These details are incredible... everything is very precise and very impressive.

Great detail work on this. Other then the cowl issue and too thick canopy, I’ve always liked this kit. The Hobbyboss kit has a ridiculously thick wing that’s impossible to fix.

Meanwhile, I applied surfacer to check previous work and I started work on wing pylons, which were higly inaccurate(all of them) .
And a bonus, this is my "office". 🙂

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

A very organized working space you have, Martin.
Also quite some storage space, which I do miss myself unfortunately.

This is some of the best scratch building I’ve seen around, truly impressive both details and engineering of the parts...a lot of materials go into it. A word of recognition also for the excellent paint work so far

I think you've got that cowling. If you don't, it's certainly "close enough" and miles better than the original.

That's really quite a nice work space. Great lighting set-up.

I started painting, finally. According to research I mad and discussed I am using mostly White Aluminium MRP-009, which seems to be most close to original aircraft look.
I guess it is unusual for american aircraft, I would have expected polished aluminium instead.
I started with glossy black as a base. Then I mad some random stains (free hand) with white, tan and blue. Last layer is white aluminium applied carefuly to not hide underlayed colors completely.
I used that as a good test. I will apply just white and black for the rest of aircraft and also different metal shades..
Propeller head is Alclad chrome.

There is still some little work on fuselage, just few places need to be touched. I hope I can start with painting of everything tomorrow.

And funny story at the end of this post:
I placed two cameras as they were placed on 2P versions (see the pic).
But, to my surprise, after another investigation of original photo evidence, I found out that this aircraft is definitely version F8F-1B, so it is correct on the box. The camera installation is some kind of field modification and therefore non-standard. (I am not replacing them any more, however. I am OK with that it is not 100 % accurate.)
I will take better pictures soon. Although my new Realme has impressive sharp camera with high resolution, white balance is poor.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I think you nailed the cowling just right Martin. All the extra detail and research you've done is making this one fine looking Bearcat. Nice workspace.