ghodges Posted January 2 Report Posted January 2 (edited) For the third year in a row I challenged myself to getting a model built in less than 24hrs on New Years day. This is the Accurate Miniatures 1/48 P-51B issue of the 1946 Bendix racing plane. I chose it because the parts count was manageable, I had experience building Mustangs, and most importantly for the single color overall scheme. The model was built strictly OOTB also to speed things along as much as possible. 12:03am and time to start the model! Nothing's been done except to study the instruction sheet. This where things stood at 3:35am. The very first thing that was done was to spray rattle can Tamiya Interior Green wherever needed (and the overspray would later cause problems!). I used the Tamiya paint because it would dry very well in an hour or less. In the meantime I assembled the wings and painted the interior parts. I also used acrylic brush paint for the details since it wouldn't interact with the paint it was going over and I could proceed faster. Note some of the parts have already been painted rattle can Tamiya TS-8 Italian Red. By 5:30am I had the model assembled. I used superglue exclusively throughout so I could immediately sand the seams. Note the canopy has been masked off, but not the rear windows because they were overpainted red on this plane. Also notice that in this issue of this kit the fuselage plastic is darker than the wing plastic. This would cause me problems going forward. I sprayed the model at 5:30am with the Tamiya rattle can TS-8 Italian red. Unfortunately this is where I ran into problems. The different colored plastic made for a tonal mis-match between the wings and fuselage. The green overspray on the bottom also caused tonal problems. I tried spraying more paint on the model to try to even it all out and then ended up with some runs behind the wing roots. At this point I went to bed to get some rest and let the paint dry. Got back to work about 2pm and shortly afterward had airbrushed the entire model with Testors Gloss Red (cut with lacquer thinner) to fix the paint problems and even out the coloring. I then stepped away to let it dry for 5-6hrs. Got back to work about 8pm and by 9pm had all of the decals on. Stepped aside for an hour or so to let them set and dry. Finished adding all of the final parts and detail painting of the lights, etc. at 11:13pm for a build time of 23hrs-10mins. It would have been 5-6hrs faster if I'd avoided the paint problems! All in all I'm very happy with the result. More importantly, there's one day down and one model completed for 2026! On to the rest of the year. 🙂 Gil Edited January 2 by ghodges 1
Ron Bell Posted January 2 Report Posted January 2 You are a trooper. By the time you started this model, I had been in bed and asleep for hours. I hear you about the color mismatch thing. Yellow and Orange are also prone to this. To try to avoid it, I undercoat with either light grey or white, depending on how I want the final color to come out. I know you know this and am wondering why you didn't do a quick coat of Tamiya White primer as it dries very fast and wouldn't have impeded your progress. In any case, you turned out a very nice model. 1
Boots Posted January 3 Report Posted January 3 You are a better man than I Gil! For a one day build, that Stang turned out great! I may have to try this one day! Happy Modeling, Mike
Recommended Posts