Global Scale Modeller

Having finished my first build in many years as an entry in the I Heart Tamiya GB, I was itching to start a second build. I wanted to choose a subject that would "relate" to Sadaaki Akamatsu's J2M3 Raiden that I had built. After a bit of research and shopping I settled on the 1/48 Italeri P-51D/K Pacific Aces kit.

During my fairly limited research (if any WWII historians read this, please forgive any inaccuracies and feel free to correct me), I found this statement:

On April 19, 1945, Akamatsu single-handedly took on the 45th Fighter Squadron west of Atsuki. He made the young Mustang jocks fight on his terms, forced them down to low altitude, and shot down three of them. On June 23, he and his wingman downed another Mustang over Chiba Prefecture. He frequently fought the P-51's of the 7th Fighter Command over the Imperial Capital and never had an easy time with them.

Further research indicated that one of America's top aces of the 45th Fighter Squadron, 7th Fighter Command was Major Robert W. Moore who piloted his Stinger VII P-51D out of Iwo Jima during that time period. While I found no evidence that the two ever met in combat, it still seems like a good fit to me. This subject is one of the configurations in the Italeri kit.

The kit arrived a few weeks ago:

Italeri P-51D/K Pacific Aces by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

Now, for those that choose to build this kit, the first thing you need to know is that the cover art is wrong! The aircraft pictured and their captions don't match. Specifically, Major Moore's Stinger VII is the middle left aircraft, not the lower right as the captions would lead you to believe. The instructions suffer from the same issue.

I had not intended to do a build thread for this, instead I was just getting some practice/experience before joining some of next year's GBs/SIGs. However, after a couple of nights of building I realized it would probably be a good idea to practice documenting my build as well, and also to get more feedback on my results. So, while I'll have to skip some of the earlier parts of the build, hopefully the rest of this thread will be of interest to others.

My first update should be coming soon...

Well, as I stated in the first post, I've already made some significant progress on the build, but without pictures to document it. For example, no sprue shots, but I'm sure a Google search will find some if you are interested. The sprues looked pretty good to my eyes, minimal flash and fairly good detail. There a a few more parts in this kit than my first build, the Tamiya J2M3 Raiden; this build will be slightly more difficult.

As seems to be usual, the first step is to assemble/paint the cockpit. One early decision is how much to assemble before painting. I choose to assemble a minimal amount and paint most of the parts individually. At this time I also identified other parts that would be needed to assemble the fuselage so they could be painted as well. I deviated slight from the instructions; they show assembling the side of the cockpit to the cockpit floor before fitting into the fuselage. It made more sense to me to attach the cockpit sides to the inside of the fuselage first where they could be easily painted and detailed (this is similar to how the Tamiya Raiden went together). I was a little worried that there would be some fitting issues doing it this way, but it all worked out fine.

With a few parts assembled and the rest prepped for painting, they were all primed with Stynylrez Black. Some of the pieces were to have a final color of Flat Black, so I just left them in primer.

The next decision was the color to use. My paints of choice at this time are Tamiya Acrylics; the instructions call out Federal Standard references and Italeri Acrylic numbers. So I spent some time deciding which Tamiya colors would be good matches to those in the instructions; for this I used the recently release iModelKit V2 which seems to work just fine so far. For the cockpit green, I decided to go with a mix of 15 parts XF-5 Flat Green, 8 parts XF-55 Deck Tan and 2 parts XF-7 Flat Red; according to iModelKit this was a very good match to FS-34151. After mixing, I ending up adding about 5 more parts XF-55 to lighten it up a bit as the original was a bit dark for my tastes. This was thinned 50/50 with Tamiya X-20A Thinner for spraying. With everything sprayed with the base cockpit green (except a few things that remained black), it was on to detailing.

The kit provides a decal for the instrument panel details. I had painted the panel cockpit green as shown in the instructions; but since the decal had a black background, I repainted just the portion that is covered by the decal with black. I then applied a coat of Pledge Clear/Future so that the decals would settle down nicely. After that dried for a day it was time to apply the decal using MicroSet and MicroSol. Well, the instrument panel is fairly well detailed with raised gauges and switches; I wasn't sure how this would work as I've not applied decals to a surface like that before. Well, in short, it didn't. After getting the decal in place and applying lots of MicroSol to soften it, it never conformed to the relief on the panel and just looked crappy. The decal seems to be a lot thicker than the decals that had been in the Tamiya Raiden kit (of course it's instrument panel was just flat); I suppose that was the problem? If anyone has tips on making this work for next time, please let me know.

So at this point it was back to the drawing board; I removed what was left of the pretty damaged decals. I needed to re-repaint the panel in black and then dry brushed and detail painted some grey and flat aluminum to highlight the gauges. I also picked out a few switches and knobs with red and yellow to add some interest. The results can be seen in the photos below. It certainly ended up looking better than the decal was turning out!

I finished detailing, weathering and assembling the rest of cockpit and fit the subassembly into half of the fuselage. It was at this point that I decided it would be good to start taking pictures! So here they are:


Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

Next up is fitting the other fuselage half, adding the wings and horizontal stabilizers, affixing miscellaneous exterior details, masking and attaching the canopy and prepping for priming and painting. Most of this is done, but will be the subject of my next post.

So until then... Thanks for looking!

With this post I hope to catch up with my actual build progress!

Fitting the second fuselage half went really well despite having to line up lot of pieces; the tail wheel strut, the cockpit, two radiators and of course the whole seam. The seam closed really well only requiring minimal cleanup and some light filling with Perfect Plastic Putty. The worst area was the bottom of the radiator air scoop which you can see here:

Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

You can also see my failed attempt at repairing some light panel lines that were lost; I ended up just filling those on both halves. I'll post pictures of the repair after it is primed.

Before assembling the wings, it is necessary to determine which equipment will be attached to the underside of the wings. This is needed because the mounting holes must be drilled from the inside of the wings. I chose to install the 75 gallon fuel tanks as that is what I've seen in the photo references for Maj. Moore's aircraft. I also added 6 of the 5" rockets; I don't have any reference of Moore's plane carrying those, but hey, why not? The holes were drilled with the smallest drill I currently have, 60 gauge, that seemed to be perfect. I held it in a make shift pin vise (the handle to a file set that I have); a real pin vise is already on its way!

It wasn't clear from the instructions what the recommended assembly order was; assemble wings and affix to fuselage or affix bottom wing section to fuselage and then add top sections. I chose the latter which worked out just fine. Again these fit really well requiring only minimal cleanup.

Here you can see the wheel wells that have been painted and detailed:

Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

With the wings installed I continued on attaching various small parts: air scoop inlet, tank racks, rocket launchers, air outlet doors, canopy, pitot tube, machine gun barrels, nose cone; pretty much anything that could be attached before priming and painting. During this I continued cleaning up the body and rescribing any panel lines that needed it.

For the canopy, before attaching it to the fuselage, I first dipped it in Pledge Clear/Future. I let this thoroughly dry and it turned out great. I then masked off the canopy starting with thin strips of Tamiya tape around the edges and filling the interior with larger pieces. To attach the canopy, I used UV activated glue (LazerBond) and that was great! You apply the glue and have plenty of time to position the part. Then shine the UV light on it for a few seconds and ta-da, its bonded! Here is the windshield masked and installed:

Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

And one last shot of the cockpit before covering it with the masked canopy:

Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

And the fully masked canopy:

Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

With the main body all assembled, it was time to mask areas that are already painted (wheel wells and air ducts). For this I used mostly a Blue Tack equivalent (actually museum putty, I think its the same, right?).

Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

Well, here she is, ready for priming. That catches me up with the build. Hopefully I'll get to priming tomorrow.


Italeri P-51D WIP by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

Thanks for following along!

Looking good so far Bob.

Between family/holiday commitments and inept modeling, it has taken a while to get everything cleaned up and primed. But I think I'm finally ready for the base color; I'm just waiting for the last primer touch ups to completely cure. So in the meantime here is an update.

In my last post I showed the worst part of the fuselage seam that needed cleaning, here it is again:

Needs work. by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

After applying Perfect Plastic Putting (aka PPP) and lots of sanding, I thought I was ready for primer; well not so much:

First attempt. by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

The primer really showed some less than stellar work, so that led to more sanding, more PPP, more sanding, more primer, more sanding... You get the idea. After a while I got a better feel for both the PPP and Stynylrez primer; the most important tip is to let them both dry thoroughly before sanding. Also, after PPP has dried it can still be easy removed with a damp cotton bud. Once I got the hang of it, the Stynylrez sanded very well. Besides allowing it to cure thoroughly, the other important tip is to sand very lightly; I use 320 and 600 grit wet/dry paper mounted on thin coffee stirrers with double sided tape. I also needed to cleanup some panel lines using my Trumpeter scribe. Here are the results:

That's better. by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

Still some imperfections, but much better and "good enough" for me at this stage.

All the fussing with that area gave me time to cleanup some other areas as well so at this point it is all primed and waiting for the base color, X-11 Chrome Silver. This will be my first attempt at spraying a metal color; wish me luck.

Here she is, curing before the next step:

Ready for paint. by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

The next update should come fairly soon as we have the full week off before New Years.

So until then, I hope everyone had a great Christmas/Holiday.

I said the next update would come quickly!

I applied the base coat. I can see why I've seen complaints about the large pigments(?) in the Tamiya metal colors; I'm hoping that the gloss coat and weathering will tone it down some as it currently looks very "model-like". I'd gladly take suggestions for a better set of metal colors, preferably acrylic.

See if you can pick out what broke:

Base color complete. by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

Yup, the antenna of course. Already the second time, I'll have to fix it again but I guess I'll wait until almost complete....

In the back you can see the miscellaneous part that were also painted and will be assembled later. I build both sets of drop tanks, although I'll only use the 75 gallon metal tanks. The paper tanks will be use to test weathering techniques before attempting on the final model.

Next step will be to mask for and paint the olive drab anti-glare on the cowling and the rocket tips. Then I'll apply a clear coat (Pledge Floor Care/Future/Klear) before adding decals. But before all that, I'll let this completely cure overnight.

Stay tuned!

Bookmarking this for later, when I'm not trying to see these pics on my phone

Great work on the scoop. That's something that I'm still on a learning curve with, filling seams and what have you. They can look great until you put primer on them...

First, thank you to those that have taken the time to read and comment on this thread.

It's been a while since the last update, for a couple of reasons. First, the obvious, Christmas and New Years got in the way. I had planned to make good progress the week between, but that leads to the second delay. I think it was the Thursday before New Years and while taking a stack of empty boxes out the the car, my back went out! That laid me up in bed for two full days with a couple of more moving gingerly around the house. And then it was back to work... Oh well, the back is much better now and I finally found time to get back to it!

I guess I had left off with it primed and ready for paint, here it is with a coat of Tamiya X-11 Chrome Silver:

Base color complete. by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

From here I guess I had masked and painted the anti-glare with XF-62 Olive Drab; detailed the exhaust with X-10 Gun Metal and a custom rust mix; painted the nose cone with XF-1 Flat Black (more on that in a moment) and painted the machine gun barrels also with X-10. Unfortunately I thought I had pictures along the way, but in my haste to move on to decals, it appears I forgot.

Oh well, after the painting was complete I applied a coat of Pledge before tackling the decals. I new the toughest would be the nose cone decal, so I tried that first. Well, it was tough and I ran out of patience trying to get the flat decal to conform to the complex curves of the nose cone. Despite applying lots of MicroSol, it just wouldn't lay down; so I gave up.. Unless I find a green that matches the rest of the decals, it'll stay black!

The rest of the decals went on very well (ok, except for the first small one which somehow just completely disappeared while I was removing it from the backing ). I still can't believe how wonderful MicroSet/MicroSol are, I'm always thinking back to when I was a kid trying to get decals to look halfway decent but always ending up with a piece of colored "plastic" film that usually just fell off...

After the decals were on, I applied another coat of Pledge; here are a few pick of it waiting to completely cure before I start weathering:

Decal'ed and Clearcoat'ed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


Decal'ed and Clearcoat'ed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


Decal'ed and Clearcoat'ed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


Decal'ed and Clearcoat'ed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


Decal'ed and Clearcoat'ed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

Thanks again for "tuning in"!

With the Pledge clear completely dry, it was time for weathering. This is something I'm still learning and trying to find my own "style" if you will. For this I figured I'd need a panel line wash, and not having Tamiya Panel Line Wash readily available I thought I'd try my own version of Paul's P.E.A.T system (I guess it would be B.E.A.T for me?). I had bought some cheap oil colors off Amazon along with some Mona Lisa Odorless Paint Thinner. I mixed up a black concoction and proceeded to apply it to the panel lines. This when well and was giving the effect I was looking for. However, I may have gone a bit heavy handed since when I went to streak away the excess there was more left than I expected and I found it difficult to control. But after some work, it seems to have come out OK.

I then decided to try to add some extra streaking/smoke around the air scoops, machine guns, exhaust, etc. using dabs and streaks of the lamp black oil. This never really worked out as I wasn't able to find a balance between adding oil and streaking/removing it. It never seemed to dry even after a day; maybe I was just too impatient and should have waited longer. At this point I went looking for reference photos to see what effect I should be trying for. That's when I found that most of the photos showed very little streaking/smoke build up. So, in the end, I removed most of it which actually seems to have worked out as you'll see in the pictures below. In some areas however, I think I over worked it with the thinner and ended up removing some of the color coat, or at least thinning it enough so that the black primer show through. At least that is what I think I'm seeing, I suppose it could also be some of the lamp black that I just can't remove. It isn't bad, it gives it a bit of a well worn look in those areas.

After weathering with the oils, I added some chipping with chrome silver; I know a bit out of order, probably should have chipped and then weathered. But I was pretty light with the chipping so I think it turned out OK.

With the painting all complete I did some final assembly (wheels, tanks, rockets, etc) and applied a final coat of XF-86 Flat Clear. The very last thing was to add the last couple of indicator lights on the wings which had previously been painted with various Tamiya clear paints. These were affixed with some old Aleen's Tacky Glue that I found in the crafts drawer. It had become very thick over the years (thicker than normal) so I thinned it some with water.

With it entirely completed, I set off to photographing, and here are the photos:

P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr


P-51D Stinger VII Completed by Bob Mortensen, on Flickr

All in all, not bad for my second attempt.

Thanks for looking!