1/48 P-51D Improving the Tamiya Kit (Tutorial) DONE

[lawdog114]

Hello, The Tamiya P-51D is without a doubt my most often built kit (their P-47 is a close second). I'm good for at least one a year. I don't really know why. Perhaps the plethora of schemes? Inspiration from the men who flew them, like the 357th FG's Yeager, Anderson, and England to name a few. Maybe its from other inspirational sources? I once built one immediately after seen the Tuskegee P-51 shoot down a 109 in the movie Hart's War. It's certainly not my favorite bird, that would belong to the Spitfire Mk I. So I really don't know. There's just something about this subject and this kit that is alluring to me. Out of the box, it's simple to build and looks like a P-51 when done. That said, the kit has some areas that need improvement, and over the years I've developed ways to rectify these. In this thread, my aim is to point these out then show how "I" fixed them. Of course your mileage may vary.

My "recipe" calls for a True Details cockpit, Ultracast seat (in this case), and for this one I will try out the Eduard Brassin wheels.



One of the biggest weaknesses of the kit is the cockpit. Its a far cry from their new 1/32 version. I usually replace it with the True Details example. You can use the Aries pit too but this one is much cheaper and just as nice. Unfortunately the substitution does involve sanding of the kit sidewalls, otherwise, the pit will be too wide and force out the wingroot just enough to flatten the dihedral of the wings. I usually take course sandpaper and sand until you can slightly see through the plastic when held up to the light. Now that I have a Dremel this was a piece of cake. Once done, I superglued the new resin sidewall in place. I filled the top gap where it meets the fuselage with super glue then sanded it flush.




I apparently raided this particular True Details set on an earlier project because the seat was missing. These are excellent. On a side note, the seats are available separately so you can just use one of these if you don't want to do all this sanding. It alone will improve things considerably. Anyways, I fortunately had Ultracast seats in the resin stash so I used one here. The TD seat is the whole assembly, while this one you need to add the kit headrest...bummer



Here everything is dryfitted and checked. It appears my sanding is sufficient and the wing angle is where it should be. Oh yeah, I forgot, I here you can where I added a .10 strip of styrene to cover the gap between the resin and plastic at the canopy rail.....easy.




It's time for paint. I utilized Gunze Interior Green as my primary color over flat black to add depth. The center fuel take was painted in XF-24 Dark Grey to simulate the rubber coating for its self sealing properties. To simulate the wooden floor I sprayed it XF-59 Desert Yellow then X-26 Clear Orange. It looks convincing to me. Technically the floor had a black coating on them but I wanted to keep it interesting. The old artistic licensing cliche? Rather than rehash my cockpit process, please see my cockpit painting tutorial in the "Modeling Tips" section.




One night of work and were ready to button it up.....and I have no idea what scheme I'm doing. Right now its a toss up between Drew's Detroit Miss and Preddy's Cripes A Mighty III....

Joe

[BorgR3mc0]

You make it look very easy Lawdog, with great results.

[CallSignOWL]

very nice!

[LyleW]

Very well done! Great tutorial.

[mostrich]

Now that's useful. This is no doubt one of my future builds.

Sitting and watching!

[lawdog114]

Thanks folks.

Joe

[lawdog114]

I got a bit of work in last night. I sealed the fuselage, added the nose piece and had no issues. The top engind cover fits much better on the D than their B example. I'm not sure why.



Here is one of the areas I hate about the Tamiya P-51, that being the lower radiator seam. This area usually requires the most of my attention. I usually have to sand the center seam so much that all of the detail in the area disappears, primarily the square with the circle inside. I remedy it with a piece of styrene. Not exactly accurate but it works for me. The seam inside the vent is impossible to sand so I usually hide it with a piece of styrene stock thusly. (Note: I had to fill an oopps made by the Dremel during cockpit work).



After the fuselage work was done, I turned my attention to the wings. Another weak area on this kit is the lousy blobs for 50 cals. These are perhaps the worst I've seen on a P-51 kit.



Initially I would drill out the ends which only marginally improved them. Then I got the idea to drill the entire gun out and substitute them with Quickboost fifties. This looked my better but there was no answer for the inboard gun which only had the blast tube exposed. Then another modeler (I'm sorry, your name escapes me) came up with the idea of substituting the barrels with Albion Alloy brass tubing.



I stole...I mean tried it and must say it worked great. They come in three sizes and can be inserted into each other, which is perfect for the business end of a 50 cal. I just drilled out the kit plastic thusly and subsitute the tubing secured with super glue.





I got the frame together without issue. These really do build themselves. I used the masking tape to ensure there were no wing root issues.



I'll be painting soon...

Joe

[CallSignOWL]

where do you get those tubes?