Attitude: Another Skill That Evolves

Back in the 90s I considered myself a pretty good modeller. Well over 20 years in the hobby, airbrushing for a decade and a half, I knew my way around kits pretty good; but when a kit company fell down on the job my ability to think around a problem really extended no further than filler putty and hope.

Italeri has been described as one of those companies, like Hobbycraft, that perennially spoils the ship for a hap’eth o’ tar. Near enough is good enough, it has been said, and there are plenty of examples that bear out the worth of this observation. Even in later years, with the adoption of technologies for engraved detail, better decal production and attention to the wants of modellers, Italeri could still make mysterious blunders.

I read the review in FSM of their 1:72 F4U-5N (#044, dated 1994), and Paul Boyer made a marvellous job of it. I would have expected nothing less from a modeller of his abilities! I bought the kit off the shelf and was quite impressed with it, and had it almost complete when a problem I had not expected reared its head. The wings appeared to be out of alignment. I puzzled over it for a long time, held it to the light, compared it to drawing tools and graph sheets, and sure enough my eye was telling me true. My set of the tail surfaces was correct to within a degree or two, but the wings were off. It may have been my fault, but the whole wing structure sloped up to the right by some degrees. I had fitted the wing first, believed I had it right, and did not notice the problem until I installed the tails.

I tussled with the problem for ages. It had taken a lot of work to get the wing seated properly and the joints sealed up neatly, what could I do about that mismatch on the angle? Maybe I should just accept the error and finish the model, nobody but me would ever know the problem was there… But that seemed like either cheating or admitting defeat.

Eventually I forgot about that unfinished Corsair among the kits on my shelves as I went on to new and better projects, learned many new skills, got into scratchbuilding, honed my techniques on armour, amassed an impressive stash, and so forth. Fast-forward a number of years…

My great gloss finish dilemma and the accompanying clearcoat debarkal have taken many twists and turns but eventually they seem to have sorted themselves out. On a recent trip to the LHS I spotted Tamiya’s XF-17, which appears to be a close match to FS 35042, Flat Sea Blue, and therefore the right shade for late war Corsairs. My present experimental approach is one suggested long ago by Paul Boyer in a review of Future Floor Polish (unavailable in Australia to this day): paint the model in flat paints, they’re easier to apply and dry much quicker, then bring up the lustre with a coat of clear gloss. I have the flat blue, the gloss will be arriving next week by air, all I need is a subject to test it on.

I searched my log for Corsairs, Hellcats and Avengers and was about to go stash-diving when I noticed the Italeri box on the shelf… I pulled it out and looked at that wonky wing, frowned and reassured myself with the grid on my cutting mat that my eyes were telling me true – and of course they are, they always were.

Experience counts for much. Without a qualm, I flexed the wing, sprung it away from the old glue and filler, rubbed down the filler to clean up the joints, filed the mating surfaces clean, and corrected the angle. How? .020” plastic strip a few millimetres long shimmed inside the joint on the starboard side ahead of the wing, plus about half that much filed away from the portside joint, was just enough to push the wing down and into proper alignment, while leaving the mismatch at fore and after on the underside within the ability of a lick of filler and some sanding to hide.

Back in the mid-90s that would never have occurred to me, and looking back I don’t know why. Perhaps it was still a mindset that looked on the engineering of the model company as being so far in excess of anything an enthusiast could bring to bear that it must, perforce, be correct, which leaves the mismatch of parts that has always dogged the industry as a conundrum. Perhaps the real difference between me then and now is that today I will re-engineer as required, and in those days I had not yet grasped how, or indeed how simple it can be.

I’ll post pics when this Corsair is done. Better late than never…