1/48 Hobbycraft P-40 |
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Gallery Article by Darius Aibara
on July 13 2003 |
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RAF Curtiss P40 Tomahawk Mk II
This is the Hobbycraft P40 kit
modelled as an RAF Tomahawk Mk II of 112 Squadron RAF somewhere in North Africa
in 1941. I assembled the kit essentially out of the box but with the help
of an Eduard photoetch set for the cockpit and flaps. The kit is fairly
straightforward but the plastic is somewhat brittle and needs careful cutting to
accept the photoetched parts - which are fairly good. The Eduard flaps
have separate triangular stiffeners that need to be individually cemented with
cyano - my technique for this is to place a few drops of glue on the top of a
jam jar lid and then just touch the stiffener to the glue drop using tweezers
before transferring it to the flaps. This is about 80-90% successful with
the stiffener being stuck to the tweezers in the remaining 10% (as opposed to my
fingers, which is what used to happen).
Click on
images below to see larger images
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I brush painted the
model using Humbrol enamels and coated it with Johnson's Kear acrylic varnish
before applying the decals. The kit decals are not good (thick, glossy
with incorrect colour shades) and so I used an aftermarket set for Curtiss
P40B's. After sealing in the decals with a further coating of Klear I
applied a coat of Humbrol "matt cote" and had a go at weathering with
some pastel chalks.