SPA Modeler

Nice... you know that you can go the Fermis route for scavenged detail materials. He often uses Arizona Iced Tea cans as a source for thin aluminum for scratch built details. That Coors can could serve the same purpose...

I make spoons for catching fish out of Coors and Tecate cans! But it never occurred to me to use that aluminum for models!

Fermis has done some fantastic scratch work building seats and other interior detail parts using can aluminum. Now that PB has started showing photos again, maybe you can see some of his work here. Poormans’ PE substitute.

KennyX wrote:

Talking of Badass - that's awesome!

Thank you, Stuart!

...so I’m contemplating painting and weathering as it pertains to the wheel wells. I touched on this before... insofar as the Corsair is concerned, around this time the directives were given that:

1. The yellow-ish Zinc Chromate primer should replace the salmon-colored Zinc Chromate primer.

2. For the three-color scheme on F4U 1-A, the wheel wells should be oversprayed with Insignia White.

What I’m doing with my model is painting it the way they did it. Mix the black in with the yellow Zinc Chromate for the cockpit, and I’m spraying the yellow Zinc Chromate into the wheel wells first, and then overspraying tbem with Insignia White.

Now, here’s my question. In terms of weathering those wheel wells, there’s a lot of potential for paint chipping effects in there and I’m wondering if you’d see the Insignia White chipped down to the primer on the real aircraft out there in the field? Would that happen? I’d assume so, I mean there’d have to be dings and scrapes on that surface from the landing gear being folded up, right? Would this be an accurate detail? What do y’all think?

That's an interesting question - I would say yes to an extent. I've spent many an hour with my head stuck in an undercarriage bay (I used to be an A&P Engineer) and you wouldn't believe the amount of muck that accumulates in there.

IIRC yes you do get paint chipping down to the primer/metal, but not a massive amount. BUT that being said, I'm used to pampered GA aircraft flying off tarmac and grass* - those guys flew off EVERYTHING!

To my mind - nothing here is going to be wrong, if you want to weather and beat the crap out of it then go for it!

*(even then I've seen some stuff that would make you never fly again)

Cheers!

You know something, Stuart (and thank you for the great input), my friend who had an uncle who flew these mentioned something about his Uncle that stuck with me. “He kept going back out, day after day, wven though many of his friends went out and never came back.”

Think about getting into the cockpit of an airplane that’s been beat to Hell, and flying out into what could very easily be Certain and Assured DOOM... and doing it anyway!

That’s amazing to me. So yeah, man, in a lot of ways I want this aircraft to be one that looks like you’d never in a million years want to go up in it, but you do anyway because you’ve got balls, and underneath the grime and paint chipping and dirt, the aircraft is a badass workhorse that you know will get the job done.

KennyX wrote:You know something, Stuart (and thank you for the great input), my friend who had an uncle who flew these mentioned something about his Uncle that stuck with me. “He kept going back out, day after day, wven though many of his friends went out and never came back.”

Think about getting into the cockpit of an airplane that’s been beat to Hell, and flying out into what could very easily be Certain and Assured DOOM... and doing it anyway!

That’s amazing to me. So yeah, man, in a lot of ways I want this aircraft to be one that looks like you’d never in a million years want to go up in it, but you do anyway because you’ve got balls, and underneath the grime and paint chipping and dirt, the aircraft is a badass workhorse that you know will get the job done.

The first word that springs to mind when reading that is 'Heroes' - That's what they were.