:-)I wanted to show the fabric coverd areas lighter than the metal areas (similar to David Aungst's F4U-1A). The first time I had lightened fabric areas was on my Henschel Hs 123. This had started far to light but after spraying a well thinned straight colour, building it up gradually, in the recesses it came out quite well. More thought went into this Corsair, Normally convention would dictate painting the lighter colour first, but that would make masking more difficult. There are small metal areas within the fabric, these would need to be the same tone as the other metal areas. So I sprayed the straight colors all over (shown on the last up date) then masked off the fabric areas. I Spent quite some time figuring out how to cut the masking tape to cover the small circular and racetrack shaped inspection panels. I had a punch and die set with the currect size punches, but to punch out the tape was impossible. I eventually hit on, what is now the obvious answer, put the tape on a thin piece of styrene, punch out a disc with the tape attached, peel of the tape and stick in position. For the racetrack panels I simply cut 2 discs, one for each end and filled in the gaps with small bits of tape. When everything was masked I lightened the paint and sprayed the very well thinned mixture over the high spots on the fabric covered areas, letting overspray acumulate, lightly onto the lower areas. The lighter, undersurface colour, was done first then for the uppersurface colour I took a leafe out of Tim's (Twistedfate)book. I emptied the paint out of the colour cup, but didn't clean it out, then add the uppersurface colour which was lightened by the remaining colour. Thanks Tim :-)
My punch and die with styrene and Tamiya masking tape


I use Tamiya masking tape for the "dangerous" parts of masking and fill in with Scotch removeable tape


I also masked off the rivets under the wing. As the wing is going to be folded then these will show up and look odd if faded. I used white glue

Masking off. I am pleased with the results. The lower wings will not get lightened any more, but after decaling I will spray a very well thined Medium Sea Grey over the upper surfaces. This has lightening affect, which works well over decals as well


Mal

Holy crap!! No wonder your stuff always looks so good Mal. I doubt they put that much effort into making the real bird! Your attention to detail is impressive. I hope that your new job will allow you access to some free tape, as you use a ton for the masking (HEHE). The finished product is very subtle, but also very nice. I never would have never even thought about putting in the effort to mask the tiny little metal areas within the fabric covered sections. Thanks for posting your in progress pics, they give some of us a glimpse the work (and techniques) it takes to make our projects turn a little bit more like yours.

Mal, great stuff as usual. I like your punch setup. Where did you get it and did the jig come with the punches? Thanks.

Hold looked great, your usual excellent standard. One thing, how is this punch and die set? I have been wanting to get myself one. Is it useful?

:-) Ryan


Yes, had to be subtle cos there's more to come. The final fading though will be done with a very diluted Medium Sea Grey, over decals as well this will tie the whole thing together. One thing that I picked up from David Aungst's Renee Ann, is how he has faded the markings that land on the fabric areas. Having the metal areas, within the fabric areas, painted the the same as the main metal areas adds a certain something, Takes a little more time but in my opinion is certainly worth it :-)

Bryan, Dave
The punch and die set is from Historex, it is complete and works very well. The smallest punch is 0.025" the largest is 0.123". I must admit that I don't use it very often but it's one of those tools that can be the only one for the job.
Mal

wow, she is gonna be a very nice lookin' mud mover, as usual very nice work

Bender

The end result is sooo worth the effort you put into it. You continually impress all of us with our solid effort in the AC world.

HHOOOWWWLLLL !
Mal, once more I'm impressed by your work !

Looking very good so far Mal........

wow.........nice work. I hope mine turns out that nice. I can't wait to see the final bird.

USMC0321

hehe I've given up all hope of mine ever being that good, but we all have to chase someone.

Looking good Mal, and don't be surprised if one your techniques ends up in my next project.

Splendid detail Mal, just love your attention to detail.

Roger

Great work as always Mal.
If only I had the drive that you seem to!!!!!!