The Little World

A week would appear to be a long time in the Little Workshop. Long enough to build and paint the Hobby Boss Republic P-47 and push it off the assembly line. I think I need to remind myself that I’m not under government contract here…

The assembly was just as easy as I thought – Hobby Boss have some of the neatest casting lines I’ve yet encountered and the entire filling needed amounted to about a half-inch spread over three seams. Now that I have gotten the trick of cutting the Tamiya filler putty down with their lacquer thinner I can flow it into areas and end up with very little sanding afterwards. My researches turn up lots of on-line advice and one piece I adopted for some areas of this model was the one about using Humbrol Liquid Poly cement in the applicator bottle with the long tube. There were fewer glue blebs afterwards.

In the case of this fuselage/wing/tailplane combination I was puzzled to find a way to hold it for undercoating and painting. No tailpipe to stick a handle into. I finally settled for putting the engine on, masking over it, and grasping it like a drawer knob. I think in the future I will go back to the patented foam-core stand and just settle for doing each coat in two passes.

The coats were done using Tamiya paint with their lacquer thinner as a cutting agent. I think they sprayed extremely well and the drying time on these coolish days was as fast as I could have wanted. I can boost this up with the drying box if I put it in the sun. One thing that I am wondering about, though…there seemed to be a little residue left on some of the surfaces from an old roll of Tamiya masking tape. Was it because of the lacquer thinner or is it just old tape. In any event, the residue was picked off with a fresh bit of tape so all is well.

I must compliment the Hobby Boss people – the decal sheet was slow to release but has ended up quite good-looking – including the labeling on the Hamilton Standard propeller blades. No overweening detail, but good shapes.

I think later in the piece I will purchase a P-47 kit from another maker to provide a comparison aircraft – there were enough colour schemes to make a good visual presentation. They’d have to be good to beat the value for money with this one.

Heading Image: I have not taken leave of my Little Studio but I did experiment with landing the P-47 on my Epson scanner and pressing the button…