1:32 GWH Curtiss Hawk, „white 68“

[PeterOlsen]

Hi Folks, I thought I‘d share my 1:32 GWH Curtiss Hawk 81-A2 wip pics with you. This is a really lovely kit that goes together quite well,(minus a few little hick-ups here and there) and it’s a real joy to paint and weather. It‘s also packed with plenty off interior detailing options. I particularly like the fine surface rivets over the entire airframe, I wish more manufacturers would do this with the same quality on more 1:32 scale A/C kits. 
 

I‘ll start by showing you some of the work in the cockpit. Except for the instrument panel ( I used the ‚Eduard Look‘ set, which I forgot to photograph ) 🫢 everything was built straight out of the box.

 I hope you like the pics……….

 

 Just like the real thing the cockpit floor is curved and is part of the upper wing surface…

 

 

This is the left hand side cockpit wall frame which glues over the interior of the fuselage side. I used Gunze‘s H58 U.S interior green over Mr Metal Color MC 218 Aluminium for the paint chipping, a Black and burnt umber oil wash  for depth and weathering and Vallejo acrylics for the fine detail painting. The placards are from the kits decals, they add that lovely bit of extra spice so to speak.

 

The right cockpit frame…….

 

The kits seat with seat belts from HGW models. They‘re a little fiddly and time consuming to make but totally worth the effort and I like them so much more then photo etch, especially in 1:32 scale.

 

 

The rear cockpit bulkhead and head rest ….

 

 

The finished cockpit fits nicely together with the two fuselage halves, you can catch a side on glimpse of the ‚Eduard Look‘ Instrument panel here which as I mentioned above, I forgot to photograph. 🤬

 

 Once dry the fuselage can be attached directly to the top of the wings. The next step is to add the wing root fillets which took a few little improvements to make them fit better, but I’ll talk more about that in the next update….
 

Well, that’s it for now folks. I hope the pics don’t appear to large in this post but I’m not sure how to preview my entry before posting…
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my work so far……. more is coming shortly,

Cheers,

Pete.
 …. Oh, by the way, I’m starting up a new Patreon page soon so you’ll be able to view more of my content, stay tuned for more details….

[nmayhew]

nice

 

it's a shame that this kit has gotten so few builds given its position in American WWII history as the fighter at Pearl Harbour

 

it's also a shame that GWH have not turned out anything else in 1/32 - in terms of detail and fidelity i would say they are the closest to Tamiya (Z-m too much fiddly nonsense which only 1% of modellers can make fit; Kotare far less complex with a focus on ergonmics, fit and only detail you can see... there is no-one else at all in the conversation sadly)

 

good luck with the patreon - do you have any links to your other work?

 

thanks for sharing

Nick

[PeterOlsen]

Hi Nick, thanks for your response, yes this a great kit and I hope GWH will make us some more !

I‘ve made some previous posts here on LSP so you should be able to see them. For now I’m working on my page but I‘ll post here when I have more details of course.

cheers,
Pete.

 

[D Bellis]

Looks fantastic so far!

 

Just a note on the color of 'what's behind the glass' aft of the cockpit:

 

Always in exterior color(s), never the cockpit color.

 

HTH,

D

[nmayhew]

ah now i remember...I re-visited a few of your builds and recall i really liked your finishes, especially top side mottling

 

did the 190 book ever get published?

[PeterOlsen]

Thanks Nick, no, life got a bit full on unfortunately but I’ll put that content on my page too. 

 

D Bellis,  Ah yes ! Thankyou, a good tip for anyone building these P-40‘s. The  exterior camouflage color does continue through the rear windows. 

[crobinsonh]

Superb work. Looking forward to your next update.

[alain11]

hi 

great work inside this cockpit !! I like the weathering effects , particularly the seat belts which have a natural positioning .......maybe some wire and linkages could have been added on the side walls .....but it's only my opinion.....good job !!!!

Alain  

[PeterOlsen]

Thankyou Cronbinsh, glad to have you following along.

 

Thankyou Alain,  yes one can always add more detail, absolutely !  Well, …..in this case I just wanted to keep the momentum going and the kit supplied cockpit is pretty nice in this one.

 

Pete.

[PeterOlsen]

Thankyou for the views and responses everyone,I really appreciate it. 
 
Ok, moving along with the build now…… For the most part this kit fits together quite well but as I‘ve eluded to above there are a few little areas that need some attention if you want to achieve an absolute perfect fit. Of course it goes without saying that in no way am I bashing this kit at all, I’m only sharing my building experiences and hopefully these tips can assist those of you who are building this kit as well.

Eh ‚em…..and those for those of you planning to add it to their mountainous stash of models at home. 😆

 

After gluing the wing halves together and bonding them to the fuselage you will need to add the wing root fillet. I found that there was a bit of a step between the top part of the wing fillet and the fuselage side. Initially I made a couple of dry test fit runs placing the fillet in position before committing to glue. 

 

 

 

 

Although not so evident in these pics the wing to fillet join actually came out quite well but the step at the top touching the fuselage side still needed some work.
 
There were some web like reinforcement structures on the inside of the fillet that I removed with a curved hobby blade and some sand paper. This really enhanced the overall flexibility of the part and greatly improved the fit. Again I failed to take pictures of this but if you can indulge my cave man like diagram drawing skills in the picture below I think you‘ll see what I mean…🫢

 

 

 

In this next pic you can see the gap of the fillet aft of the trailing edge of the wing. I do believe I thinned the inside of the part down and with a little finger pressure it went into place quite well once I committed to the gluing stage.

 

Once I was happy that I could fit the part successfully I glued small sections of the part one at a time and waited for them to dry before proceeding.

I‘m jumping ahead here but with this shot you can see a „closer to end result“ of the area after gluing and a test inspection spray of metalizer. Some cleaning up, retouching and respraying was necessary but it turned out quite nice in the end.
You can check things out further in future updates…

 

That’s it for the meantime folks, more coming soon,

cheers,

Pete.

 

Edited January 9 by PeterOlsen

[scvrobeson]

Great progress. I've seen that filet area causing problems on other builds, so it's certainly not unique. Great problem solving on it to improve the fit.

 

Keep up the great work

 

 

Matt 

[MikeMaben]

Nice progress Pete, really like your chipping 

[Gazzas]

That cockpit interior looks great.  I really like your use of oils.

[PeterOlsen]

Thankyou Mike , Matt and Gaza’s, much appreciated,

cheers,

Pete

[PeterOlsen]

The kit gives you an opportunity to display the engine all opened up but I decided to keep the lines of the aircraft so I could make painting and weathering the main focus for this build. The fit to the fuselage was actually quite good.

 

 

 

There was a bit of a gap on the top section of the cowling so I utilized some white styrene sheet to bring the void closer together.  Once it dried I had to carefully cut and sand the shim to make it blend in. 

 

 

Actually it took me a few „rinse and repeat“ episodes of cleaning up the join and then respraying to check before it began to look acceptable. You can also see here that in my haste I forgot to mask over the exhausts which I had previously painted. 🥴 Further on in the build I ended up simply treating them to successive oil washes of different earth colors which returned them back to their filthy state.

After the pic above I also gently re-scribed the panel lines on the top of the engine cowl (using Dymo tape as a guide) to make them pop out a little crisper.

I don’t know about you guys but I often find myself jumping from area to area or taking one step forward and two steps back before progress seems to show itself. 🪃

 

 

 

According to my references there is a panel line that needs to be scribed down the center of the underside cowling. Of course it wouldn’t be complete without adding some rivets. 🪚🔨

 

 

The bulge of the wheel well on the leading edge of the wing is a separate piece and it needs a bit of work to get it to fit.  It’s not the prettiest of pictures especially with that big blob of poster gum there to hold the piece on but it lets you see what I mean.
 

Now, If you follow the shadow line of the smile shape crack up to right hand end you can see a vertical flap of plastic on the leading edge bulge which should be hidden once it’s installed in the wing. I removed this and the fit was much more workable. Even so, I still had more careful sanding and filling to make this area blend in.

Unfortunately I couldn’t work out my edit option on my Imgur page to help me draw an arrow on my Image   🤯 . 

 

 

 

For the most part I believe I’ve pretty much covered the main hick up areas for the airframe part of this build ;the rest of it was rather straightforward. 
I hope you‘ve enjoyed my updates so far in this thread and it looks like I’m close to talking about how I approached painting on this build.
Well, until then,

Cheers,

Pete.

Edited January 10 by PeterOlsen