Revell P51B

This is my son's P51B by Revell. The kit is cheap and has really bad fit issues. He is actually doing a good job with how difficult the kit is. He seems to be enjoying building it. 

I think he did a good job on the cockpit. 

I had to take off a bunch of the Vallejo paint. It was spitting and shooting big globs of paint all over. We learned to never use anything by Vallejo thinner with Vallejo paints.  

Learned a lesson about how to use Vallejo paints. Never thin Vallejo paint with Mr. Hobby leveling thinner, or X20A. It turned the paint to gel in the airbrush. It took me a whole night to clean out the brush. I thought the airbrush was a goner.  

Was able to save the model, and resprayed it with Tamiya gloss black, then sprayed it with Vallejo Metal Color airbrush paint. I love these metal colors. They are so easy to use ad have no smell.  

Painted the top olive drab using Tamiya XF-62. I felt that it was too dark, so I mixed a little buff XF-57 in with the XF-62 and highlighted some of the top surfaces. You cannot tell in this photo though. 

This is my first time painting invasion strips.  

The flat white came out ok. I had a little bleeding under the masking on the right bottom side, but all and all, I am ok with this. Maybe I can wear the bleeding out during the weathering phase? 

This was very tedious making sure all the strips were strait, and the same size.  

Well, its not prefect. The raised detail and rivets of this old Revell kit make it hard to mask off and get solid lines without bleeding, or overspray. I think its ok, and my son thought it looked awesome, so if he's happy with it, I can be happy with it. I know I could do better, but I am getting sick of working on these strips. I still need to do the strips on the middle of the fuselage, and I am not looking forward to those.  

The bottom strips look better than the top. I wish it was the other way around. haha. 

This was as much as I wanted to do today. Tomorrow I will see if I can get the fuselage invasion strips done.  

Now I need to install the landing gear. The landing gear are horrible. Now of the parts fit correctly, and they lean inwards. I have become very frustrated with them and haven't touched the model in over a week. I just need to get it done so I can move on.