The Atom Furnace: Back To Pearl - 1/72 Curtiss Hawk, P36A Refurbished

I was looking through the "old model storage box" and saw a sad looking pursuit plane with no motor or propeller. It was camo painted and had, what Bob would later describe, Finnish markings, most of which had flaked off. Luckily I continued to fish around the box and found what I thought looked like the missing motor and propeller.

This is what came out of the box.....

.....Boom - this is what happened when I started my examination. Fifty years will do that to the old Testors tube glue. It was almost like having a new model, except for all of the scraping and cleaning etc. Where to start and what to do? I began my research to see the operational history of the P36. Of course, other than the radial engine the airframe is almost identical to the P40, which was developed from the P36. I discovered another cool story, that of Phil Rasmussen. "PJ" Phil, as I call him, while still in his pajamas, commandeered one of the Wheeler Field few, not destroyed, P36's, got in the air, shot down a Japanese invader and was jumped by a number of Zero's. Phil escaped into the clouds and then was able to bring his ship down without a radio or hydraulics but about 500 bullet holes. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. A story of heroics like that of Ken Taylor (see the P40 build in this Blog).

The P36 number 86 that Phil took off in was unpainted. Bob told me about using foil which could work, but I was wary of trying it. I did a little research on Chrome Paint, but rejected that also as expensive, and risky with no guarantee of a result better than I might achive with my Testors Brillient Silver, so I opted for that.

This is the full size diorama at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio showing Phil in his pajamas with a Colt 1911-45 around his waist and ear phones climing into the all Aluminum Number 86.

An obvious advantage of this model coming apart is the ability to repaint/detail the rotary engine.

I wanted to experiment with the silver paint, but first I had to do the usual cleaning of 50 years of grime, removing remaining decals, and scraping down and sanding off built up paint layers, yellow gloss in particular.

Note that besides the scraping the canopy is repainted with silver.

Since I did not like the molded nubs for machine guns, I shaved them down, drilled out the cowl and inserted some stretched sprue so they would look like guns protruding instead of simply a black dot at the end. Now it.s time for additional experimentation with the silver paint.

Potential is there so let's keep going.

I started painting silver in earnest!

So what about markings you ask? Well, I went back to Scott (rebelalpha on eBay) in California from whom I purchased the decals for the Ken Taylor P40 (Number 155) and the G4M1 Betty. He had them and they are on the way. I hope to receive them by about September 14-15.

Now what about Phil? I did not try and break the pilot out of the seat so I painted in situ along with the seat itself. Since the gear is up and and the ship is in the in-flight mode I will leave the canopy in one piece; however, I still want to simulate Phil in his PJs. I started him in white. I painted over the flight cap with a mix for sandy blond hair. I added the ear phones using olive drab. Now for the pajama look.....

.....At this scale, no way could I duplicate the fine pink and white stripes, so I just went with red the best I could - like a French red prison uniform (Like in the movie Papillon). The top is short sleeve so I had to paint the arms, but the figure is in a flight jacket, so the arms look like "Popeye" - Uck, uck, uck! He will be more obscured because the canopy will be closed as the gear is up and the ship is in flight. I added an instrument panel but that will not be seen at all! Time for some assembly!

Let's put Phil in the cockpit, paint the walking strips (see the USAF photo) and get the motor in, wings on and cowl installed.

There are seams to fill and a lot of touch up to do. The one problem with silver is it never seems to totally dry and handling must be kept to a minimum. I hope decals will show up early next week, so stand by.

Speaking of seams, the worst is that of the upper and lower haves of the cowl. While it facilitates the install of the motor, the seam it creates is too obvious. It can be seen in the photo above but even more so in the macro below.

See what I mean! After a few applications of the Testors window glue I got the seam closed up as best I could for silver touch up.

Not perfect, but an improvement. I keep having to touch up the Silver after most every time I handle this ship. I do have a gloss clear coat I want to apply but I want to wait for decals. In the meantime some panel line hightlighting with Acrylic.

Now I can drill holes for the eventual radio wire from Stablizer to wing tips and add a pitot tube. I must have broken it off somewhere along the line, but just as well I can add a new one out of my 26 gauge silver wire.

It is now September 15 and decals finally arrived. We start with the most difficult due to the protrusions on the port side of the vertical stabilizer. Dry fit showed me where to trim before dunking in the water and thank heaven for Solvaset! The Starboard side went on just as well, but an unexpected fold over occurred......

..............the result ended up ok, thankfully, as there is no margin for error (no extras). The 15P48 came out of the water and folded over longitudinally! A lot of pushing around with a Solvaset wet brush. I had better luck with this decal on the bottom, but there were other issues. Watch for these kinds of challenges when working with after market material.

This diagram came with the decals. The underside of the wing is busy with US Army and the 15P48 (again). What the decals and directions don't take into account are the gun pods under the wing.

This what I installed. It looks good, but it took a work around those pods. First I cut the U and the S apart. Printed as a single decal the U. S. was too wide and needed to be closer together to fit in the space between pod and the proper roundel location, so cutting and individual application was necessary. Similarly I had to cut the "A" from ARMY and install it to the left of the pod and the "RMY" to the right. Also note the position of the 15P48. It had to be aligned with the "Y" instead of the "A" (shown in the diagram) to avoid pod interference. Oh well, it turned out fine, again, thanks to Solvaset, an absolute necessity in order to manuver the decals into the proper position.

Final decals applied and they were more fiddly than I anticipated!