MAC valve

2. End cap with dial for setting trigger pull
I also have a MAC valve on my air brush. I turned it way down too, and set the trigger depth after some experimenting. I started having trouble with the paint drying in the tip of the air brush, so occasionally I had to remove the back cover and pull the trigger all the way back to clear it out. Once it started spraying paint again, I screwed the end cap back on to limit the travel of the paint trigger. This really helped a lot.

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
Thanks my friend !

John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Thanks John ! It makes sense to me too that the black would fade in the sun.

gary sausmikat (@gwskat)
Thanks Gary !
Louis Gardner said 1 year, 5 months ago:
Today I didn't get as much bench time as I originally planned for.

But I did get some stuff done on both planes. Please follow along and I'll explain.

This is Corsair #740. The paint demarcation line is straight under the engine cowling. It also had a single radio antennae. It was mounted ahead of the cockpit. So I installed this part before painting the NS Dark Sea Blue.

I also installed the clear gun sight, armor glass inside the windscreen and the rest of the canopy assembly. I decided to close this one, after doing an online search, and watching a few VMF-214 videos on YouTube. Sometimes you see the canopies open while parked, other times they are closed. I decided to close these two Corsairs after seeing several rain soaked F4U's in the videos as the Blacksheep were entering them. They had to press the enclosure release, slide the canopy back and then enter the cockpit. It looked as if it had just had a good amount of rain fall on the island, so it was probably a good thing the canopy was slid shut at the time.
1. Canopy glued on
So mine will be closed too. Many of my Corsairs in the display case have open canopies. It's nice to mix it up once in a while.
1. This will get cut off

2. Canopy installed
This one will be #883. It had a single antennae too. However, the antennae was mounted behind the canopy. I added the second one in front of the cockpit, and will let it dry overnight. Tomorrow I will cut it off, and smooth up the area. There is a hole in the fuselage for this front antennae, so it had to be filled. This was the quickest, and hopefully easiest method to do it. Tomorrow I will know more.

I also installed the cockpit clear parts on this one too in preparation for painting the Dark Sea Blue.

Here you can see how the paint wraps around under the nose on #883. You can also see that for now, it has two antennae's and the clear parts are in place.

This shows how these two F4U's look right now.

The next steps will be to mask off the walkways on the wings, and cut off the forward antennae on #883. Then maybe tomorrow I will get to spray the Dark Blue.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by.
John vd Biggelaar said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Besides the little benchtime, you made some nice progress, Louis @lgardner
Nice approach on filling the antenna gap.
Spiros Pendedekas said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Great progress indeed, my friend @lgardner!
George R Blair Jr said 1 year, 5 months ago:

The amount of work you are doing on these planes is daunting, Louis (@lgardner). I get tired just reading all of the stuff you are doing. Great idea for filling the hole for the forward antenna. I suspect you are right about the closed canopies. C141s had an upper hatch above the cockpit. We would sometimes leave the hatch off during crew rest to keep the heat from building up in the cockpit. We always left it closed in the Pacific, however, due to the frequent rain showers that would occur. I discovered the same problem painting my F9F. What appears to be a logical painting sequence turns out to make things harder in the end. Great progress. Looking forward to your FAA Corsairs.
Brian Mennenoh said 1 year, 5 months ago:

@lgardner - Fantastic work Louis. Both planes are looking incredible so far!
Eric Berg said 1 year, 5 months ago:

Wow, Louis @gardner. Your airbrush work looks fantastic which make me think I need to get a new airbrush. What are you using? And what is that MAC valve all about?

Viewing 46 - 60 of 121 posts

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A pair of 1/48 Tamiya Corsairs: VMF-214 Greg "Pappy" Boyington F4U-1 numbers #883 and #740