Building the Academy P-36A Hawk

Manufacture: Academy
Scale: 1/48th
Kit: # 12238
Build Series: Ben Builds Season Three: The P-36 Hawk (Completed) 

Background

I have always liked the look of the P-36! There was just something "interesting" about the plane, with it's mismatched nose gun calibers and big radial engine. It always peaked my interests and to this day, I have only ever built two P-36s: a 1/72nd scale, Monogram kit from 1989 and this 1/48th scale Academy boxing. So, let's talk a little about this one.

The Kit

I had a blast building this kit. The parts went together very well, with minimal fit issues. The parts were flash free and crisply molded. The decals were clearly printed and went down without any issues. The cockpit looked OK, but it wasn't as busy as I would have liked. I did end up adding some homemade seat belts and closing the canopy. There just isn't a lot of detail to show off, so I figured it would be fine to close everything up.

Since this kit allows you to make a few different versions of the P-36, there are a few areas where you might need to remove some molded in details. If you are building the Hawk 75 version, the kit is pretty much ready to go, but if you want to build the Pearl Harbor version as I did, you have to remove some details. If I remember correctly, you have to sand down some louvers around the fuselage nose, some dive breaks under the wings, the wing guns and a few panels here and there. Not too bad, but a bit tedious.

Even though I did enjoy the build, I did have a few issues with the kit. Nothing that should dissuade you from picking this one up, but first off, the cockpit wasn't as accurate as I was hoping it would have been. I found some issues with the floor and the instrument panel, so I did my best to rectify that by adding basic styrene details.

My other real issue was the wheel bays. The kit parts were molded with a canvas covering detail that did not match any of my references. Now, as I understand it, these covers were sometimes carried, but none of my references showed them installed. And when I did find images of these covers, they did not look anything like the kit parts. So, I decided to take advantage of this, remove them and just try my hand at scratch building the bay interiors.

I tried to represent the interior details with strips of styrene, cut down and shaped to look like internal ribbing. I wanted to get the look close enough to my references, but since this was my first attempt at this sort of thing, I gave myself some leeway. I ended up going for more of an artistic representation, rather than a 100% accurate recreation. It was fun process! The finished product was not exactly perfect, but I am happy with the end results, so if nothing else, it was a good learning experience for me. I really wanted to just try it out and to see if I could actually build those types of details. I did my best and that is all one can hope for. 

Conclusion

Despite the kit's few issues like the cockpit and the wheel wells, I think that overall, this was a very nice project. There is a lot of potential with this model. A more experienced builder could include resin add-ons and updates and have a great basic kit to build off of, or a beginner builder could take their time and practice their modeling skills. Either way, I would recommend that fans of early WWII aircraft check this kit out. Build it and have fun with it. I know I did!

Feel free to checkout my completed P-36A Hawk build over on my YouTube channel!

Thanks for joining me today, stay safe and happy modeling.

Building the Eduard Hawker Typhoon

Manufacture: Eduard
Scale: 1/48th
Kit: # 1131
Build Series: Ben Builds Season Four: The "Spiffy" Tiffy (Completed) 

Background

I have to be honest, I don't know much about RAF aircraft. Sure, I can usually recognize a Spitfire or a Hurricane, but when it comes to the later war aircraft like the Typhoon or Tempest, I am mostly in the dark. I probably wouldn't have even looked at this kit, if it weren't for a group build called "The Spiffy Tiffy" group build, being hosted by the International British Modeler. This build was focusing on Typhoons in any scale, and by any manufacturer, which intrigued me as I had never build one before. Typhoons were one of those aircraft that looked mean and impressive and I thought that the group build would give me a good reason to try my luck at building one. So, I grabbed the 1/48th scale Eduard kit and boy am I glad I did!

The Kit

First off, this was a great model and I thoroughly enjoyed branching out into RAF aircraft. It really gave me some appreciation for the Tiffy. I enjoyed myself so much, that I ended up building and purchasing several additional British planes and I have plans to pick up a few more in the coming months.

As I mentioned before, the group build only focused on the Typhoon, any make, model or version. Some builders built in 1/72nd, others went with the larger 1/24th scale kits, I stuck with my favorite scale and selected the early "car door" version in 1/48th. For some odd reason, I typically enjoy building the early versions of subjects, so this was a perfect kit to continue on with that trend. 

During the kit selection process, I found out that this Eduard kit is actually a reboxing of the 1/48th scale Hasegawa Typhoon. That means that it has the typical Hasegawa habit of adding inserts into certain areas of the model, in order to give the molds more flexibility. All of these types of kits share typical sprues of common parts, but for each unique version, Hasegawa gives you inserts, so you can make a particular mark. In this Typhoon's case, the canopy and cockpit areas were different, so I had the inserts for those sections. 

On a personal note, I am not really against the idea of inserts and I understand why some manufacturers choose to do this practice, but most of the time, inserts can tend to be a bit fidgety. Hasegawa's line of P-40s come to mind, where you have to replace the entire tail section depending on the version you're building.  This leaves a nasty seam and step to contend with, but that comes with the territory.

For the actual Tiffy build, the kit was a real pleasure to work on. Not only was the box loaded full of extras like decals, resin parts, masks, and photo etched pieces, but the part fit was really solid. The only issues that I had, focused around the P.E. parts and some of the kit's plastic inserts. They gave me a bit of a pause, but that isn't really surprising and I was able to pull it off. 

Truth be told, I am not a huge fan of P.E. parts, mostly because of their size and their innate ability to fly off of the sprue and be swallowed up by the carpet. In the Tiffy's case, most of the PE levers and switches were super tiny and very difficult to work with, and once the cockpit was closed up, almost impossible to see. Due to this fact, I ended up leaving a few of the smaller, hidden parts off the kit. 

Building the kit was relatively painless and most of the steps were a joy to work through. As I had mentioned before, the plastic inserts around the canopy and spine of the aircraft did leave a bit of a seam and step that had to be dealt with, but with some fitting, sanding and filling we got it done.

Paint was typical late war British Dark Green, Ocean Grey and Medium Grey. I used a mixture of Vallejo, Mr. Hobby, and Tamiya paints to get this all squared away. I used a top coat of Future to seal it all together and to get it ready for decals. The decals went on nicely, with just a little bit of Micro Set and Sol to help them along the way. After that we sealed it all up with another gloss coat and tried my hand at weathering. 

Weathering is still a very difficult concept for me and I am sorely lacking in a lot of the necessary techniques, but it is a work in progress and I'll figure it out one of these days....I hope lol. I actually do not have any store-bought washes, so I ended up making my own sludge wash with some pastel chalk and weathering powder by AIM. I used a few drops of dishwashing liquid to breakup the surface tension and then applied it all around the kit. The results were alright, so I added some color pencil chipping and some oil stains and streaks with Testors Rubber. I finished it all off with some semi flat coat and called it a day.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a great project and an awesome kit to work on. Not only do you get Hasegawa molds and Eduard detail parts, you also get resin upgrades pieces, and a beautiful decal sheet. All of those additions really made this build a great time on the bench and I would recommend the kit to anyone, who is a fan of RAF aircraft or Eduard kits. Truth be told, I was a little bit skeptical at first, about the PE and all of the added resin parts, but they weren't too bad and really spiced things up. As I mentioned before, I ended up leaving off a few of the PE levers, as they were absolutely lost in the cockpit detail. I just didn't feel they were all warranted, so I kept them in the spares box. I think the cockpit looked sufficiently detailed, so I was happy with the end result. Feel free to checkout the completed Hawker Typhoon build over on my YouTube channel!

Thanks for joining me today, stay safe and happy modeling.

Building the Trumpeter KV-1 Model 1939

Manufacture: Trumpeter
Scale: 1/35th
Kit: # 01561
Build Series: The KV-1 mod. 1939 (Completed) 

Background

First off, I’ve always loved the KV series of Russian tanks. There is just something awesome about their aesthetics. Maybe it’s their hard edged, jagged lines, maybe it’s their imposing size or maybe it’s just the fact that they were virtually unstoppable in the opening days of the WWII. Whatever the case may be, the KV-1 is one of my favorite tanks of all time and I celebrate the entire history of this Russian behemoth. 

When Trumpeter first announced that they would be releasing different versions of the KV family, in 1/35th scale, I was very excited! At that time our options for KVs were limited, relying on Eastern Express, which always had a ton of flash on their parts and the old Tamiya kits, which were produced in the 1970s. We definitely needed more options.

Generally speaking, I've always liked Trumpeter kits and most of my experiences with their releases, have been very pleasant. As you can imagine, as soon as the KVs became available, I purchased one the next day and dug into it immediately.

The plastic was a thing of beauty, the kit was easy to assemble, it had a very intuitive part break-downs and the kit include some extras like brass wire tow cables and your choice of either vinyl or link-by-link hard plastic tracks. It built up extremely well and looked fantastic when completed, so I was so very happy. Of course, little did I realize, Trumpeter had made a few miscalculations, which had resulted in more than a few inaccuracies and variant issues. Some were less egregious then others, but regardless they were there. Enter our KV-1 model 1939.

The Kit

I picked this kit up in April of 2013, along with a few other KVs that were on sale at the time. I had really wanted to build an early KV and this kit contained what I assumed were the parts to do so. It had the early rounded turret, the older L-11 gun, no bow machine gun and an unarmored rear turret machine gun mount. Perfect, right? Well, not really.

As I started to do my research, I quickly realized that this kit was in fact not exactly an early 1939 KV at all. It was actually a 'hybrid' KV-1, combining elements from both the 1940 and 1941 production runs. This means that the kit actually represented a rebuilt vehicle with a spring 1941 hull and a spring/summer 1940 turret. Not exactly what I assumed I was getting.

As we know Russian armor often went through extensive rebuilding programs, so combinations like this certainly existed, but this unfortunately meant that I could not build as accurate of a kit as I had hoped. Regardless, I soldiered on and tried to make a few minor adjustments to help with some of the inaccuracies. I think I was successful enough, but to truly build an authentic and accurate early KV-1, I would have had to kit bash several different Trumpeter KVs and I just did not want to invest that much money or time. Instead, I just did my best with what I had.

I did end up making a few alterations to the basic plastic. Since it would have taken a very large effort to correct everything, I just settled for smaller changes here and there. I ended up modifying the curved rear hull overhang by sanding a flat spot in the upper portion of that part. I also modified the turret roof plate and lowered the entire turret by removing the turret lip.

Aside from a few other cosmetic fixes here and there, I left the hull, road wheels, storage boxes, fenders and tracks all the same. If I had been trying to make all of the necessary fixes, then all of those areas would have needed to be changed.

For a really detailed look at the inaccuracies of this kit and the other KVs, go checkout www.4bogreen.com. That site has a wealth of information that is very helpful to anyone building or reading up on the KV family of Russian heavy tanks.

As it is with most tanks, the real challenge wasn’t building the model, it was applying the finishes and weathering. Since I’m still new to this process, I proceeded cautiously and tried a variety of different techniques like preshading and oil washes. Tamiya paints like NATO Black and JA Green were used in the build. Pastels, powders from AIM and some oil paints were used in the weathering process, along with some homemade dirt mix for a bit of mud.

I tried to keep the mud and dirt to a minimum, even though it's probably not very realistic. I would have liked to add a bit more, but it seems like most beginners make the mistake of overdoing it on the weathering and I didn't want a vehicle that looked like it had been dunked in mud.

Conclusion

Overall this kit was a pleasure to build. Aside from my lack of weathering experience, I think that it turned out far better then I had expected. The fit was fantastic, the plastic was free of flash and distortions, plus I absolutely loved the subject and it even gave me an excuses to pickup a few additional references.

If 100% accuracy isn't your game and you are alright with minor variant discrepancies, I say pick one of these up and have fun. If you want to create the most accurate early KV-1, then make sure to head over to www.4bogreen.com and read up on the subject. It is possible, just a bit too advanced for me right now.

Feel free to checkout my complete KV-1 build over on YouTube! It was my very first attempt at YouTube modeling, so it is rough, but we all have to start somewhere.

Anyway, until next time, stay safe and happy modeling.