1/72 Academy F4U-1A Corsair

Gallery Article by Chris Lepore on June 3 2009

 

Hi everyone! My name is Chris. I post on the ARC forums as "3Dguy". This is my first model after about a ten year break. It feels great to be back in the hobby and finally contribute something to this great website.  The model itself went together very smoothly. It was built out of the box with no additions except for the radio wire which is a strand of hair and aftermarket decals.  I painted the model with both Testors and Tamiya paints and weathered it using pretty much every method I know: dry brushing, sanding, black washing, and pastels.  I started with a clean, new looking Corsair, then I dry brushed Tamiya "Flat Aluminum" on the metal parts focusing on where the plane would be walked on and maintained.  I used a very fine sandpaper to lightly sand the fabric areas to wear the paint on the raised surfaces.  I used thinned flat black on the entire model trying to bring out the detail of the panel lines.  On the bottom, I used both brown and black pastels for the exhaust stains and on the areas behind the wheels to simulate dirt kicked up by the wheels.  Then I gloss coated it and applied the decals.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  I used decals from Super Scale, No. 72-857.  I chose markings for VMF-222 mainly because I wanted to do a Corsair that wasn't from VF-17 or VMF-214, plus I liked the unique yellow numbers.  The kit's decals are really bad. The wing stars are the wrong size and overall the decals are way too thick.  After everything dried I sprayed the model with flat coat and after it dried got very frustrated after the flat coat pretty much frosted the entire model.  So I took a rag with a little Testors paint thinner on it and lightly wiped the model in certain areas which gave it a look of being dusty from taxiing around the islands of the South Pacific.  In the end I was proud of it and I guess that's all that really matters right?

Thanks for looking!

Chris Lepore

Photos and text © by Chris Lepore