John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Yes my friend, a man does what he has to do. Sometimes you take a hit for the team, and I took my hit by eating all of those ice cream bars ! 😉

I saved the left over ice cream sticks because they work out great to use as a parts holder while painting.

I am very pleased with the outcome of the 'Candy Apple Green" color. It is the same color as my first bicycle when I was a kid. It was made by Schwinn and it was called a "Classic Crate". These were really cool bicycles that had a big fat "racing slick" tire on the back, (with a little one on the front) and a gear shifter. Toss in a banana seat with a "sissy bar" and high rise handlebars and it was the baddest bike on the block at the time. Mine was this Candle Apple Green color and I think it was called a "Pea Picker". Each different color had a different name. Hey it was the end of the 1960's ... so what else did we expect ? 😉

My Dad got it for me at an auction, and boy was it beat up badly and missing some parts, flat tires, the works. I had to do a lot of work to it before I could even ride it. That was cool though, because this is how my Dad spent time with me, and he taught me a whole lot about mechanical things, to name some. Fast forward a few years, and I actually rebuilt my first motorcycle engine at the age of 8... and it ran great once done. It was a 2 cycle single cylinder Yamaha 100 Enduro engine. Ahhh... Those were the times. Brand new Monogram kits were less than $3 too.

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
Thank you my friend ! Even though I have the Kindergarten going, and I try to build most of my models two or three at a time, I still play catch up to you. You my dear friend are the fastest builder I know, and your quality doesn't suffer one bit from your speed.

Please stay tuned my friends for another update. It's coming right up next !

Here’s some pictures to show the steps that I took with painting the Mayberry Corsair. I did some similar work on the Ashmun Corsair too.

I masked the outer lower wing panels off in preparation for the Light Gray color that was to follow.

The Inboard Flaps were prepped for paint too. This involved filling in the step opening with LQS and several sanding sessions to make things smooth. I also added the main landing gear doors at this time, since they have a better grip if installed prior to painting. Since they will end up the same color as the rest of the surrounding underside, it's not a big problem.

The horizontal stabilizers were installed, and the seam on the fuselage was taken care of too. The fit here is particularly good, so not much was necessary.

Some quality time with the air brush ended up with this. Now the underside is painted in a Light Gray color. Realizing I made a mistake, I had to come back later and mask off the Blue Gray, and paint the Light Gray again where I had over spray on the inner wing structure past the wing fold line.

This is a feature you occasionally see of Goodyear built Corsairs, having a soft demarcation line, or on planes that have been touched up in the field.

Next the inboard wing parting line at the wing fold area was masked off. I don't have any pictures of this...

I sprayed the upper surfaces Blue Gray. I didn't carry it over to the outer wing panels or fabric covered elevators and rudder. These locations will be painted in a similar color that I have added some White paint to.

The cowling, and it's cooling flaps were also painted at this time, as were the top sides of the inboard flaps.

This is what the underside looked like after the masking tape was removed. Here you can see my "mistake" with the Blue Gray bleeding over on top of the Light Gray. This was an easy fix thankfully...



The fabric areas were then carefully masked off in order to paint them a little bit lighter shade of Blue Gray. This was done because in some pictures of Corsairs that served in the South Pacific, you can see how the cloth covered areas faded at a different rate from the rest of the metal covered areas. I'm guessing this was because of the different types of paint materials that were used.

A "Dope" is used to seal and color fabric areas, while a Lacquer or Enamel was used on the metal area.

After spraying the fabric areas, this is how one of the two Corsairs looked. If this one has the Candy Apple Green in the cockpit then it's the Ashmun Corsair and not the Mayberry plane.

I might not have taken pictures of both planes at this step.

Later on I decided to go ahead and paint the ailerons in the lighter color too, since they were made of wood, and covered in fabric on the real plane.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by.

Tom Cleaver (@tcinla)
Your observations are spot on. I painted these areas this way in preparation for the upcoming weathering, and then the final sealer coat of a highly diluted coat of Gray Blue that is mostly thinner. This allows the difference between the colors to still be slightly visible on the finished project. If I don't go this stark in contrast now, it can't be seen later.

Good eye, and good call.

The next installments will be on the weathering process I did, and I think it will be very informative.

Thanks for the compliments.

Amazing job indeed, my friend @lgardner!

An amazing project it was, Louis @lgardner.
You created a very nice article supported by a perfect copy of Walter's Corsair.
I really enjoyed following your progress and the historical facts.
Thanks for sharing all this with us.