Christmas Day 1974. Ah, what a banner day it was for 11 year old me. Model kits and more model kits and all the usual suspects. Revell, Aurora, Lindberg, MPC, and my first ever Monogram kit, a "White Box" edition of the Monogram 1/48 P-40B Tigershark. I remember being quite impressed with this kit. Three decal options, posable flaps, open or closed canopy, and a cockpit that was beyond the usual floor, seat, and pilot. Maybe those features don't count for much now, but back then, wow! At a recent show I pick up a "Blue Box" edition of said kit for the poultry sum of $8.00. I decided to wait until the Christmas of this year to start a nostalgia build of a kit I first built 50 years ago. I also decided to build it mostly with techniques I learned during the 1970s. As there is no real significant aftermarket for this kit, I'm evoking the spirit of Shepard Paine and the powers of "Creative Gizmology" (plus my own inner modeling mojo) to build a reasonably accurate P-40B
7 attached images. Click to enlarge.
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1. Alright pilgrim, we're burning daylight. Lets get after it.
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1. Good 'ol Morton Grove, IL plastic
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1. Somewhere inside this ordinary box of plastic scrappage is a cockpit, wheel wells, radiator flaps, and a host of other little tidbits that I am going to need to make this Monogram P-40 shine.
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1. Sanded down all the molded on interior detail. Will lay down some Tamiya tape, draw out the shape of a sidewall, lay the tape down on some plastic scrap and, using it as a template, cut out some sidewalls.
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1. Starboard sidewall
2. Port Sidewall
3. Rear bulkhead
4. Instrument panel
5. Instrument panel
backplate
6. Floor
7. I knew I had a cockpit in that box of plastic scraps. Need to do some dry fitting then flesh out these parts and everything should be right as dodgers.
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1. Here we see the basic idea
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1. Will be building a module here to hold the .50 Cals as well as to increase surface area for gluing.
