F4U-1A Painted
Milestone Day!
First up was to paint the wings. The Life Color Intermediate and Sea Blues are not as "bluesy" as the Tamiya color sheet, but look pretty realistic based upon photos of the real planes that I've seen. The outer wings undersides are not insignia white. Instead they are the intermediate blue since when on the decks with wings folded, the white wings shining upward would make the ship captain very unhappy. In fact, that blue is not much different than the aircraft carrier blue wood deck stain used in WW2.
After the paint dried (helped with the hot air gun) I carefully removed the liquid mask off the light lenses and I was very pleased, especially the landing light. It really looks like a silvered reflector under there. You can't beat the chrome pen. Chrome silver paint just doesn't cut it.
Then it was time see how I could free hand paint the multi-color scheme with the airbrush on the test article. I am soooo glad that had that since it really built my confidence that I could actually do it without a hard masking line or setting of the masks with blue tack or rolls of masking tape.
I used my main line Badger for this, but the demarcation was a bit too fuzzy so I tried the detail brush. While I was able to sharpen up the line a bit, the brush was working terribly, and was sputtering putting big drops out in all the wrong places. I tried a total cleaning with acetone, which worked, but then I noticed that the tiny O'ring behind the air nozzle was shot and dissolved in the acetone. What kind of paint spraying tool uses a rubber that's not compatible with acetone???
While not perfect, it proved that I could paint to a line. The line, BTW, I drew with a pencil before spraying. I took the pattern from the Tamiya instructions.
I then drew the pattern on the real model only spent more time on getting it correct. I needed to do some extensive masking to keep overspray from getting on the white areas that would be in the line of fire, e.g., flaps, landing gear and doors, and of course the entire exposed cockpit. I sprayed the vertical stab and rudder, and after force drying, masked it from the rest of the model since the rudder has a sharp color separation line.
Then I drew the pattern. Incidentally, using the liquid mask as a temporary adhesive to hold the removable cowls in place worked! I sprayed the intermediate first letting the line wave a bit between the white, which apparently it did in the prototype. I then did the sea blue. I didn't like the demarcation and I was able to go back and forth a couple of times to get it to be fuzzy... but not too fuzzy.
After demasking and doing some very minor touchup, the bird is painted. I'm letting it dry well over the weekend and will gloss it to ready it for all the decals and stencils.
After these pics were taken I went back and cleaned up the separation around the oil cooler inlets.
Tamiya provides nice masks, perfectly sized, but you have to cut them out. I used a fresh #11 blade and cut just enough depth to cut the mask and not the backing sheet so it was easier to separate the two. I actually enjoyed this. It was a nice delicate cutting op on something that wasn't styrene. It's the last thing I did today and I'll airbrush them on Monday. They get black first (the inside color) and then Sea Blue. I am sure that this paint job will come out very well.
The plane needs some gun shot residue around the gun ports and some residue at the shell ejection ports. I'm not sure what kind of debris is around those. I'll have to check the reference shots.
Milestone Day!
First up was to paint the wings. The Life Color Intermediate and Sea Blues are not as "bluesy" as the Tamiya color sheet, but look pretty realistic based upon photos of the real planes that I've seen. The outer wings undersides are not insignia white. Instead they are the intermediate blue since when on the decks with wings folded, the white wings shining upward would make the ship captain very unhappy. In fact, that blue is not much different than the aircraft carrier blue wood deck stain used in WW2.
After the paint dried (helped with the hot air gun) I carefully removed the liquid mask off the light lenses and I was very pleased, especially the landing light. It really looks like a silvered reflector under there. You can't beat the chrome pen. Chrome silver paint just doesn't cut it.
Then it was time see how I could free hand paint the multi-color scheme with the airbrush on the test article. I am soooo glad that had that since it really built my confidence that I could actually do it without a hard masking line or setting of the masks with blue tack or rolls of masking tape.
I used my main line Badger for this, but the demarcation was a bit too fuzzy so I tried the detail brush. While I was able to sharpen up the line a bit, the brush was working terribly, and was sputtering putting big drops out in all the wrong places. I tried a total cleaning with acetone, which worked, but then I noticed that the tiny O'ring behind the air nozzle was shot and dissolved in the acetone. What kind of paint spraying tool uses a rubber that's not compatible with acetone???
While not perfect, it proved that I could paint to a line. The line, BTW, I drew with a pencil before spraying. I took the pattern from the Tamiya instructions.
I then drew the pattern on the real model only spent more time on getting it correct. I needed to do some extensive masking to keep overspray from getting on the white areas that would be in the line of fire, e.g., flaps, landing gear and doors, and of course the entire exposed cockpit. I sprayed the vertical stab and rudder, and after force drying, masked it from the rest of the model since the rudder has a sharp color separation line.
Then I drew the pattern. Incidentally, using the liquid mask as a temporary adhesive to hold the removable cowls in place worked! I sprayed the intermediate first letting the line wave a bit between the white, which apparently it did in the prototype. I then did the sea blue. I didn't like the demarcation and I was able to go back and forth a couple of times to get it to be fuzzy... but not too fuzzy.
After demasking and doing some very minor touchup, the bird is painted. I'm letting it dry well over the weekend and will gloss it to ready it for all the decals and stencils.
After these pics were taken I went back and cleaned up the separation around the oil cooler inlets.
Tamiya provides nice masks, perfectly sized, but you have to cut them out. I used a fresh #11 blade and cut just enough depth to cut the mask and not the backing sheet so it was easier to separate the two. I actually enjoyed this. It was a nice delicate cutting op on something that wasn't styrene. It's the last thing I did today and I'll airbrush them on Monday. They get black first (the inside color) and then Sea Blue. I am sure that this paint job will come out very well.
The plane needs some gun shot residue around the gun ports and some residue at the shell ejection ports. I'm not sure what kind of debris is around those. I'll have to check the reference shots.
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