Tamiya 1:32 F4U1-A1 Corsair Build Thread

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
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Time for a new build. After the Essex I got back to building structures for my model railroad, and finished this scratch-build freelance structure. It is a building featured in a 1957 Model Railroader given to me during that time by a long-deceased uncle. I kept this article for almost 60 years and then decided to build it with a 3D interpretation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks masterpiece.

I’ve been keeping my interest by interspersing railroad structures and scenery projects with really challenging high-end plastic kits. Up till now, I was working off a stash of kits given to me by a parent of the one of the kids in my “Grandpop’s Model Building Workshop” which I held for a couple of sessions in 2012. I finally had to buy a kit this weekend when Scale Reproductions, Inc. had their anniversary sale. I’ve been eyeing several 1:32 planes: The Tamiya Corsair F4U-1A, Tamiya or HK Models Mosquito, Tamiya or SWS P-51, or SWS or Trumpeter A1 Skyraider. I had downloaded instructions of all of them. When wandering the hobby shop and not finding anything in the shelves (And SRI has one of the most complete plastics departments I ever seen), I asked about the Corsair. Lo and behold, it had just come in and hadn’t even been priced yet. I got it with the anniversary discount.

One of the reasons for wanting this kit was a book I bought years ago. I had a Topflite Corsair RC kit that a friend wanted me to build for him. It never got built and the kit was sold. I bought the Johannsen book becuase it had some terrific fold-out pics of details not often seen in typical publications.

Here are some other images from the book.

Here is the wing fold detail both in color and then with specific call outs. Since I want to add the hydraulic lines to this part (I folding the wings), having this level of detail will be very helpful. For the TBM, I had actual wing-fold pics taken by an owner of an actual TBM. I don’t believe I will be as lucky with this build so having these images will be helpful.

The book has several fold-out images much bigger than 1:32 showing actual color rendition and markings, some of the same VF as the Tamiya model.

Lastly, there is a full cut-away drawing showing many things that even the Tamiya kit doesn’t include including all the tankage behind the firewall. I am actualy a bit surprised that Tamiya didn’t include that section and give you the opportunity to open that section. Say what you will about Trumpeter, but they do like to include more ‘hidden’ stuff like they did with the TDM.

I’m probably going to build the plane as the “Big Dog” group leader version. I’m annoyed that Tamiya doesn’t have the exterior colors (Navy Blue and Medium Blue) in their bottle paint. I don’t relish using rattle can paint for the exterior since I use airbrush extensively and don’t get the best results with spraying outdoors.

I will commence the build when I finish repairing some of the streets that suffered some water damage on my model railroad. That should only take a couple of days so stay tuned.

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Looking forward to watching this one! Too bad books like that aren’t easy to come by for every build!

3

I too am going to watch this build since I fancy this kit.

I have a number of Watanabe’s books that I collected back in the 1980’s. He is one my most admired illustrators.

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I also have Rikyu’s Hellcat book so if I ever decide to build a large version of that bird I’ll be ready. Went to hobby shop and picked up some Tamiya bottle colors for the paint job. I am partial to Tamiya for lots of reasons, none the which is familiarity using it since the 70s. I bought Intermediate Blue for the mid areas and Royal Blue for the Navy Blue parts. Tamiya makes a Navy Blue in spray, but not in bottle. What Navy Blue looks like to me is a mixture of Tamiya Royal Blue and their Field Blue. I have a little bit of Life Color’s Navy Blue that was used for the Essex project. Life Color makes the Navy, but I couldn’t find a good intermediate blue. So it might be a mix to do the job. Based on the recommendation by Marty Schwanbau, the head of the shop’s terrific plastics department, suggested using Tamiya Retarder to keep it wetter on large spray jobs and prevent striations between passes. So I bought that too. You can’t get that from buying stuff on line.

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I’ll certainly follow along. It’s my favorite prop fighter and, with your skills, I’ll certainly learn something.

BTW, I love the structure you built for your model RR. Eduard Hopper is one of my favorite artists and, being someone who was born and raised in Manhattan, his painting of “Nighthawks” really resonates with me. Although I lived in the upper east side for most of the 29 years I considered New York City my home, when I was first married I did live close to where some say the cafe that inspired the “Nighthawks” was situated .

See here: https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1916/44305045275_0089b8e7b6_h.jpg

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That’s really neat. I went on Google Earth and street view to see if I could spot the location, but no luck. A lot has probably changed in that neighborhood since 1941.

I spend a lot of time picking up and putting down the wrong sprues especially when building a model with as many parts as the Corsair. I know that Hobby Zone makes a commercial Sprue Rack, but I had enough scrap ply and Masonite floating around the shop that I decided to build my own. I measured the smallest sprues in the kit and based the dimensions on something a little bigger, but not too big so small sprues wouldn’t get lost.

I settled on 4" X 6" for the separators. I cut it all out using a saber saw and chop saw and then cleaned up the edges with my 1" belt sander. I held it all together with Aleen’s Tacky Glue and some thick CA since I am basically impatient.

I started it yesterday and finished it today. Of course I only cut 15 pieces (that’s all I could get out of the piece of awfully warped plywood) and upon attempting to load the Corsairs sprues I find that their numbers go to the letter “T” and I ended at letter “M”. I’ll make due. Most models don’t have that many sprues. If I have to I’ll build an extension. After marking the alpha locations, I loaded it up.

And with that, work officially commenced on the Corsair build.

I’ve watched some videos about this build and notice that folks like to assemble all the little bits and then airbrush the assembly. Then they go back and do all the detail painting with a brush. I decided to go that route. I already lost one part to the Quantum Rift continuing to uphold my theory that small parts do actually leave this dimension and occassionally grace us with their return (but mostly not).

All of the levers and trim tab wheels are separate parts. I’m not sure why, but Tamiya has two of the wheels in clear parts with their based called out as semi-gloss black. I looked at my color rendition and it shows these wheels to be entirely black. But to entertain Tamiya, I liquid masked the clear rotary knob and will paint the bases.

Tamiya calls for their interior green to be a 2:1 mix of Flat Yellow and Flat Green, but I already had some nice zine chromate green from PolyS that I’m going to use. I did want certain parts to show a little wear so I preparinted them silver and used liquid mask that will be removed exposing “bare metal” after the interior green goes down.

I had a little scare. I started assembling the main instrument panel by gluing the clear gauge lens piece to the back of the gray frontal piece, only to see that the instrument decal had a different gauge configuration. What the…? Upon closer inspection of the instructions I see that there is another sprue “T” that has a different instrument facing with the correct gauge design. So where is the clear part? It’s on Sprue “Q”. "Where the heck is sprue “Q”? I didn’t remember seeing another clear sprue. I searched and searched and then called my LHS to find out how to get missing parts. I was instructed to contact Tamiya USA. I did so and was about to take a picture of my sales receipt as instructed to send off an eMail request, when I noticed the other lens piece on the same fret as the first one that I cut out. Oh… sprue “P” and “Q” and on the same tree. The model obviously has parts for several different iterations of Corsairs. I’d better keep my eyes open going forward. In the above image you see both configurations.

I put the decal behind the right one.

The images are brilliant and in perfect register. My plan is too cover the gauge faces with liquid mask and then airbrush the semi-gloss black. Since I had another gauge cluster I decided to see how this scheme works, so I made a test. There’s no decal image behind it, but it does work…sort of. I’ll probably have to do some micro-touchup after peeling off the mask.

It will work, but I will probably have to make the mask a bit thicker. Next session I’ll continue building this beautiful interior. Tamiya has elimated most of the reasons from scratch-building all these little details.

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Given some of the work I’ve seen you turn out this should be a true joy to watch.

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Hi gang! Back from our trip to the York Toy Train Show and family visits. With the last comment, the bar is now set very high. I’ll try to live up to it.

Spent the day continuing to build the exceptional cockpit. Tamiya has done a splendid job with this model. I went through the two sprues “D” and “R” and removed the parts that were indicated “not used” so they wouldn’t confuse me further down the road.

I mildly aged the bulkhead with some Tamiya black panel line treatment to highlight the texture.

I put some liquid mask on the foot pads (already had it on the pedals) so I could expose some ‘bare’ metal after the green was applied. I then airbrushed the semi-gloss black on all the instrument. You had to drill the foot pad brackets to accept the pins on the pads themselves. I used a 0.032" carbide drill to make these small holes, and then glued on the pads. After painting, I removed the mask exposing the sillver below.

The foot pads are added and some more mechanisms and then built the hydraulic hand pump assembly. This part dropped and broke and I had to put the mounting bracket back using thick CA and some accelerator.

This picture really shows how wonderful the instruments themselves look. They’re so nice it almost looks like you could fly this baby.

I think I’m going to build it with the pilot inside so I needed to start building the seated figure now. After cleaning up some mild mold lines I glued the torso together, the head and the left arm. The right arm needs to have his hand on the joy stick so I’m going to hold off gluing it on until I can place him in the cockpit. You have to build the plane around him. It also affects the PE seat belts installation. The pilot has his parachute on and its straps are white, whereas the seat belts are buff colored. I’m not a great figure painter since I don’t do all the shadowing and hightlighting that the experts do, but I’ll give it a shot. I really like that the goggles are actually a clear part where you paint the frames and have the clear lenses. This greatly simplifies the face painting since you will only see his eyes through the goggles, i.e., not too much.

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Really nice start to this. I am going to have to look for one of these at the Telford show at a good price.

About the exterior paint. Vallejo have a set for US aircraft in the Pacific Theatre that have the chipset correct colours you need. The colours are also available on their own and I’ll post the numbers etc when I get on my main system

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Thanks!

I try and exercise every other day and this cuts my work time down a bit, but I did get something done.

I painted the pilot. It’s a complex paint job due to the full flight gear he’s wearing. He’s wearing goggles which Tamiya includes as a separate clear part, plus he’s sitting on his parachute and has a life vest on.

I started by painting the little bit of face that would show, then did the whites of the eyes, and a small dot for the pupil. I then painted some eyebrows and then went back three times to back paint all the previous work to get the eyebrows even and at the right level.

Next came the flight helmet (Buff), the straps for the oxygen mask and the goggles. The entire flight suit is buff also. The life vest is straight yellow and the gloves are dark yellow which I mixed. The parachute is Khaki. Shoes are Red Brown, and straps are white. The hardware was done with the Molotow Chrome Pen. I glued the goggles on using Bondic UV cure glue. It’s great for transparent parts since the UV penetrates through and cures the glue underneath. It holds well and is totally clear. Then I did the trim painting on the goggles (Khaki). The goggles distort the facial features underneath and make his eyes look even funnier than how I painted them.

The Buff got a bit shiny due to my handling. I may give it a little dull coat to knock off the sheen. I don’t do figures well since I don’t do all the counter shawdowing that the real figure guys do. He’s going to be buried in the cockpit and I may or may not have it closed.

Still to add is the oxygen tube which I’ve left off since I would have knocked it off by now.

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It goes without saying that your Corsair will be a knockout, it looks good already.

That said, your Nighthawks building in your OP sure did get my attention. I’d actually stop screwing around and build a layout if I had that to put on it. Well, maybe…

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Work looks really good so far bud. I’ve gotta say that these later 32nd scale Tamiya aircraft kits are off the charts in terms of detail. I don’t build this scale but if I did then this kit would be first on my list.

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Builder 2010

I built a smaller Corsair ( quite poorly ) earlier this year.

Vallejo has the colors you seek. Vallejo can be a bit finicky but I found that adding some retarder helped quite a bit.

I have certainly found that Tamiya with Mr Self-Leveling thinner sprays like a dream through my AB.

When I get home from work I will get the numbers for you. I think SRI had to order the intermediate blue in for me so they probably have more.

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Builder 2010

You might want to check out these paints. I have read very good reviews.

https://www.missionmodelsus.com/collections/us-aircraft

Next time I am over at SRI I will ask if they are interested in getting/stocking some.

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As always the case, exceptional skills my friend!

Your friend, Toshi

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Toshi

i hope you and Mrs. Toshi are doing well and each day gets a little better for you both.

TOSHI if you could have seen the hood hinges that Builder 2010 fabricated for a fellow modeler / hobby shop owner here in Louisville you would be floored.

I greatly admire the skill you both have aquired.

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Builder 2010

The colors you are looking for, I believe, are these in the Vallejo Model Air line.

71.113 US Intermediate Blue

71.295 USN Sea Blue

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Oh and these Vallejo Model Air colors as well…

71.119 White Grey

71.121 Light Gull Gray

I did not name the colors I am just using Vallejo nomenclature. LOL.

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Thank you all for the encouragement and good thoughts! I’ve purchased some Tamiya paints which I suspect, when properly mixed, will give me the shades I need. I’ve used Vallejo on the Avenger, but don’t like how long it takes to fully dry. I use both paints all the time and the work you see here does include mostly Tamiya paint and some Vallejo (flesh mix, white and insignia red).

I finished up what makes up the cockpit today.

It started with building the seat. It’s five plastic parts plue one PE. Unfortunately, the PE part is completely hidden with the seated pilot.

I airbrushed all the interior green parts that were included up to this point plus the interior of the fuselage and some other bulkhead parts for the aft of the aircraft. As noted before, the engineering on this kit is exceptional. Where you have fit challenges with Trumpeter, this one is amazing. And being 1:32, you can pick out details that would be almost impossible in smaller scales. Case in point; the skull and cross-bones decal on the pilot’s flight helmet, and a decal on the instrument panel.

I glued the seat in place, and painted and installed the oxygen bottle. It called out semi-gloss black, but I painted it zinc-chromate yellow.

The underside of the seat is unpainted, but does not show at all. Getting the PE seat belt to stick using medium and thin CA was a challenge. It is VERY springy material and took more time than I would like to finally get it in place. All of the other PE seat belt material is not used when having a seated pilot. I also didn’t put the wash on the seat since, that too, would be occulded by the pilot.

I glued the aft cockpit bulkhead in place trapping the control column and then, using thick CA, glued the pilot in place. Only then did I glue the right arm in place in such a way to grasp the control stick’s handle. For this I used standard Testor’s tube cement since it has some bulk and would fill any gaps between the arm and the body.

Now I had to get those pesky PE seat belts to join with the molded-on belts, which I now had to repaint from the white of the parachute seat belts to the dark tan of the cockpit seat belts since I didn’t realize that some of the molded-in details were seat belts, not parachute belts. This was a wrinkle I wasn’t expecting.

The PE parts are probably stainless steel and are very difficult to shape. I tried to pre-bend them so the tension would be reduced a bit so the CA had a chance to hold them in place.

I scraped the paint off the pilot’s seat belts so the CA had something to which to hold and then held them in place and hoped for the best. The first belt glued quickly, but the second was a different story. My experience with CA is if it doesn’t glue the first time, any further attempts get worse. Each attempt had me scraping the cured CA off the plastic part so I wasn’t putting new CA over old CA. Eventually it stuck and I repainted all the distubed areas.

The instrument panel cowling had several small parts that glue to it before attaching to the instrument panel. Out of the five parts needed to be glued, I had two take off to the quantum rift: the little two-toggle panel on the right side and the clear gyro-stablized gun sight optic. Of the two, I finally found the clear part which would have been the worst one to lose, but couldn’t find the little switch panel, so I scratch-built it out of piece of sprue and two pieces of high-E guitar string. I used a Xuron hard-wire cutter to cut small pieces of the piano wire, and if I need two pieces, I end up cutting 8 or more since they are microscopic and fly into the rift without warning.

After painting and assembly the panel looks okay. There is a conduit that comes out of a hole in the instrument panel and goes to the bottom of the gun sight that is not included in the kit. I attempted to make it out of a piece of wire insulation. It didn’t work, couldn’t really be seen, so I scraped the idea.

I used some Microsol Liquid Mask on the gunsight’s lens and airbrushed the cowl semi-gloss black, picked out the toggle switches with the Molotow Chrome Pen and then glued it to the cockpit assembly. My source book shows the leather front edge of the cowl to be a brown shade which I may paint tomorrow just to add more intereset.

With the addition of the canopy cowl, the interior is complete and ready to be installed in the fuselage. I notice that I’ve worn some black off his headphones that needs to be touched up.

The cockpit of this model was the singular most complex and complex cockpit model I’ve ever built, and believe me, I’ve built a ton of them. Tamiya is to be congratulated for doing it this way. In later versions of Corsairs, a cockpit floor was installed. It was a real pain when the pilot would drop something in the cockpit and it would end up on the bottom laying on the fuselage skin. It would be most difficult to retrieve something there. Kind of like fishing something out from between a car seat and a console.

Next up: more interior fuselage stuff in preparation for joining the halves. Can’t wait to build the engine… I love radials and this one’s a beauty.

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Thank you so very much for your kind words DMX512!