mustang1989

Cool man!! I'll get you on the build roster!

Those exterior finishes are friggin' incredible!

Come on with it Ira. We'd be glad to have you in here man.

I continued on with the decal removal this morning and spotted some runs that I hadn't ever seen in the clear coat at the door handle areas and on the lower areas of the body. I'll be smoothing all of this out as I go. and finally, decals are removed............and ALOT of sanding and clean up to go.

That came out really well Bill!

Thanks Glenn! Thank you too James! Dude this thing ended up in the friggin trash can twice and was headed to Ebay for a Tamiya kit both times. I simply found myself too vested in this kit to quit!

I tried to build the Dauntless version.....................................I'll stick with the plastic ones. lol

You have a good point , the -4's do look good.

The molds on these kits date back to 1963.Looks like your seams in front of the windscreen turned out ALOT better than mine did initially. I sanded away so much detail during the build that I had to apply dots of super glue from the point of a toothpick to "re-rivet" the top of the whole nose and I had to use stretched sprue to replace panel lines sanded away. Yup its an early kit as those were molded in blue. God bless you for tackling one of these over again! Try a Tamiya. Those are supposed to be a COMPLETE dream to build.

and it all starts.........................

Thanks Lee!

'Preciate it Snake! I had SEVERE fit issues with the glass too. I ended up dipping both glass sections in future and then after drying I glued them in with Testors Clear parts glue and then filled the gaps with the same glue. Surprisingly it came out ok. The next one's gonna HAVE to be a Tamiya 1/48 D model for sure! lol

Go for it Ray!

I'm game!

Thanks Mike! On this build I got lucky because the glass pieces are two separate parts with the painted windscreen brace being molded in (see pic below). I usually use BMF myself unless I can find a pre-cut mask set (which I can find for most anything but these old Monogram kits). I'll add that if any paint comes off, the airbrush takes care of that and then you can blend the paint in with either a similar shade of ground up pastel dry brushed on or cover it up with a little weathering like a wash.

I'm not going to mess with the interior much as I built it using 14 year old eyes and I could paint detail fairly well back then. I'll just be dusting this all off. and then there's the IP. I'll need to re-glue the upper dash pad to the lower carrier assy and re-paint some of the areas where the red is bleeding through like on the steering wheel. Again all detail is through a 14 year old set of eyes...............without the visors that I need today. lol

Thanks Ira!

Thanks James! This was mostly an OOB build using the Revell supplied decals. I did spring for a set of Eduard PE seatbelts, True Details bombs and I used a set of OOB wheels and tires from an Eduard Hellcat Profipack kit I had in the stash since Corsairs and Hellcats share the same wheels and tires. I wasn't worried about using the tires from the Hellcat as there are a set of resin wheels included in the Profipack boxings along with a fair amount of PE stuff. I'm definitely going to be building that Hellcat within the next year.

Thanks Ray and yeah that's the one. I just thought the idea of a Blacksheep Sqdn. build was cool.

That and those wheels need a dark wash to get rid of that red hue in the wheel "holes" and to bring out some of the detail. Also the white lettering effect on the tires needs to happen. Looks like we're in for the long haul on this one.

Thanks Carl! I hated doing to it what I'm going to show next but man, the decals! I couldn't stand it any longer . Sooooo..................................... Here we go..............................

I bought this kit in the spring time of this year as a project for my son and I to work on. I bought two of these things so that we could build along side together and build at the same pace. After we got started we both realized that this wasn't the kit to have a beginner on so I shelved it and bought something a little easier for him. The reason behind this build was a meeting with my mentor at a church function we had over early summer. He used to build models but cant any longer due to a slight shake he has in his hands which makes him unsteady. I had asked him what his favorite WWII aircraft was(because he's into that kind of stuff) and he responded almost right away with "The Corsair". I kept that in the back of my head until September 26 when I put the wheels in motion on building this kit. What I didn't know was just how much of a challenge this build would be with all the gaps, misfits and alignment issues. I literally slaved away on this thing to get it done in time to present it as a Christmas gift by next month for him with anywhere from 30 min. to 4 hours a day being spent on it. This is the kit I'm taking about to give you all a visual (and to properly warn any innocent bystanders out there) of what I bought. The fit issues alone where enough that I actually had the thing in the trash can twice! I knew if I did what I wanted and went for the Tamiya 1/48 kit that I would have had a lot better looking build with more detail but I wouldn't have been able to finish it by Christmas because thats how I am. The more detail, the more time it takes to get it done. I built her as flown as part of Black Sheep Squadron VMF-214 operated off of the USS Sicily (CVE-118) , Korea in 1951. Any ways here are the finishing photos; and the shot of it on the display base that I made out of a modified shadow box, with a mirror base I had made for it and the custom badge. I also have a custom made acrylic glass case that goes over the top of all of this that's not pictured here. What WAS surprising about this kit was the fact that it actually had a full cockpit (however inaccurate) which was out of the ordinary for Monogram kits of that day. I worked with what I had using nothing but the skills I have obtained from forums along the way and a set of Eduard seat belts to set it apart from a bone stock interior. The first two pics are the real color of this pit and the last was me toying around with my new camera so that one is a little , let's say........bright.

Well this puppy is now wrapped up and ready to go for my friend for Christmas. I have a few touch ups to go but nothing that'll show up in pics here. Here's the finishing shots. and a shot on the display base without the acrylic glass cover.

I came to this site about a year or so ago after chasing a 1990 Mustang LX build that I found searching through Yahoo, ended up looking around a bit and liking the good folks here, and decided to stay. I build primarily 1/48 scale aircraft and some of you have seen me "holing up" in the All the Rest section of this forum for a while. To wrap things up for the year and while I still have idle bench time in between builds I've decided to take on a car project. I have a Monogram Challenger that I built 30 years ago when I was about 14 or so that is in the middle of repairs. I built it for my little brother back then and then as years went by and he moved from home, got married and had his own family it stayed at my parents house. I took it from my parents house years later and cleaned it up a bit and glued some parts that fell off over the years back on and gave it back to my brother around 5 years ago as a Christmas present. Long story short it ended up in the bedroom closet covered up by clothes and other stuff and got knocked off of the top shelf by my nephew. We ended up finding the hood and a wheel/tire assy that was lost for a little bit out of the fall and I pieced it back together. It's still missing the hood scoop from the hood and the rear spoiler but I managed to glue everything back on and repair everything else that was damaged during the fall. Now before I turn this into a "brother bashing session" let me tell you that my brother is a top notch guy. Its just that models aint his thing. Hes got a wife and two kids and he so busy he looks like a one legged man in a butt kicking contest. With that said, I took the model home and I bought another kit in which to replace the missing parts with. I am going to put this thing back to its unmodified original condition but here she sits proudly once again. Anyways I didn't paint it with anything more than a gloss coat when I originally built it and aside from the decals wrinkling a little the finish came out PERFECT! The gloss coat was applied from a can for cryin' out loud! One of my only regrets is how the decals all came out. The interior was detailed great for a 14 year old. All you have to do is put a visor on and you can read the gauges. Of course I didn't need glasses or a dang visor when I originally built it. LOL. Anyhow here's the pic of what I'm working with as of now. I took this pic last year and really it's not in that bad of condition for being as old as it is. I've decided to retain all the parts due to the fact that this model is molded in the red you see here. I may ask for some help along the way because I don't know how all you guys get this "mirror " finish that I keep seeing and I haven't built a car model in YEARS. It'll be an OOB build....er.....rebuild, so I'm not going crazy on the budget.

Man it's gotten a little quite in here. Well I've got the wheels and tires on and made a little more progress here and there on the folded wing. I had to cut the stupid hingepoint and extend it outwards so that the wing would fold at the angle it needed to be at. Not much left now. I'm also working on a display base for it. I used a shadow box for the base, removed the glass retainers from the inside walls of the box and took out the glass, I then reinstalled the side walls and glued the cardboard base down to the side wall lip. I had a 12" x 12" mirror cut to fit and adhered that to the cardboard base and had an acrylic glass top custom made to fit over the base(I'll provide a pic of this later). Additionally I had a personalized badge made for the outside of the display base. Aside from that I'm just left with fiddly stuff to do. Aerial antenna, bombs, weathering and stuff like that.