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1/32 Tamiya F4U-1a Corsair - Boyington's 17740


Thunnus

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Some detail painting on center wing components.
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The parts are glued into place into the upper wings.
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But once the wings are put together, the detail all but disappears.
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There are lot of cases where the interior detail is rendered unseen by construction and I am trying to limit my painting efforts accordingly.
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This area is right next to a clear window so you'd think it'd better to paint this area, right?
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But nope... it's not visible.
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No one would know if you left the pieces out.
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Thankfully, the cockpit WILL be visible.  Not completely but a good majority of it will be seen.
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Edited by Thunnus
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Some VERY clean work going on here, but I have a question. It appears that you are using yellow zinc chromate for the factory primer. What happened to the infamous "salmon" color that was all the rage some years ago? Was there a cut-off date when it was discontinued, only specific aircraft? 

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Thanks guys!  I always wash my hands before going into my modeling room! :D

 

1 hour ago, Archer Fine Transfers said:

Some VERY clean work going on here, but I have a question. It appears that you are using yellow zinc chromate for the factory primer. What happened to the infamous "salmon" color that was all the rage some years ago? Was there a cut-off date when it was discontinued, only specific aircraft? 

 

Thanks for checking in Woody!  I'm not a Corsair expert but my references say that the salmon primer was discontinued during the F4U-1a production.  

 

The online article, Camouflage and Markings: Interior Colors of US Aircraft 1941-45 by Martin Waligorski states, "Somewhere during the production of F4U-1A model Vought discontinued the use of Salmon primers and switched to Zinc Chromate Yellow with cockpits in Interior Green." 

 

Exactly WHEN that was, I do not know.  The Dana Bell book on the Corsair says it happened very early in the production run of Corsairs with raised seats (F4U-1A).

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15 hours ago, Thunnus said:

The online article, Camouflage and Markings: Interior Colors of US Aircraft 1941-45 by Martin Waligorski states, "Somewhere during the production of F4U-1A model Vought discontinued the use of Salmon primers and switched to Zinc Chromate Yellow with cockpits in Interior Green."

 

Wow, thanks for the information. I've been out of the loop for quite some time and since a Corsair build is in my future, this information is greatly appreciated.

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I decided to paint the windscreen.  I have a couple of masking options to choose from... the Montex mask set which has a full set of inside and outside canopy masks.  And then the Tamiya kit comes with tape masks but you have to cut them out manually.  I used a mixture... the Montex masks for the inside and the Tamiya masks for the outside.
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The interior of the windscreen was painted first: satin black (actually very dark grey).
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After the interior masks were removed, there was one cockpit part to be added.  This was painted black and finished off with a decal from the Barracuda decal set.
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Before the windscreen was glued into place, I attached the armor glass.
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The windscreen is clicked into place and secured with Tamiya Extra Thin glue.
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I ran into a hiccup while working on the center wing assembly.  I lost one of the small exterior parts to the carpet monster.  One of a pair of small fairings that go over the attachment point to the flaps.  I've made two extensive searches for the missing part and even recruited my wife but the part remains missing.  I'll have to scratch up a replacement but I find it really hard to sculpt such small pieces of plastic. <Sigh>

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5 hours ago, Thunnus said:

 

I ran into a hiccup while working on the center wing assembly.  I lost one of the small exterior parts to the carpet monster.  One of a pair of small fairings that go over the attachment point to the flaps.  I've made two extensive searches for the missing part and even recruited my wife but the part remains missing.  I'll have to scratch up a replacement but I find it really hard to sculpt such small pieces of plastic.

 

Put a new bag in your vacuum cleaner and vacuum the area. If that doesn't find it, my money is on aliens.

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I'm getting slammed at work so not much time in the evenings except to eat and sleep.  No major work on the Corsair.  I did start hammering out a replacement for this lost piece.  Luckily, it's one of a pair so I have physical part to base my copy on. 
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I used a thick section of plastic card (actually two glued together) to start carving out the basic shape.
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The flange around the base will be a separate piece of thinner card stock.  Since the part is so small and would be difficult to hold, I tried to do the majority of the shaping while the part is attached to the bigger piece of plastic.
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Bottom flange is added.  I'm now confident that I can make a pretty good copy of this part.  At least good enough so that it won't be noticed.  I made the mistake of hollowing the end out to mimic the original part but this wasn't necessary since the opening will be blocked by the flap.  The opening on the original part is there to accommodate the locating tab on the wing.
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The replacement part is almost finished.  It is a tad oversized but I should be able to whittle it down.  Because of the hollowing out, the walls around the opening are really thin and may prevent me from reducing the part to the correct size so I may have to fill the hole that I made.
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When I was trying to verify that the opening of the replacement part would be blocked by the flap, I had a mishap with the Tamiya Extra Thin cement... another repair!  :BANGHEAD2:
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Edited by Thunnus
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The replacement part looks great to my eye John. Great work there, as those tiny parts are normally the hardest ones to replicate.  As Damian said, repairs, repairs the "fun" part of the build. :lol:  

 

However, we all make boo boos, and we all loose parts and what not; fixing that stuff is the difference between an Ok modeler and a really good one! 

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