#p-40b

[nocternalrandomness]

"A Rare Bird” 

Curtiss P-40B Tomahawk 41-13297 is  the world’s only  P-40B and only surviving airworthy American fighter from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor flies wearing the scheme she wore during her time in Hawaii with the 18th Pursuit Group.

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The pilot in the cockpit of the American fighter P-40B "Warhawk".

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P-40B at Duxford

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Academy 1:72 Curtiss P-40B Tomahawk plamo photo build update April 11th, 2019

I guess this is a retro update. I had done this work a year ago and took pictures of it. I thought I had made this update, but apparently not. So this update takes place between this one and my most recent update.

In the first update I wrote, I had assembled the fuselage halves as well as the wings. In the picture above I am attaching the horizontal stabilizers.

Here I have painted the wheel wells the same Model Master Interior Green that I used on the cockpit. This is supposed to be accurate according to one source, but I am not sure. 

Not wanting to attach the canopy before priming so as not to add too many layers of paint onto the clear plastic, I instead stuffed the cockpit with cotton and used masking solution to ensure that it was sealed. Look at that nasty seam on the left wing. That needed to be puttied in.

I used Mr. Dissolved putty to fill in the cracks, and then used acetone to wipe off the excess.

I used blue tack by Loctite to fill in the wheel wells. The plane was then ready for priming with Mr. Surfacer 1000.

Here are the paints I used for the exterior: Flat Black XF-1 for the propellers Sky Grey XF-19 for the underside XF-26 Deep Green and XF-52 Flat Earth (lol) for the camouflage scheme XF-85 Rubber Black for the the tires (duh) Model Master Acryl 4721 Insignia Yellow for the propeller tips

(By the way, if you know anybody who believes this “flat earth” bullcrap psy-op nonsense, you don’t even need to circumvent the world to prove it’s round. All you need to do is book a flight from Chicago to Tokyo and the flight path travels over the arctic circle to get to Asia.)

The first color to go down was Flat Earth, since it is the main color. P-40 Warhawk planes with a desert scheme will use Middle Stone instead.

I used blue tack to get the outline of the camo scheme and filled in the middle parts with masking tape. I found this to be much better than masking the whole areas with blue tack, as I did on my Eggplane Flanker.

Here’s the finished result. It looks great on the top...

...but the bottom looked terrible after I removed all the masking tape. The tape had left behind that terrible pattern on the underside. Little did I know that after doing some wet sanding, simply applying a gloss coat of Tamiya X-22 Clear made this pattern disappear! So this brings us to my previous photoset post.

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Academy 1:72 Curtiss P-40B Tomahawk plamo photo build update April 8th, 2019

I painted the P-40 last summer, including the camouflage pattern. I first painted the underside XF-19 Sky Gray, masked it off, and the top is a pattern of XF-26 Deep Green and XF-52 Flat Earth. 

After I removed the masking, I saw that it had left a nasty pattern where the masking tape was. I was using Tamiya Masking Tape, which I rarely ever have a problem with. Perhaps I did not allow the paint enough time to cure? I was very disheartened and shelved this kit for many long months.

I wet sanded the paint and was planning to just paint it all over again. After wet sanding, the ugly masking tape pattern remained. But then I had the idea of just giving it a coat of X-22 Clear and the crappy pattern disappeared! Above are the before and after pictures. I’m so relieved!

After the gloss coat dried, I was able to apply the decals. Since I didn’t get the sides well enough with the gloss X-22, I had to use Mr. Mark Setter to get the side decals to set well. Check out the Republic of China roundel on the wing there. Ugh. The white and blue did not line up during the printing process. This is a rather old Academy kit, and the decals are a bit sloppy. As I mentioned in my previous update on this kit from last year, this kit is originally an old FROG model from the ‘60s. Here is the entry for this kit on Scalemates. It’s from 1987. So the white ink on the decals looked nearly invisible on the paper backing, and didn’t really become visible until I soaked them in the warm water. By then it was too late to try to trim off the excess white off of the roundels.

Decaling is now complete. Again, this kit is from 1987, and I bought it used at Otakara Ichiba in Fuji City, Shizuoka Prefecture where I used to live. You can see a video walkthrough of that store here on my YouTube channel. So yeah, this is an older kit, and the decals were a little stubborn to take off, but with a bit of coaxing they slid off without too many difficulties. The shark mouth was the most difficult. There are two different Hell’s Angels logos, and you need only one.

This kit actually has two sizes of RoC roundels, and by mistake I put the larger ones on the bottom of the wings and not the top. At least the mistake is consistent. It would look really silly to have one large and one small on either side of the plane! The mistake won’t be noticeable, so that’s good. The tiger mouth was a bit difficult to line up, particularly since the sides did not get a good enough gloss surface. I still was able to get them on. One thing is that the red vertical stripe indicating the 3rd Pursuit Squadron was waaaay longer than it needed to be. I ended up trimming a bunch of it off.

Next I will use Mr. Mark Softer to relax the decals and after another gloss coat, I can start on the panel lines.

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Curtiss Hawk 81 (known as the P-40b in USAAC), Used by the AVG, Flying Tigers, in China 1942.

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behold, a p-40 from WWII

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Academy 1:72 Curtiss P-40B Tomahawk plamo photo build update July 30th, 2019

Continuing where I left off, I used Tamiya’s Dark Brown Panel Line Accent Color to get the panel lines on the top of the P-40. 

I used Tamiya’s Dark Gray Panel Line Accent Color for the underside.

Excess was removed with a cotton swab soaked in enamel thinner.

One thing that really bothered me with this kit was that the decals weren’t made right. The decals are made by printing the white first and then the color layer next. Unfortunately, these two layers were misaligned on this kit. So what I did was carefully hand-painted the appropriate Tamiya colors to cover up the white peeking out from underneath the Republic of China roundels. Nuts. Oh, and I think I mentioned previously that the larger roundels go on top and smaller ones on bottom. I applied the decals reversed because I wasn’t paying attention. Rats.

After a flat clear coat from Mr. Hobby Top Coat Flat (acrylic), I was ready to weather the kit. I used Nouvel Carre pastel chalk color No.054, Brown Ochre.

I scraped the chalk with my hobby knife to make a nice little pile. I used a makeup applicator to brush it on. Believe it or not, many women believe that God made a mistake when He created them, and that in His error, he neglected to make their eyelids sparkly purple or some crap like that. These are useful for weathering your model though.

This helped to create a filtering layer to reduce the contract between the two colors.

After another flat coat, I used Tamiya enamel XF-16 Flat Aluminum to create paint chips. I knowingly went a bit overboard on this model because I was wanting to practice my brush strokes in accomplishing this step. 

Next I used black pastel chalk to create smoke streaks on the guns.

I also did the same for the engine exhausts. You’ll see that I did go a bit overboard with the aluminum. And look at how offset the white is on the Hell’s Angel decal! That’s disappointing. Otherwise, the decals were nice and thin, and after flat coats, they really look painted-on.

Next I used Tamiya X-10 Gun Metal to paint the guns.

Here’s a display stand by Doyusha. You just need to drill a 3.5mm hole in your model to rest it on this stand. 

And here is the plane mounted on the stand. Then I realized I forgot to paint the exhaust.

I mixed XF-56 Metallic Grey with XF-10 Flat Brown to get the desired color and carefully painted it on.

A final completed image gallery will come next! Thanks for looking.