1/48 Tamiya P-51 Mustang

Gallery Article by Frédéric Schwebel on Mar 9 2010

 

Good day, for my first submission to ARC website, I would like to show you my second attempt of rebirthing an old model.  I built this P 51 more than ten years ago, it was painted as the big beautiful doll, and after a first attempt to use aluminium tape as the skin for an old monogram P-51, I decided to try this method on the Tamiya model. I stripped all the paint off the model, and covered it carefully with self adhesive  aluminium tape. Once fully covered, the aluminium is engraved and weathered with oil paint. The stars and bars and the checkerboard are painted ones, the rest of the paint scheme are standard decals.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

I added some extra home made detail and use an aftermarket seatbelt.

Covering the model with aluminium tape is a long and demanding task, especially with an already built model. But the result is quite realistic, and as far as the oil paint weathering is dry, you can easily manipulate the model and add some extra weathering or polish back some panel on the plane. I have tested this method on some spare parts, and painting a standard camouflage on an aluminium taped wings gives a realistic result too.

Thanks for looking at my model and have fun modelling.

Frédéric Schwebel

Photos and text © by Frédéric Schwebel