With my RQ-7 99.9999% done it is time to start with my 56TH FG entry.

Subject of this build will be a P-47D from the 63rd FS, 56th FG piloted by Lt Sam Stamps. The cowling of this machine had pin-up made by Alberto Vargas.

The kit will be the Tamiya P-47D razorback and decals are from a sheet of Aztec decals.


This will be the pin-up that will dress up the cowling.


I have collected a bit of AM stuff, but probably not all will be used. I am particulary interested in how difficult it will be to paint the markings.

The seatbelts are from HGW models, but it seems that i have to cut these out of the paper. Not sure how that will turn out...



I also have the Aires gunbay set, but i am also not sure if i will use it in this build.

The build started with priming the cockpit parts and parts of the interior. I used Alclad black primer and microfiller for this, which sprays excellent (like all alclad paints).



After an overnight dry, i painted the cockpit parts with Tamiya acrylics in a green color. After that i started to detail the side panels. Instruments were painted with Vallejo Air paint and i added a few placards from the Eduard set.



More to follow soon.



Jelger

Great to have you on board Jelger, thanks for joining in at this late stage. I'm really looking forward to following your build here with those extra goodies, you're off to a great start in the cockpit already.

Please keep the updates coming.

Cheers, D

Jelger,

Really like the cockpit so far! Interested to see how the belts turn out. I'd race you to the finish, but you'll most likely win! Haha.

This artwork was carried on a couple of different P-47's by Sam Stamps.
If you go for a coloured cowling theres no need to paint the white bands on the empennage.
Looks like it was also on this aircraft in the white cowling era and in that case you'll need to apply the white empennage bands.
By the time of the red cowlings 325307 had been junked and the cowling artwork transferred to his next P-47 "Tinkle"
Have fun!

Hi Jelger.

How is your build progressing here? I have allowed and extra month at the end of the official time frame so we have about 5 weeks to complete our builds.

Cheers, and have a great Christmas, D

Hi all,

Thank you for the nice and useful comments. November and December are always busy months for me, but i managed to make some progress. Except for the gun sight, i have completed the cockpit.

The seatbelts are from HGW models and consist of fabric belts and PE buckles. The pieces are very small and it took me a several evenings to complete the seatbelts. After glueing everything together, the belts were attached to the seat. Then seat and belts first received a gloss cote, followed by a matt cote. Then a wash of brown oil paint was used to colorize the belts. The result is pretty nice.



I added a gloss cote to the floor piece to give it a wash with oils to add some dirt. Chips on all pieces were made with a toothpick and Vallejo aluminium. All cockpit pieces received a matt cote to protect the washes and to tone down the shine of the PE.

All cockpit pieces prior to assembly:


And everything assembled (except for the seat and gunsight).


There are still a lot of things to do. At the moment I am busy with the engine. It is nice to know that the deadline has been extended, but with this pace it is not realistic to say that i will finish it in time. Nevertheless, i shall proceed and keep you updated.



Jelger

Hi Jelger,
the cockpit looks really good. I like the seat belts very much. With the neat seam they are a real eye catcher. Looking forward to Your next post!

Oliver

@Oliver: thank you for the compliments. That is highly appreciated.

Some more progress on the P-47D.

Next project was to build the Double Wasp engine. The kit parts were enhanced by photoetch ingnition wires and some plackards from the Eduard PE set. I didn't bother to remove the seamlines on top of the cilinders as these are not visible from the front.

The engine and gearhousing were constructed and painted separately. Both received a coat of Alclad black primer and the engine was painted next with Alclad aluminium color. The ignition wires were first painted black and then brown with Vallejo paint. Some parts on top of each cilinder (the bow shaped things) were painted white for a bit of extra color. From a distance this gives the impression of a lighter metal color.

The gearbox was painted with Tamiya gray paint supplemented with a bit of light blue. All bolts were first painted black and then with a toothpick received a white dot. This gives the bolts a bit more dimension. Finally, Alclad aqua clear was sprayed on it and the gearbox received a black wash. This was covered by Mr Hobby Top Coat matt acrylic varnish, which hopefully is more forgiving when using acrylic paint (instead of the Testor dull coat, which almost ruined my cockpit ).





Any tips and tricks to improve my engine building skills are highly appreciated as i have room for improvement.

The next subassembly to deal with are the gun and ammo bays, for which i have bought the Aires set. As i don't have experience with cutting panel lines i was reluctant to add the bays as it requires some surgery. I decided only the add the gun and ammo bay to the right or starboard wing, because that saves me a lot of trouble when painting the insignia, which is on the opposite wing.

I first taped a metal ruler next to the panel line and with a sharp needle i made the cuts, which was pretty easy. Finally, each corner was drilled out with a small drill to connect all the cuts.



At first, the fit of both bays seemed to be fine, but at closer inspection i noticed that the ammo bay was 1 mm short, leaving a small gap. At closer inspection i also noticed that the cover of the ammo bay is also 1 mm too narrow. The cover for the gun bay seems to be ok. I found out that i was lucky to do only the right wing bays as the left ammo bay is 1 mm shorter than its right wing counter part...



This photo summarizes everything pretty well:


The question is how to deal with this.

I have a few options:
- first of all i will fill the gap between the ammo bay and the wing. That should not be to difficult.
- I can leave the covers off, that hides at least the fact that the covers are too small and also does not attract attention to the fact that the ammo bay is too small.
- I can add the covers and especially glue the cover of the ammo bay exactly in the middle of the bay, leaving half a millimeter on each side. This is rather small and not very obvious.
- Using the original covers from the kit is not an option because i made holes in these to connect the cuts in the corners.

Any thoughts on this are highly appreciated.



Jelger

Hi all,

Nine months later, a campaign that is already finished. But not my project i am afraid. I don't spend much time on scale modelling in spring and summer as sports (cycling) dominates these times of the year.

But now i have started again working on my P-47. I replaced some of the photo's in my previous post to show where i stopped with this build. I will soon replace some of the other photo's in earlier posts.

As you can see, i ended working on the gunbays. These are from Aires. The bay where the Browings are located fits well, but the ammo bay didn't. This one was replaced with an Eduard ammo bay which fits much better.

Fitting the bay between the wing halves was quite a lot of work with a lot of thinning of the gunbay and wing to make the gunbay fit. But now it seems to fit quite well.

This test fit shows where i am right now.




Jelger

Really pleased to see this build progressing Jelger. Fitting resin parts has always been a bit of a lottery in regards to exact fit. usually a lot of grinding and sanding to both the kit parts and the resin to get it to fit. But the level of detail gained is usually quite remarkable. The gun bays look great can't wait to see the rest of the kit take shape, keep up the good work!

Hi all,

Since the christmas holidays, i was able to spend quite a bit of time on my P-47D so it gradually becomes assembled.

The gunbays are glued in the wing and the wheel wells were sprayed in the base color and further enhanced by handpainting and drybrushing. They still have to receive a gloss coat for some final washes. The gunbay has some seams around which have to be dealt with (with putty).





Although i am not sure if the P-47D i am building had a K14 gunsight, i nevertheless installed one from Quickboost as it has much more detail than the one Tamiya provided. I grant myself here some artistic license. The reflector plate will be added during final assembly as it is pretty delicate.



The cockpit is glued to one of the fuselage halves.







The fuselage halves are ready to become assembled.

I also did some work on the front end of the P-47D. The engine is installed in the cowling.









Jelger

Lovely clean work Jelger, it is great to see more progress on this build.

Looking forward to more updates.

Cheers, D

Thank you Damian for your response.

A small update on the P-47D, but a significant one! The fuselagehalves have been glued together .



I have decided not to glue the part in place where the engine will attach to as it has fragile PE parts attached that operate the flaps of the cowling. Therefore, this part is glued to the cowling, which will be painted separately (saw this in Nigels 1/32 build today).



Next step will be sanding the seams away.

Thank yoy for looking.



Jelger

Hi all,

Now summer is gone, my scale modeling summer sleep is over, so it is time to continue working on my P-47.

All bodywork is finished. There weren't too many seams, only a few issues with the bomb pylon below the gun bay that has been opened up. To fit the gunbay, the wing is probably slightly altered in shape so the pylon didn't fit properly anymore. But easy to fix with putty and some styrene.

Almost ready for priming:




Cockpit masked:


Wheelwells covered:


Time for Alclad black microfiller primer





She is all black now .

A have quite a few days off, so i can continue working on this beauty.

But i need some advice:
I would like to have some chips on my model. Chips will be a bit on the cowling, quite a few on the wingroot next to the cockpit and a few on the leading edges on the wing and finally some at a few covers, like the ones of the gun bay.

I thought about trying either the salt technique or by maskol with a sponge. For this, before the main colors, i have to spray a metallic paint (alclad) on the model at the location of the chips. But is it better to cover the whole model with alclad paint or only the sites where chips will be. I am afraid that the spots with alclad will in the end look different when the final coat is on. Any help with this is appreciated.

Thanks for looking,

Jelger

The metallic paints used Jelger go on pretty thin so don't show up under the top coat usually. But I generally paint the whole wing and Aircraft sides that way if any of the top coat gets pulled off during unmasking then it shows alloy paint underneath and simply looks like wear. I had fun with the Maskol chipping approach when building my Jap nightfigther but a sponge would have given me a better effect I think. Good luck with this build I can't wait to see it finished!

Time for some updates on my Tamiya P-47D

@Chris: thank you for your advice for the metallics. In the end I decided to spray it only locally where the chips were to come. These areas were dabbed with Mr. Masking Sol Neo to cover the future chips.



I also sprayed the white bands on the stabilizers that were masked in subsequent steps.

The white square for the pin up on the cowling was also sprayed to avoid that the decal is not fully opaque. This square was also masked in subsequent steps.



For the colors of my P-47D I took the colors that were used on a P-38 which build was posted in issue 4 (Base colors) of The Weathering Magazine - Aircraft.



This is how the bottom turned out:


And the rest of the bird:




The gunbays were masked off and sprayed with Mr. Paint zinc chromate primer (mrp-129). Finally, with a wet toothbrush, i removed the Mr. Masking to show the chips. I added more (smaller) chips with a sponge dabbed in Vallejo Silver and also created some damage with a silver color pencil, especially around some of the hatches.



Although the white band on the vertical stabilizer is too wide, overall I am pretty pleased with the results so far, especially as these methods are a first for me. Rubbing a carefully painted model with a toothbrush was a bit uneasy to do .

At the moment, the model is covered with clear gloss (also from Mr. Paint) waiting to completely dry. The next step will be decalling. Waiting time is filled with doing small bits and pieces, like painting wheels, etc.



Jelger