Here's a few pics of my latest kit, Tamiya 1/48 corsair. I decided to do it in Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm livery as I had some decals available. The kit was airbrushed in Xtracrylix gloss dark blue. To this colour i added some white to fade areas of the paintwork. A coat of Clear was applied and then I started on the decals.
This was an absolute disaster. I don't know how long I've had the decals but most of them refused to budge from the backing paper! Time to improvise. I went through my spare decals and came up with the following solution- The "Royal Navy" decals were useable and the tail letter and fuselage number came from spares.
The main fuselage and wing insignia are made up as follows. A large white circle from Tamiya spitfire decals. A slightly smaller blue and white circle from some hurricane decals laid over the top. The "Bars" cut from the "Stars and bars" that came with the kit were placed either side of the roundels. It was a real pain applying each, adding decal solvent and hoping it would settle flat before adding the next bit the next day. The more observant may notice a slight diference in the blues that make up the insignia.

WOW. that is some great work. I love the detail and I especially love the weathering.

Hey Martin

You've made a lovely job of that. The weathering is spot on, not too heavy, just enough to break up the monotone colour. Nice detailing around the wing fold area too. Top job, well done!

Harri

Hi Martin.
Congratulations on overcoming your decal problems.Very nice job.
A question about the excellent paint fading.
Did you just spray a general mist of the lighter colur over the whole plane or were you very selective.Ive read of people spraying the middle of panels,which I suppose will complement any preshading,and Id be interested in how you reached the end result with your Corsair.
Thanks for sharing this with us.
Nige

Excellent Corsair Martin, loverly weathering and a nice get out to the decal problem, well done mate
Mal

thanks for the nice comments guys.

For the paint fading I simply added some white to the base colour, thinned the paint down, reduced the air pressure and sprayed the middle of the panels. I added a bir more white for the fabric areas but much of the effect has disappeared under the varnish and wash for the panel lines. Also the model has quite a bit of paint chipping on the inner wing surfaces but it doesn't really show in the pics.

I found this pic of of a FAA corsair which has carefully been stripped to the original paintwork from 1944. The scratches and wear marks are all original and show the amount of "stick" that these aircraft took.

Thanks Martin.
That all makes sense.
Nice photo.I noticed there are a couple of Corsairs that have been "retro" restored and I think its a great idea. It certainly shows restored aircraft in a different light rather than the pristine examples we are used to seeing in museums.
Nige

Excellent work Martin. Corsairs, in my opinion, always look better faded and used.
i will have to try your technique on the post-shading, as that's one area i really need to practice at.
Andy

Beautiful work! I dont know why but I love seeing American Planes with British roundels,and British planes with American stars and bars! It just works for me! May be that could be a campaign !

WOW ...Excellent Job, Martin... Great job in the cockpit as well....

Nice job. As I always say, you can never have too many Corsairs. your finish is really good!

Hey Penny, Long time- no see

Very nice !!!

I've got one in the stash awaiting similar FAA treatment ... I'm inpsired by yours ...

John

Ditto everyone else; the faded Sea Blue looks very effective, and your improvised markings are top notch. I've been over at the dark side for nearly a year, building ground vehicles. I'm really tempted to reach into the back of my cupboard and find my Tamiya Corsair.

Very nice work

Great gob as everyone has said. But I love this FAA version and was wondering how you clipped the wings? The HC kit was done that way in advance, but the Tamiya is not. So what is the secret?

I read that the FAA had to cut 8 inches off each wing to get the corsair to fit in the hangars of the RN fleet carriers. This worked out at 4mm in 1/48 scale (if I remember correctly) so I used a razor saw to cut 4mm off the wingtips. From photos I've seen the cut was made parallel to the nearest
panel line.

Understand so far, But what did you do with the tips after you cut off the 8 inches. How did you finish the the tips as thay don;t look as round as americans ones. ANd since thay are not suspose to look round, you are on some track that looks interesting.

After cutting off the tips there were no gaps to fill so I gently sanded the edges to get a smooth finish and make sure they were squared up.

Outstanding and thank you!!

Hi Martin

Really tasty build! - and neat "lateral thinking" in overcoming the problem with the decals. I wouldn't worry about any slight differences in the blue - period photos show that insignia were prone to varying degrees of bleaching, and naval aircraft were in one of the harshest environments.

Did you ever figure out what had gone wrong with the kit decals? Had they perhaps got damp at some stage?

All the best

Rowan

All I can think is that they were affected by the weather. There were two or three days of really high humidity and instead of putting the decals away out of the way I left them out on my worksurface. Maybe the humidity got into the edges of the decals and caused the adhesive to set.

The cobbled together decals didn't look too bad and don't show at all now as the kit was safely placed in the trashcan (my method of storing my completed airplane kits) .

Hi Martin

Wow! Do you really bin them all?! That is more ruthless than I manage to be - I clutter the place up with everything I've never built! :-) I've got half-finished models from 20 years ago... perhaps a clean sweep would do me good.

I was shocked initally by your approach, but then I realised the joy is in the building - and how often do I go back and look at my old finished models anyway?

All the best

Rowan

Martin.
I did a double take when I read that as well!
Surely not?
I can understand you being ruthless and space being an issue etc,but at least put them on Ebay or something.
They are works of art,,please dont just throw them out with the potato peelings!!
Nige

Yes I bin them all. To be honest I've never built one I consider worth keeping and as Rowan said the joy (and frustration, anger, foul language and a thank God that one's out of the way) is in the building.

If I had propper display cabinets I might keep one or two but I simply see finished models as dust magnets. If I want to see something I've built in the past I look in my gallery.