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1/32 Tamiya P-51 Mustang - 'Daddy's Girl' - FINISHED


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Clamshell doors assembled.

 

Clamshells Assembled 2

 

Clamshells Assembled 1

 

 

Brake lines attached to gear struts.

 

Brake Lines Installed 1

 

Scissor links also attached.  There's a small piece of PE that must be folded over the link and attached with CA glue.

 

Brake Lines Installed 2

 

 

Hubs were primed black and sprayed Aluminum.  They press fit into the rubber tires.  The tail wheel tire is plastic.  Go figure.

 

Tires

 

Drop tanks assembled.  This version calls for the teardrop shaped tanks.  There are also a set of the paper / resin tanks supplied for the filletless tail version.

 

Drop Tank

 

 

This is the one piece set of main gear doors that are supplied for the inflight pose.  Glued onto the back is a brace to make it a strong plug.  The plug into the gear well opening is good and tight.  Perfect for priming and painting.

 

In Flight Covers

 

In Flight Cover Brace

 

Gear Bay Plugged

 

Thanks for looking and constructive criticism and comments are always welcome.

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Looks like some of your concerns about masking are being addressed, with the gear doors, etc. I love the clean detail. You are inspiring me to attack a more complex kit that I care about more - like the big Italeri CF-104D! I think I'll be buying one of these Mustangs as well. The kit is fantastic, and I'll use your build as something to aspire to.

ALF

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17 hours ago, ALF18 said:

Looks like some of your concerns about masking are being addressed, with the gear doors, etc. I love the clean detail. You are inspiring me to attack a more complex kit that I care about more - like the big Italeri CF-104D! I think I'll be buying one of these Mustangs as well. The kit is fantastic, and I'll use your build as something to aspire to.

ALF

 

Thanks ALF.  As I opined during our phone chat, the big test will be the fit of the cowls.  Hopefully there won't be any gaps.  If push really comes to shove, I think there is enough surface area for Tamiya tape to grasp to around the exposed Merlinand then filling in the gaps with more tape, paper (possibly) and liquid mask should do the trick.  🤞

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  • 1 month later...

Many apologies for the long hiatus.  Got into a bit of a funk but I junked that funk and we're back at it.

 

The drop tanks were primed with flat black and then sprayed with Alclad II Aluminum.  The caps were painted with Model Master Guards Red.

 

Drop Tanks

 

The main canopy had a faint mould line down the middle.  I scraped most of it off with a new #11 blade.  I then masked each side of the line and then sanded with finer grits of sanding sticks, wet sanding with 4000 grit paper and sanding pads.  I then manually polished with toothpaste on a Q-Tip and finally dipped in a bath of Future.  I let it dry for a couple of weeks.  Although Tamiya provides masks for the canopy, I taped it off with Tamiya tape.  It was primed with flat black and then sprayed with Alclad Aluminum.  Although I didn't take a photo, I did use the Tamiya masks for the front windscreen.  In this day and age, I can't understand why the masks aren't pre-cut and stick and seal.  They did work well though.

 

Canopy

 

The kit comes with two types of cowling louvers.  Solid and vented.  This version has the vented louvers.  Again, with the precision moulding of other parts in this kit, I don't understand why Tamiya didn't make these true vented lovers by hollowing out the holes.  If one had a very steady hand and jig, you could drill out the individual recesses in each louver but if I did it, it would look like a dog's breakfast so I chose to live with the kit part.

 

Cowling Louvers

 

The cowling parts are moulded quite thinly.  Very impressive.  The two rods attached to the lower cowling fit into corresponding holes in the supercharger housing that have little nylon poly caps inside to create a firm grip on the rod.  I haven't tested the fit yet.  That'll be done during painting.  The two metal discs at the front are crazy glued into place.  They will mate to two tiny magnets on the lower air intake to prevent the front of the cowling from drooping when installed.

 

Lower Cowling Attachment Rods

 

 

You can see the two holes in the supercharger housing in this photo.

 

Lower Cowling Attchment Slots

 

Earlier in the build process, a magnet was glued into the circular recess in the engine bearer.

 

Engine Bearers 2

 

That magnet will attract the metal strips on the side cowlings to keep the cowlings in place on the model.

 

Side Cowling Attachment Strips

 

 

Finally, the prop blades and hubs have been painted.  The blades were painted flat black and once the paint was dry (again after a couple of weeks!), I taped them and sprayed the tips MM Insignia Yellow with very light passes of the airbrush at about 8-10 psi.  I then sprayed the hub parts Aluminum.  I also sprayed the spinner and associated parts (no photos) aluminum in preparation for olive drab glare shield and medium green 359th FG ID colours.

 

Prop Blades

 

Thanks very much for looking and comments and constructive criticism is always welcome.

 

Edited by AX 365
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  • 8 months later...

I had to post photos in a separate reply after this update.  I'm getting a '500 Internal Server Error' when trying to post photos in this reply. 

 

Good morning everyone.  It's been donkeys ages (eeee-ons and eeee-ons...sorry, I'll show myself out now) since I posted an update on this build.  Quite frankly, I have done very little since my last update in March.  The weather got nice early and many competing interests got in the way.  I sat down at the bench a couple of days over the summer and the only thing I did was lay down an airbrushed coat of Model Master Gloss Black to prepare for the Alclad I used.  I let that dry for a week or so.  It was nice and hard so there were no finger prints in the paint.  I always wear nitrile gloves when painting anyways.


 

I then mistakenly sprayed everything Airframe Aluminum and it appeared as if I was looking in a mirror.  Way too shiny.  I let that dry for a few days and then sprayed with Aluminum.  Much better.  After a few days of drying time, I installed the removable cowling pieces, masked the appropriate areas and sprayed the green on the nose and the olive drab on the anti glare panel.  The kit supplied canopy masks are great but they're not pre-cut so carefully following the lines with scissors is a must.  I knew those cutting exercises in Kindergarten would come in handy some day!

 

Over the last couple of days, I go off my can and applied the decals.  As a reminder, the decals are from Fundekals.  The 'Daddy's Girl' decals are no longer available but the P-51D/K stencils are still available from their website.  They're printed by Cartograf and they went on beautifully without muss or fuss.  I got everything to settle down with a light coat of Solvaset.  One of the things I did was glue one of the port side removable engine panels in place in order to apply the 'Daddy's Girl' decal to the cowling.  It's large enough so that it sits on the middle and lower cowling pieces.  One thing I wanted to do was display the name so that's why the panel was glued in place.

 

Without further ado, here's a few photos of what I accomplished over the last couple of days.  Sorry that there are no photos of my muck up with the Airframe Aluminum or the gloss black primer coat.

 

Here's the assembled prop, painted and given a coat of Testors Gloss Coat prior to applying the prop decals.  They have since been applied...all 12 of them.  The decal sheet provides decals for the yellow tips.  I painted them yellow.

 

The moveable rudder installed.  It wasn't too difficult to get the tiny PE pins on the rudder into the slots on the vertical stabilizer.  The serial number is a one piece decal so I cut it in two and applied it in the appropriate spot.  You can also see some of the many fuselage stencils.

 

Here you can see the port wing decal applied.  Solvaset helped get it to settle over the aileron bump in the wing.  The decal is also pre-cut like this to allow you to display the ammo trays in the open position.  They also include a solid decal if you want to keep the trays buttoned up.  Also in this picture, you can see the port side cowling panel glued into place.  'Daddy's Girl' had yet to be applied.  It has been since applied.  The black wing stripes are painted.  They were masked after I applied the gloss black primer coat.  The canopy is taped shut so nothing breaks or falls off.

 

Finally, the fuselage decals.  The carrier film on the decals is so thin that I didn't realize that the CS fuselage code (or the rudder's serial number) was one decal.  I discovered that while applying the port side decal.  Not to be repeated on the starboard side.  The horizontal stabilizers have since been installed.  It was much easier to get the rudder installed without them in place.  I also installed the rudder after applying all the other fuselage and wing stickies, as The Boss calls them.

 

That's it for now, folks.  More progress over the next few days when I'm not schlepping Christmas stuff up from the basement and schlepping non Christmas stuff down to the basement.  All that's really left is final assembly.  No more photos until she's done.  As usual, comments and constructive criticism is always welcome.  Have a great day everyone and thanks for looking. 

Edited by AX 365
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  • AX 365 changed the title to 1/32 Tamiya P-51 Mustang - 'Daddy's Girl' - FINISHED

I finished 'Daddy's Girl' yesterday.  Here are a few photos.  More in the Display Case thread.  Thanks for following and all your comments and constructive criticism.

 

Right Side 1

 

Left Front 2

 

Left Wing

 

Edited by AX 365
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