Factory NMF--shiny or dull?

WWII era aircraft would usually be a mid gloss, not highly polished but a noticable sheen. P-51s otoh had their wings puttied and sprayed silver so you'd need to do a duller silver on the wings than the fuselage.

SNJ is a fine way to go since you can vary the sheen with the polishing powder. A very sturdy finish, you can mask over it unlike the T mettalics. That polishing powder has a variety of other applications as well.

Final clearcoat over metal finish is kinda tough because it changes the sheen of the metal. It's best to use high quality decals and trim them close to the colored portion.

hth,

The Keeper (of too much crap)

Could be. I thought it was the forward 2/3rds. Don't recall seeing the panel lines filled on models I've looked at.

Tom

Gents, When you work this out, please post it here. I'm just about to the painting stage on a Hasegawa P-51D - I knew about the puttied and painted wings, but wasn't sure about the fine details involved - no real mention of it any of my references. Like Tom, I've never seen the filled panel lines on a model, either (is that some sort of oxymoron or something??). From the little that I know of the subject, it was done to maintain the airflow over the laminar-flow wing, which worked very well when the surface was perfect; little dents, scratches, or, as I recall reading in a book about Spitfires 'even a squashed bug on the leading edge' (!) (the Spit using laminar-flow wings when it became the Spiteful, IIRC) was enough to interefere with airflow, causing a loss of efficiency.

I've dropped the flaps on this bird (Oh, the horror, the horror!) - this has involved building into the fuselage the boxes for the flaps to fit into, adding substantial plastic the the flaps, to fill in the missing bits there and rebuilding the little tags that fit around the intake from the wings - nearly finished, though I'll never do it again! If I want dropped flaps on another 'stang, I'll use the Tamiya kit. Rest of the kit is as Mr H offered - quite nice, but a bit fiddly.

I'll do this as one of the RAAF's 51s, in natural metal and silver; don't know which squadron yet - if it ever gets finished, I'll post to abms. You guys just need to get your act together and give me some definitive info on the putty/paint question! :-)

RobG

Weren't the ailerons fabric? If I'm correct, then they'd be silver doped instead of bare aluminum if not painted camo.

Factory-fresh alclad aluminum alloy sheet has a somewhat "brushed finish" look to it, stemming from the rolling mill rollers which process it into thin sheets for covering aircraft. The various sheet aluminum panels were cut or punched out of this rolled aluminum in pretty much the most economical way to maximize the use of the material, while creating minimal waste (even though the scraps were recycled!). This means that this linear, brushed finish laid at various, often opposing angles on the surface of a newly built, natural metal aircraft. During WW-II, with the tremendous mass-production of aircraft in the US, the earlier methods of creating such compound curved panels as wing fillets, wingtips, cowling panels, and leading edges became stamped parts, rather than being formed on "English Wheels" as had been the practice in the 30's when aircraft production could be measured in 2, or 3 digit numbers over a production run of perhaps a year or two. As such, I suspect that the stamping process for these panels did lead to the disappearance of the original "rolling mill" finish, and they may even have seen some polishing.

While not primarily an aircraft builder, I have done several NMF planes over the years, which I covered in BareMetal Foil. On a Williams Brothers Northrop Gamma, I elected not only to use BMF on the entire aircraft, but determined to give it that "rolling mill" finish to each panel. This I did with an old-fashioned typwriter eraser, as those had a bit of fine abrasive embedded in the otherwise rubber eraser. I did this on the sheet of BMF, then cut out each panel separately, and applied that to the surfaces at right angles one-to-another. The foil used on wing-roots, the fairings over the landing gear, etc., I left in untouched BMF. The effect was outstanding, IMHO, and gave a different dimension to the model.

AA

Alclad II:

#2. Testors metals are easy to work with even if they are delicate. I've found 2 ways to work with them, one a bit labor intensive but no waiting between shades. The other is to spray a 'shell' of Future over the primary buffed shade. Masking around panels to be sprayed different shades with drafting tape has not lifted the Future, which means the metals stayed down also.

-- Chuck Ryan snipped-for-privacy@REMOVEearthlink.net Springfield OH