1/32 Tamiya Vought F4U 1a Corsair

Gallery Article by Klaasjan Schuuring on Nov 1 2017

 

      

The Tamiya 1:32 scale Corsair is a great kit to build. It's nearly flawless and construction is easy. All parts just seem to fall together and cleverly use of the moulds prevents unnecessary prep work. The Corsair in itself is, of course, a great plain and beautiful aesthetically. I have chosen to build the version with the folded wings. The folding mechanism is represented very accurately and again is easy to build. 

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I did use quite a few after market sets from Eduard although I ended up not using all the additions provided in the sets. Some were in my view just impossible to add and some were clearly totally off the mark. However a lot added interesting detail which otherwise would have been a lot of extra work. The cockpit of this kit is outstanding. The solution Tamiya presents for the dials is great. A thin transparent peace with little lenses for the dials is attached to the backside of the instrument panel. Against that a reversed decal is placed with the dials facing downwards so to say. It looks really convincing. 

Painting was pretty easy really. For the interior I used yellow chromate as the primer and interior green for the cockpit. The outside is simple white, sea blue and intermediate blue. The blue didn't turn out that blue though but that was solved quite simply by adding a drop of transparent blue to the gloss varnish. The decals were good although the white stripes (not the band) in front of the cockpit broke up during placement. I decided it would be easier to just tape and spray it on instead. Weathering was mostly high lighting and a light wash followed by some chipping here and there and finally smoke trails behind the exhausts. 

I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Klaasjan Schuuring

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Photos and text © by Klaasjan Schuuring