1/48 Hasegawa F4U-5N Corsair

Gallery Article by Kyrre Ingebrethsen

 

Recently I spent 3 months in the Grand Forks, North Dakota. Anyone who’s ever spent some time in GF realizes there’s not much to do unless you like Bowling or Golf. I was there in the Winter, so golf was out and I never got good at bowling, so I went ahead and bought myself a kit, some Testor’s spray paints and some essentials. I thought I’d keep it simple, so an all black Corsair was the obvious choice, while I’ve always wanted to do a VMF-513 machine from the Korea War. 

Not a simple build though. Having half done a couple of Tamiya Corsairs I’d have to say that Hasegawa has compromised a bit with their multimolds, leading to a couple of steps and punchout marks. No big deal, just a bit of sanding and superglue filler needed in some places.

 

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Come painting I decided I wanted to try out the metal-first-followed-by- topcoat- followed-by- chipping-and-sanding- exposing-the-underlying-paint-technique for the first time. And although I overdid it in some places I have seen pictures of very worn Corsairs late in their careers, so I believe I’m not that way off. Remember that some of the -5N’s were in use until the end of ’53!  

Having completed the kit with a bit of sanding, a bit of Future, decaling (forget the stenciling, too much effort and not likely to have survived that long back then) and a bit of Testor’s Dullcote on top it was time for another “first”: I entered the pastels’ weathering scene. And boy that was fun! Tried to seal it with some more Dullcote which obviously made me have to do it all over again, but I really did like the end result. Glued it to a base, made dirt from some more pastels on top of wet Future, and there it was. My first and last kit bought and built in the States!

I am quite pleased with the result considering the numerous runs made by the stupid spray cans. Nothing lots of sanding, some generous washes and heavy layers of Dullcote and pastels couldn’t hide, but still... Looking at my modeling facilities (see below) I guess I should be quite glad I actually finished the kit too. 

Kyrre Ingebrethsen

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Photos and text © by Kyrre Ingebrethsen