I've started construction on my Hasagawa P-40E. Construction started as usual with the cockpit. I'm using the Eduard photoetch set so I folded and soldered the seat. For seat belts I used foil and belts from Lions Roar. I scratch built the hand operated hydraulic pump, just a small piece of wire and built up CA for the nob. While dry-fitting the seat, the cockpit floor was dropped and I lost the kit control stick so I had to scratch build that as well. I rebuilt the stick with a hand grip from a Corsair a short length of solder, styrene and wire. I know that in one of the articles someone asked what the box is on the front of the stick, from the In Detail and Scale book it appears to be a pinkie trigger, if someone knows for sure by all means please fill us in!

I also began putting that modular fuselage together. Here's how I'm tackling that. This process requires a lot of small adjustments and planning. You really want to get the seams as close as possible to minimize filling and sanding. To get the mating surfaces along the sides as close as possible I filed away any plastic that prevented a tight fit. I'm also building each side seperate as I find it much easier to fill the top and bottom seams. Once all the fuselage parts for each side were assembled I sanded the seams to bring each side of the seam level, and applied Tamiya Liquid Surfacer to fill the seams.

The next step will involve sanding the seam smooth where the majority of the surfacer will be removed. To be continued!

18 attached images. Click to enlarge.

coming together nicely, the office looks great.

wow the preshading looks better than my finished work...masked right?

That's correct I just used some post-it's. this is my second time pre-shading like this. I liked the effect it had on my Skyraider so I thought it might liven up a bland OD over N. grey scheme.

you sprayed directly over the post-it edge or just to the inside of it to achieve that effect?

Patrick... I see you have found the easy method for multiple masking panels with Post-a-Notes. My question is, how did you decide which side of the panel line to put the shadow?

Great looking preshade you have applied, Patrick! I very much prefer your approach compared to the 'classic' panel line technique.
Looks like the panel lines running along the aft fuselage where the join is are a bit mismatched by Hasegawa, was this difficult to fix? Or perhaps this is not so visible once the aft fuselage is completely together and has been cleaned up.

Great work allaround, thanks or sharing! 🙂

Here are a few photos after having painted the OD over N. Grey. Both colors were lightened slightly. Grey with white and Olive Drab with some yellow.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.