In my last posting about this Mustang I had gotten it ready for painting.
The Chinese Nationalist Air Force kept their Mustangs in its original natural metal finish and if it wasn’t for their national markings the Mustangs would look pretty identical to USAF aircraft.
Until this project I’d never applied a metal finish to an aircraft and I was apprehensive about doing so because I’ve read, in many places, that metal finishes show up every little flaw and scratch. I was also unsure how a metal finish would apply by hand but it turns out that it is actually rather easy.
I don’t have a lot of in progress pictures to be honest but here is the Mustang painted with a gloss coat applied. I’ll start with some of the building details first though. Between the grey shell of a Mustang from the last update to this Mustang I’ll added all three, the propeller and the exhausts.
The exhausts are probably the worst feature of this kit, they’ve got really awkward seam lines that are almost impossible to remove. I did try but I pulled off a pipe in the process and just left them as is. The exhausts are painted in Vallejo Gunmetal Grey and washed with Citadel Badab Black to darken them up. The six .50 calibre machine guns are painted the same way.
The propellers and nosecone were all painted separately, you’ll notice from the last update that a section of the nosecone was already fitted to the fuselage. I painted both that section and the cone section with Revell Aluminium and painted over it with Vallejo Flat Red. The reason I did this is because I’ve assumed this is how it was done on the real aircraft and it gives a slight metallic look to the red.
The propeller blades were painted with Revell Tar Black and then the propeller assembly was closed up. The fit of the cone wasn’t perfect to be honest and I painted in some thinned PVA glue to try close up the gaps. With that done I took out a pot of Revell Yellow and free-handed the yellow tips on very carefully. They turned out quite well to be honest.
The canopy came together perfectly. I started with the windshield painting it first in Revell Aluminium and then painting on Vallejo Black Grey which is the same colour as the nose stripe. The nose stripe took a bit of work to get right as I wanted to get lines straight. I followed a panel line to do and although I had to touch it up several times it came together pretty well.
The rear canopy received several coats of Aluminium and was fitted onto the fuselage once the gloss coat went down. Originally I wanted to pose the canopy open but it was too wide the further I took it back so I left it closed.
The wheels caused me no problems whatsoever although I wonder if the tail wheel is sitting to low as the tail is a incredibly close to the ground. I painted the strut with a mixture of Aluminium and Gunmetal Grey to give a bit of colour variation although it isn’t much of a variation looking at it now. The centre of the wheels was painted with the same mixture. The tyres were given a couple of coats of Revell Anthracite which is a nice shade of off-black good for tyres and such.
The entire Mustang was painted with Revell Aluminium over Halfords Grey. The trick to painting a metal coat by hand is to do at least two coats. The first coat should be painted in the direction of nose to tail and will look streaky at first. The second coat should be painted in the opposite direction, tail to nose, this should eliminate the streaks but if it doesn’t you can always apply more coats repeating the directions.
Using a wide flat brush is also advisable as it’ll help spread the paint better and avoid lines forming in the wet paint. I found that Revell Aluminium is pretty thin from the pot but always best to test out your paint first, especially when hand painting.
With the painting finished and the gloss coat applied I moved onto the decaling and then the weathering. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures between the clean decaled Mustang and the weathered finish so I’ll just continue on with the pictures and talk about both.
The decals are from a Taiwanese company called PMA and they’re very nice but a little thick. The roundels were especially thick and unfortunately out of register, each one had a slight white rim at the bottom. The decals are available from here from Luckymodel by the way.
Here are some of those decals at work. Now I made a big mistake with ‘069’ because when I was applying another decal my finger landed right on this one, pulled it off and crumpled it. I spent ten panicked minutes fixing it and fitting it back in place and a lot longer trying to get it to smooth out and not look so damaged. It came out alright in the end but I was kicking myself for the mistake.
I’ve no idea what the two decals under the cockpit say but I really like them. They went on without any problems and bring the aircraft to life. I just had to make sure I was placing them the right side up as it isn’t easy to tell and I didn’t want someone coming up to me someday and telling me they were all messed up.
This Mustang also marks the first time I’ve used aftermarket weathering sets. After all of the decals had been applied and glossed I broke out a bottle of Flory Models (previously known as Promodellers) wash, in this case ‘Dark Dirt’ and gave the entire aircraft a wash in it. I let it set for twenty minutes and then I took out a tissue, licked it, and in a circular motion I began gently rubbing some of the wash away so that it would be pulled into the panel lines. Finally I rubbed the tissue in the direction of airflow to get some streaks going. I reckon the intense nature of the Chinese Civil War and rapid loss of territory for the Nationalists would have lead to a dirty aircraft.
The dirty exhausts were achieved with two Tamiya Weathering Kits; B which includes Snow, Soot and Rust and D which includes Burnt Red, Burnt Blue and Oil Stain. In order to achieve a good stain with colour variation around the exhaust I first applied a mixture of Rust and Burnt Red, followed by Oil Stain and then Soot. I’m really happy with how it turned out and the Tamiya Weathering Kits are really easy to work with as is the Flory Models Wash, I’d recommend both to anyone wishing to improve their weathering.
The streaks of gun smoke were achieved with Soot and applied both above and below the wing. For the ‘069’ and for all of the roundels I had to apply multiple coats of Vallejo’s decal softener in order to get them to bed down into the panel lines. It worked with the ‘069’ but the roundels were very resistant. Whilst all this was going on I was working on the external fuel tanks separately. PMA provide decals for both the 75 gallon and the 100 gallon fuel tanks that Mustangs can carry which is a nice touch.
The decal set also provides several different number codes for the nose with matching codes for the tail. The painting guide that comes with the decal set shows the tail with blue and white stripes along its ribbed self. I tried about three times to paint in the stripes using the ribbing on the tail as a guide but it involved too many straight lines and white is never easy to work with. Instead I just did a split colour tail with Revell White and Vallejo Blue.
I mentioned the thick roundels were out of register with a white rim on the bottom of each. Delicately I painted over the the rim with Aluminium with a flat brush to try and hide them and it has worked for the most part. The picture above is also a good indication of how effective a Flory Models was is at highlighting panel lines and rivets.
The wing roundels caused me a bit of trouble because, following the decal and painting guide of the decal set, their placement overlapped two protrusions from the wing. I wish I could tell you what do protrusion are for but I’m clueless. In order to get the decals to fit over them I brushed on several coats of Vallejo decal softener and then, very carefully, with a pair of tweezers and a craft knife I cut a notch of decal out around the protrusion. It worked but one of the roundels slipped in the process which is why they’re not even on both sides of the wing. As long as the aircraft was operational I don’t think the Nationalists would’ve minded though.
I should say that all of the decals, including those black and red circles, came from the aftermarket decal set. I didn’t use the kit decals at all.
Academy provide you the option of positioning the flaps and I wanted to position them down. I added them after the weathering had been finished so they were painted and weathered separately to the rest of the Mustang. Little bit of a wrestle getting them into place but the finished model wouldn’t have look as good without them.
So there it is, one P-51D Mustang of the Chinese Nationalist Air Force and the best model I’ve finished to date. I’m very happy with the metal finish and exceptionally happy with the weathering.
I’m hopefully going to enter this into a few competitions next year and see how it does. In the meantime I’ve started a metal coat MiG-15 of the North Korean Air Force but posts on that will have to wait until after Christmas I think.
