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Author Topic: Hasegawa 1/72 P-40N--Finished!  (Read 7659 times)
Mark Joyce
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« on: February 15, 2019, 12:23:24 PM »

Lately I've been trying to crank out some P-40 models.  This one I started perhaps a decade ago but put aside for a number of reasons, the main one being a lack of proper wheels for a P-40N.  The Hasegawa kit includes wheels that are appropriate for early P-40s but not the spoked ones usually used on the P-40N, and I was unable to locate any correct aftermarket ones until a few years ago.  So, I obtained those, worked on the model a bit more, and again set it aside.  I recently pulled it out of mothballs and decided I needed to finish it in the markings of the P-40N flown by Joel Paris, an ace who flew with the 7th FS/49th FG.

The 72nd scale Hasegawa kit is an older tooling but still nice, with recessed panel lines.  The detailing is pretty basic however, which includes the cockpit.  I replaced the kit one with a True Details one, which although isn't 100% accurate is nicely detailed.  The kit canopy is one piece, but it fits so snugly that I decided not to glue it in place in order that I can pop it off it I want to look more closely at the interior.


Fit is quite good, although I apparently didn't align the bottom wing section to the fuselage too well which caused a little bit of a step.  I usually use gap-filling superglue for seams and gaps, but this was a bit much for it so resorted to a few applications of Tamiya putty.  Once done I airbrushed some Mr. Surfacer 1200 on the airframe to check for flaws, which of course I had some that needed to be attended to.

Since the 7th FS had white on the front of the wings and the tail section of its P-40Ns, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and used some Tamiya white fine surface primer to not only get bit more coverage on the flaws but to get the needed white.  I believe this primer is only available in a rattle can and, although I've recently tried decanting from the cans to use in my airbrush, I decided to shoot strait from the can in this case. Unfortunately, coverage was a bit more than I had hoped in some areas, which although definitely took care of any remaining flaws pretty much filled the finely engraved panel lines on the kit.  So much for a wash!

I then masked off the white, airbrushed Model Master Neutral Grey on the underside, and after masking off the undersides airbrushed the upper surfaces with about a 50-50 mix of Model Master Olive Drab and Faded Olive Drab, in order to start the weathering process.  I then added a bit of white to this mix to continue the weathering and fading. Finally, it was time for the Medium Green splotches on the upper wing surfaces.  I remembered that I had some Frisket Film that I had bought years ago but never used for some other modeling project, and thought it would work well as a masking medium for the splotches.  It worked quite well for this purpose, and I added some white to the medium green to fade the splotches.  For some reason, the white I use mixes poorly with other paints, and the coverage is uneven.  One second I'll have a bit of fading, and the next far too much.  


Anyway, here's how it stands at this point, with some touch-ups and additional weathering to occur.  The white leading wing edges on Paris's P-40, as seen in the only blurry photograph I have of it, indicate that they were either very dirty, or very worn to show the Olive Drab or even the metal airframe underneath.  I'm not yet certain how I'm going to obtain this effect.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2019, 04:17:14 AM by Mark Joyce » Logged

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Vince_M
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« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2019, 10:25:09 PM »

Mark,

Nice job!
I also really like the Hasegawa 1/72 kit and have built three of them when I was younger and could see better!  LOL
The wheels that come in the kit are also too narrow.  I used to cut them in half and add styrene.
Nowadays we can get some really nice resin wheels that are exact.

I have recently purchased the newest version of the Special Hobby P-40N in 1/72.
These kits now "take the cake" for an accurate shape Warhawk in that scale.
I have a few old Hasegawa kits in my stash but they may become paint horses...

Vince
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Mark Joyce
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« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2019, 12:11:55 AM »

Thanks Vince.  I also have the Special Hobby P-40N in my stash and, if I hadn't started this one so long ago, would be using it for Joel Paris's plane.  I'm trying to decide what markings I'll eventually use on the Special Hobby kit, which is very nice.

It figures, but I just discovered this photo on the Internet, which I have not seen before, and is supposed to be Paris's P-40N:

I can't make out the serial number or what the artwork is just aft of the number 7.  Interestingly, this plane doesn't have, at least not yet, the white leading wing edges.  It looks like it also has the larger wheels and a different pattern on the spinner. Here is the photo I have been using as the reference for my model:

Looks like I might be adding at least the striping on the tail of my model, probably in blue, and although the angle that the white paint on the fuselage just forward of the tail on my model is different that in the photograph, I'll just live with that. But right now I'm just trying to confirm if the planes in the photographs are even the same.
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Vince_M
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« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2019, 12:58:36 AM »

As for the Tamiya white fine surface primer...
I find that stuff will eventually "snuggle" down so tight that even some scratches will show!
It might take several days for that to happen.
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Mark Joyce
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« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2019, 09:56:50 AM »

As for the Tamiya white fine surface primer...
I find that stuff will eventually "snuggle" down so tight that even some scratches will show!
It might take several days for that to happen.

Thanks Vince.  Unfortunately it's not snuggled enough to give me hope that I can get a wash in the panel lines!
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Mark Joyce
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« Reply #5 on: April 02, 2019, 07:34:52 AM »

I can now see why some people use the salt method for paint chipping...

The white leading wing edges on Paris's P-40N are heavily weathered (interestingly, the white tail area doesn't appear that way, based on another photograph I have of his airplane). I'm not sure if this weathering is simply a lot of black soot and dirt, whether the paint chipped off all the way to the bare metal frame, or if only the white had chipped away to show the original OD and NG paint; I decided to go with the latter assumption. 

If I had painted the OD and medium green splotches first, along with the NG underside color, then applied a lot of salt on the front edges, and then masked and painted the white, the result would probably have turned out much better.  But having used the Tamiya white surface primer first then painted everything else, I thought and thought how best to achieve the necessary weathered effect. Ultimately I decided to use a tiny piece of sponge and dab the OD on top and the NG on the bottom, touching both colors up with a small brush.  The NG turned out fairly okay, largely because I hadn't done any fading of the underside so the colors blended, but since I decided not to fade the dabbed OD the resulting contrast in it and the faded OD is too striking for my taste.  Now I need to figure out how to fix that.

On a more positive note, the old Hasegawa kit decals went down quite well, although it's obvious that Hasegawa based the camo scheme and decals on an inaccurate profile in the even older Squadron book on the 49th FG.  The profile in Carl Molesworth's book, "P-40 Warhawk Aces of the PTO," is much more accurate and what I'm generally basing my model on. Thus, I had to steal the correct national insignia and number of victory flags from a DK sheet I have.

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Mark Joyce
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« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2019, 05:47:12 AM »

I went over the OD after fading it somewhat in order to more closely match the rest of the wing.  It's an improvement color-wise, but with all the dabbing and brush work the end result is rather "lumpy," for lack of a better term.  Hopefully when all's said and done and much more weathering is added, it won't be as noticeable.

A close-up of the 'knuckle,' showing my feeble attempt to replicate what I refer to as a "fat gremlin" with the plane number on it, that's in another photograph I've seen on Paris's P-40N.  I used a very fine line black marker to try and create the gremlin with my shaky hands and, failing to find a suitably small decal for the 7, painted it with a very small brush. I don't know if the same existed on the other knuckle but I decided to put a gremlin and the number on it as well.

Interestingly, the photograph I refer to shows that this plane was apparently numbered 5 previously, and this number on the nose was painted over before adding the number 7.  I've had no luck finding any photographs of the plane in its former incarnation.  I tried to paint the number 5 prior to adding the 7 decal (which doesn't completely match the shape of the actual number), again with debatable success.
 
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Vince_M
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« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2019, 10:01:42 AM »

Looks great!
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Mark Joyce
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« Reply #8 on: April 12, 2019, 04:16:16 AM »

Stick a fork into it and call it done.  Not something I'm overly proud of.  The Tamiya white surface primer caused most of my issues, directly or indirectly, but it's more my fault than the primer's.  Not only do I regret it in regards to the leading edge paint chipping, but I made the mistake of keeping the canopy in place when I sprayed it.  Hey, no worries of getting any overspray in the cockpit, I was thinking!  That it did, but when I finally peeled off the canopy masks, the white layer was quite noticeable under the OD.  Short cuts make long delays, as Pippin warned Frodo.

Anyways, here it is with as much weathering as I dared to cover my mistakes.  The photos were taken with my iPhone and I'm trying to decide whether or not to use its flash.  The ones taken with the flash tend to show the weathering better.
No flash:

Flash:







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Vince_M
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« Reply #9 on: April 12, 2019, 11:41:30 AM »

Love it!
I have a soft spot for the old Hasegawa kit and yours proves that.

Some of my references show JB Paris plane had the dark green dark earth scheme but what u have is more consistent with history of that group.
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Mark Joyce
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« Reply #10 on: April 13, 2019, 03:28:49 AM »

Love it!
Some of my references show JB Paris plane had the dark green dark earth scheme but what u have is more consistent with history of that group.
Thanks Vince. I also have some of those references and think they are wrong too.  I don’t believe any 49th FG P-40Ns has the dark earth & dark green scheme. Mostly olive drab with some NMF ones.
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« Reply #11 on: April 19, 2019, 06:06:39 AM »

Great job, the weathering is really good. There's no way I could handle any of these small scales anymore  Smiley
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Mark Joyce
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« Reply #12 on: April 19, 2019, 10:29:18 PM »

Great job, the weathering is really good. There's no way I could handle any of these small scales anymore  Smiley
Thanks!  Between my worsening eyesight and shaky hands that come with age, this wasn't an easy build for me, but these smaller scales take up less room on the display case and usually cost less than their bigger cousins.
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« Reply #13 on: April 22, 2019, 05:24:50 AM »

I definitely understand the shaky hands and worsening eyesight, I've given up trying to add detail to smaller models, even 1/32, saves on the frustration. The Guillow's Thomas Morse Scout I'm working on has a 24 inch wingspan, sometimes I wonder if that's small enough  Shocked  Will hang from the ceiling.
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