Monogram P-47D 1/48

Still need to paint the pushrods...

Needs more wires.

Trying something new with blast tubes and magnets so they can be removed. Tubes are a tiny bit overscale but oh well.

Fits pretty well for a kit first molded in 1967.

Not the best cockpit I've ever done bit not the worst either. It's a really old KMC cockpit for the Hasegawa razorback I had lying around so I thought I'd give it a shot. Requires some modification for sure. The color is a "close enough" representation of Republic's typical dark green cockpit paint (it's actually XF-11 JN Green, LOL).

The holes for the wing guns still need to be drilled once the halves are joined, this is just to see if the magnets will work. I super glued a paperclip into the end of the tube, then cut/sanded it flush to provide something for the magnet to stick to.

The magnets are pretty strong for their size, about 1mm thick by 2mm in diameter. I plan to use them to hold things like bombs, fuels tanks and other fiddly bits on so they don't break off.

Other cockpit wall. Has to be installed after the fuselage is glued together.

Dry fit of the blast tubes. Looks decent and made cleaning up the wing seams a lot easier.

Wing panels have been rescribed/cleaned up since this.

I wasn't going to rescribe either but did the tops of the wings after this was taken and some chisel bit cleanup of the wing root seams. P.S. If anyone has any specs/dimension on where to locate the cockpit fresh air intake on the starboard wing root, let me know. Monogram skipped this entirely.

Monogram's kit has the guns lined up with the wing axis when they were really parallel with the ground. Tried to replicate that here, but didn't have much room to work so adjusted only a little.

Kit instrument panel, which was actually better than the KMC but overall it's meh. Had to shorten it to fit and added some semi-plausible rudder pedals from scratch. The corrugations on the pedals are way out of whack but the canopy's going to be closed, so was going for a suggestion of detail rather than all out.

More meh.

OK, I said I was going to do a simple build but I couldn't help myself fixing the wing fit. It was really bad. After a long time scraping, sanding, block sanding and undercutting, I finally achieved my goal of having a good fit so that only a small amount of sprue goo seeped out the joint so I didn't need to putty and sand away all that raised detail.

Another Monogram issue was that the wing wouldn't line up fore and aft. If you push them all the way back to line up the flaps then the wing leading edge had a huge step. Push it forward to fix the leading edge and you ended up with flaps that ended way short of the trailing edge. Figuring the latter was easier to fix, added some plastic strip and reprofiled the trailing edge, carefully.

Wing root gaps are my bugaboo, hate them.

The kit canopy is hopeless to make closed. It's way too thick and as a bonus, warped. I robbed a never-to-be-finished Arii Razorback kit of its canopy which is not only thinner but actually fits, with more tweaking of course.

Looking ok so far but a primer coat tells no lies.

Starting to look like an aircraft at least. Arii canopy fit great after much fiddling but still needed some fill at the front.

Since I stole the canopy from the Arii, I went ahead and stole the stabs as well. They fit well and are cleaner than the Mongram ones. Recessed lines too.

Seams looking OK and the flap extension blended.

ID lights. Red and green made of out Christmas disposable utensils. I highly recommend the forks. Still have to paint the rear one a clear yellow. Wingtip light also made out of the utensils. Stretched sprue, cover with clear then file, sand and polish.

Home made landing light out of clear sprue. Turned out pretty well.

1st round of undercoating. Still need to tweak some of the colors on a few of the panels and fill in a bit.

The Arii canopy turned out pretty well. With some work, the front windscreen was seamless with the fuselage. Apparently canopy gaps are my other bugaboo after wing gaps.

Basic OD color done. Looks better IRL than a phone camera. With raised panel lines had to be careful not to cover the black too much and the undercoat added a nice depth to the paint which should also be improved with some weathering, etc.

Well mates, it was all going pretty well right up until decals. The kit decals were just trash and my backup Aeromaster sheet wasn't much better. They looked fine on the paper, but broke apart on the clear film parts as soon as they were moved. 😭

So that means "Anderson Indian" was 14 separate decals instead of one for example, same for all the others. I would have started over, but the first decal (Little Chief) was the only one that worked and I let my guard down, so I was committed after that.

Worse, they didn't respond to microsol or microset very well, so in desperation I went with the Nuclear Option, Solvaset. That worked, somewhat, but I overapplied it on a couple of decals and it melted the gloss coat and wrinkles never went away. I'll need to sand and reapply a new insignia on the port wing.

In desperation, I turned to an old Monogram sheet for the tail numbers as the original ones completely disintegrated, so that's why they are wrong for this aircraft, but at least they're reasonably close. Also old Monogram decals for the 50" stars-and-bars on the bottoms of the wings. Opposite problem here. Being Monogram, they laughed off everything including Solvaset and so aren't conforming nearly as well.

On the plus side, the minor chipping went well and I'm hoping a gloss coat of the decals will help some and the final flat coat/weathering may help minimize some of the worst issues. That's what I get for using really old decals!

Exhaust staining on the P-47 is a bit different due to the supercharger ducting.

Bombs (not finished) attached with magnets in the pylons, similar to wing guns. Still need the sway braces and paint the front fuse and add the rear one, but it's getting close.

Underside streaking a mix of oils and a wash or two.

More exhaust streaking. Oils, panel line wash and pastels. Tried some fine spray work with a PS771, but it didn't work on the relatively small streaking you get from the wastegate on P-47s. Covered with pastels but it turned out OK.