1/48 Tamiya F4U-1A Corsair

[zaxos345]

Awesome work Carlos!!!! 

 

John

[Falconxlvi]

The armored glass solution is very neat!  She’s coming along nicely 👍🏻
 

Steve

[cruiz]

Thank you, John and Steve, for your kind words.

 

Quick post; more details added, the supports of the armored glass made from styrene strips, the switch boxes come from the Aires cockpit, and the supports for the gunsight reflector are leftovers from a photoetched set. The glass is dry-fitted only to test all before airbrushing this area.

 

 

The area around the exhausts is ready after applying Tamiya's epoxy putty and sand it.

 

[cruiz]

Hello all

 

The original plan was to install the front part of the canopy over the fuselage and smooth the union before making the riveting; since the vacuformed part has no rigidity, I was afraid to knock it off (and the armored glass underneath) in the process. So I started with the riveting instead.

 

I want to share a pic of the current progress and show my way of working these details; I find it easier to trace the lines with a pencil and run the riveting tool over them.

 

 

I use strips of painter's blue masking tape as a guide to trace the lines and keep them parallel;  in this part of the fuselage is difficult to maintain the lines evenly spaced due to its conical shape; a wide single strip for each space will tend to deform, so I use two or three thinner strips between the lines.

[chukw]

Very nice, Carlos- the armor lass and the reflector are the first time I've seen this modeled!  Yes, with good pencil lines it's easy to use the riveter freehand- it looks wonderful- cheers!

[cruiz]

Hello again.

 

On 3/30/2021 at 9:40 AM, chukw said:

Very nice, Carlos- the armor lass and the reflector are the first time I've seen this modeled!  Yes, with good pencil lines it's easy to use the riveter freehand- it looks wonderful- cheers!

Thank you for your kind words Chukw.

 

Here are some pics of the armored glass installed.

 

 

 

 

I used cyano to attach the glass to the supports, and while it sets, I test fit the windscreen to check the alignment; one of those times, I put it too close, and a small drop of cyano ended up inside the windscreen (can't help myself).

 

I tried my best to sand away the blemish and polish the area, even resprayed the internal supports; we will only see the result after removing the external mask (after painting the model).

 

Here is the windscreen in place, first glued at the base of the styrene edge using Tamiya's glue to ensure a good alignment; after that, AMMO's black cyano was used to glue the rest of the part and to fill the gap in between. Since the interior of the windscreen isn't masked, the cyano was applied in small portions at a time to minimize the risk of fogging; let's hope it worked.

 

 

While working on the riveting, I sanded away the hinge detail of a door on top of the fuselage that was already too soft; this detail was replaced using stretched sprue, as seen in this picture.

 

 

Another area that needed rework was the main gear; one of the simulated springs broke, and I had to make a new one using stretched-sprue like in the others.

 

 

These are several failed attempts at it, along with the one I'll be using on top.

 

 

Before attaching the wings to the fuselage, I'm thinking about how to put in place the rest of the parts (flaps, landing gear, doors, etc.) at the end of the build; the bent wing of the Corsair is making this very challenging because there isn't a clear visual reference or a uniform surface to rest a jig that helps with the alignment. Any ideas about this are more than welcome.

 

Carlos

Edited Tuesday at 05:18 AM by cruiz