Trumpeter P-47D Razorback

[crazypoet]

The feed chutes are folded up, glued to hold the edges, primed (super thin coat of Mr Surfacer 1200), and with a single layer of Uschi Steel powder applied (it gets a bit brighter with each layer)

The Uschi powder gives what I think is actually a better finish than the bare PE steel, but I’m going to step away for a bit and come back for another look.  I folded up a spare gun #2 chute from the closed side to give a contrast of bare steel PE vs the Uschi - it’s waayy too bright for scale, I think

The smallest chute has a bit of texture from when I tried using a drop of CA to fill in the bending lines, applied with too-heavy a hand. 🤦‍♂️  I can also see another that needs a bit of fine-tuning on one edge, plus filling in more of the visible bending lines (Eduard did a pretty good job of putting them where they’re not particularly visible, but you can still see them here and there)

I will likely clean these off and do another test with Alclad bright aluminum to see which I like better

(and also take a few minutes to smooth down the unintended texture from the CA on the gun #4 chute 😂🤦‍♂️)

at any rate, this is my progress for the day

I'm going to do a test fit of the ammo belts, with the chutes dry-fitted, to see how much I need to extend the belts (the kit belts are already a bit short; even more so after filling the chutes where the ammo is visible.

I’ll try micro-clear canopy cement to glue the belt ends together, and see if that still gives me a decent drape with no kinks - hoping it does, as that’s the simplest approach 

Then, it’s off to painting the belts temselves

wheeeee!

[BlrwestSiR]

Those ammo chutes don't look easy to fold into shape. 

 

[crazypoet]

On 10/10/2025 at 6:17 PM, BlrwestSiR said:

Those ammo chutes don't look easy to fold into shape. 

 

Mostly pretty straightforward, except for the curves right where they enter the guns

i had to use a toothpick and needle-nose pliers for those 🤣

[DocRob]

Well, there is always the question of sanity due to rum consumption or close the panels over the gun bays and stay sober . You obviously chose the first option, maybe because of the self promised rum intoxication . 
I like the work you have done and am astonished, how difficult it seems to be to find decent pics of these gun bays. Maybe that´s why the AM producers got it all wrong.
I only built one Jug a long time ago, but that was a buttoned up Eduard boxing of the Hasegawa kit, so no inspiration to get from me.

Cheers Rob

[crazypoet]

13 hours ago, DocRob said:

Well, there is always the question of sanity due to rum consumption or close the panels over the gun bays and stay sober . You obviously chose the first option, maybe because of the self promised rum intoxication . 
I like the work you have done and am astonished, how difficult it seems to be to find decent pics of these gun bays. Maybe that´s why the AM producers got it all wrong.
I only built one Jug a long time ago, but that was a buttoned up Eduard boxing of the Hasegawa kit, so no inspiration to get from me.

Cheers Rob

Rum absolutely has a part to play in all of this - both as consolation and celebration, depending 😂🤦‍♂️😎

The truly interesting thing is that neither the kit parts nor the Eduard set match *any* of the references I’ve found, taken as a whole.  They each get *some* details right, but neither get the whole picture so to speak.  I wish I knew where Eduard got their inspiration - it would be a lot easier if I knew.

You're quite right about the photos - there are precious few of them, and none of those match even each other in all details 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Another point that is giving me a bit of headache is the the inside of the panel covering the ammo bay - every photo I’ve found shows it as a simple flat panel, as opposed to the fairly complex panel with lightening holes of varying sizes provided by both the kit and the Eduard set.  Again, I wish I could see the reference they used.  My best guess is that they found one example from a later version of the bird and went with that. 

And I've found, so far, exactly zero photos of the inside of the panel over the guns themselves, so I have to just take it on faith that they got it right.

My best guess is that the details varied across different versions, different manufacturers, and changes made in the field (replacement of damaged parts and such)

Eduard did at least do a *far* better job on the various panels and partitions, and included details that the good folk at Trumpeter simply ignored

Soooo…  a glass of rum to the rescue, and a hope both that the end result is “close enough” and that I execute it *well* enough to be happy 😎

🙏🙏🙏

 

[crazypoet]

Just had to vent here for a moment.

Shopping for modeling supplies *sucks* just now! 🤣

Amazon doesn’t ship *most* things to Cambodia (notably including such things as solvent-type glues and lacquer paints 🤣🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️), and even when they do, you pay international shipping individually per item, rather than per shipment.  So… I recruited a friend in Atlanta to accept some deliveries for me pending a short visit for a business meeting in November.

So far so good

but thennnn…

I discovered that neither Hannants nor Eduard will ship to the US because of the tariff/customs situation.  They won’t even offer a guess as to when that might change (one of the customer service folk at Eduard asked me, politely, to elect a new president, so the world can shift a bit back towards to sanity)

Soooo

I took a deep breath and placed an order from each of them, to my Cambodia home address.

Delivery services here are a bit “informal”, and one is never quite sure how local Customs is going to handle things.

I’ll keep y’all posted as the adventure continues 🤣

[DocRob]

I know, how you feel, I life under similar circumstances since years. No thinner, rattle can or paint jar exceeding 30ml got shipped to my place if any.
It´s complicated and the customs situation makes it even worse. Best case is two weeks of waiting, worst case, you pay everything, fill in the forms for customs and pay them later on, only to hear that your parcel got returned after a month of delivery time, pure horror.
Luckily, there are some vendors on the Spanish mainland, who don´t care and just send the stuff. Love their smuggeling service .
We don´t even have your kind of president 

Cheers Rob

[crazypoet]

17 hours ago, DocRob said:

I know, how you feel, I life under similar circumstances since years. No thinner, rattle can or paint jar exceeding 30ml got shipped to my place if any.
It´s complicated and the customs situation makes it even worse. Best case is two weeks of waiting, worst case, you pay everything, fill in the forms for customs and pay them later on, only to hear that your parcel got returned after a month of delivery time, pure horror.
Luckily, there are some vendors on the Spanish mainland, who don´t care and just send the stuff. Love their smuggeling service .
We don´t even have your kind of president 

Cheers Rob

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

[crazypoet]

State of play with the ammo belts.

having a girlfriend is awesome, but also means that I don’t get a lot of bench time on weekends or most evenings 🤣🙏🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

So.  I ended up having to use a tiny bit of CA to glue the belt ends together, which was a bit of a pain but at least it worked (I tried three other glues, but none of them held together at all).  Now each belt is long enough that I can both fit them into the Eduard feed chutes and have enough left to also drape them properly in the ammo trays

These have been primed with thinned Vallejo Surface Primer in Panzer Gray, then the cases brush-painted with Alclad Polished Brass, and the bullets themselves hit with just a touch of Tamiya Bronze.

its all a bit sloppy up-close right now, but I’ll smooth things out with the next steps

There is a lot of *tiny* vinyl flash around the bullets themselves that I’m going to simply ignore - I can’t cut it without making it look worse, so I’ll take a deep breath and hope that it’s hidden once I get them settled in.

Once this is all thoroughly dry, I’ll swipe it with a tiny bit of Mr Leveling Thinner to smooth things down, then dust the bullets with Tamiya Weathering Master Copper powder.

I'm debating with myself on the belt links.  Theres no molded detail on the belts, so I’ll have to do those entirely by hand.  Masking long skinny flexible things will be a challenge, but the alternative is to either leave them be or try to paint each link by hand.  We’ll see how much I can screw things up when I get to that point 😂🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

After all that, I’ll glue them down, along with the feed chutes.

Once they’re in place, I’ll use my go-to Secret Weapon washes (heavy-body black and sewer water), to refine the links and tone things down a bit

Hopefully, I can get them at least close to the reference photo - we’ll see

 

[crazypoet]

(Eduard *could* have saved us all a ton of headaches by doing these belts as resin in their Gun Bay set, but noooo 🤣🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️)

 

[edit] and of course, as soon as I said that, I realized that Gaspatch does *indeed* sell resin 1/32 .50cal ammo belts.  All I had to do was look 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Now, all I have to do is find someone who can either drop-ship to my friend in the US or ship them to Cambodia.

I will probably not get them in time for this build (and they may have some issues with the short-radius bends needed to fit the P-47 ammo trays anyway), but I *will* have them on-hand for my upcoming builds where ammo belts are kinda prominent 🤣

Edited October 20 by crazypoet
Doh!

[DocRob]

9 hours ago, crazypoet said:

I'm debating with myself on the belt links.  Theres no molded detail on the belts, so I’ll have to do those entirely by hand.  Masking long skinny flexible things will be a challenge, but the alternative is to either leave them be or try to paint each link by hand.  We’ll see how much I can screw things up when I get to that point 😂🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

You may consider very thin strips of silver or blackened silver painted Kabuki tape. It may not be correct, but given the scale...

Cheers Rob

[crazypoet]

On 10/20/2025 at 9:50 PM, DocRob said:

You may consider very thin strips of silver or blackened silver painted Kabuki tape. It may not be correct, but given the scale...

Cheers Rob

I may give this a shot next 🙏

My first effort at masking and painting the belt links failed miserably - these vinyl/rubber belts are seriously twisty!  It’s hard to tape them down solidly enough to get masking tape in nice straight lines along the full length of the belt 🤣  

This is the case even after pretty aggressive treatment with hot water to straighten things out - they tend to slowly re-curl a bit during handling

*Parts* of the belt I tested on came out perfectly, but other sections were…not perfect 🤣🤦‍♂️

I’m going to strip off the paint and try a slightly different approach 

I’m going to use some good sticky office tape and some straight edges cut from spare PE to hold these things as rigidly straight and level as possible, then try again with the masking approach.

if *that* doesn’t work, I’ll go with your suggestion.  *Really* thin tape might be just the ticket, if I can get it to settle a bit between the individual cartridges

(depending on how much trial-and-error I go through with this, the gaspatch cast resin belts may arrive in time to save me and my rum stash from disaster 🤣)

[crazypoet]

So far, so good-enough 🤣

I made an impromptu “straightening jig” with a little lucite square, some doubled-over office tape to hold the belts down, a couple pieces of thick PE fret left over from the picket boat I finished way back when, and a bunch of masking tape

The results aren’t magnifying-glass perfect, but given the belts themselves not having molded links, they’re at least reasonably presentable from more than a couple of inches away

You can still see where I glued the belt-ends together, but only if you look closely.  I’ll live with that, especially since the glued bits won’t all be lined up side by side in the ammo trays.  I’m hoping that it will just look like normal variations in the individual links and rounds once it’s all glued in and a light wash applied to tie everything together 🤷‍♂️🙏🤦‍♂️

There’s enough of each belt that looks good that I’ll be able to fill the feed chutes and the ammo bay itself, then I can move on to the last bits of Eduard PE for the gun bay and wrap this stage up

 

[crazypoet]

A bit of actual installation progress, finally 🤣

I have the first two chutes and belts in, and I’m mostly happy so far

I realized (of course *after* the glue had dried on the first belt) that I’d set far too much “sag” into it between the supports in the tray.  Sooooo….

I went back and added a few snippets of links to fill-in, and it looks ok unless you get closer than about 3-4 inches away. 

grrr

It will look a bit better after a gloss coat and some wash, but it shows what happens when I’m thinking a bit behind what my fingers are doing with the tweezers 🤣🤦‍♂️

The chutes themselves will also get a bit of a touch up  with the Uschi powder once they’re all in place

Once these are all in and dry, there are a few bits of PE framing around the perimeter to install, then I can face the bay covers.

There is supposed to be another steel rod across the back side of the gun bay, according to the photos I’ve seen, but I’m not sure that there will be room for it alongside the PE strip in that same area.  We’ll see how it goes at that point

The covers will need to be folded up and bent to the appropriate airfoil curves, then they’ll be set aside until I do the final painting and assembly

The gun tray cover will sit loose on the wing (not a hinged piece), but the ammo tray cover is hinged with some delicate bits holding it in place

The wing insignia overlaps these somewhat, so getting the decals right will be kinda fun - I’ll have to set the covers in-place, cut the decals accordingly, and hope my fingers are steady enough to get everything properly lined up

 

[crazypoet]

The max load per-gun on these was 425 rounds.  That would make the full belt a bit over 32 feet long, or about six layers when folded into the bays - these things could get seriously crowded!

Even the “normal” load of about 250 rounds per gun would give three layers of linked ammo in each tray

I wish I had enough belts to actually do this, but I have to go with what I’ve got on hand 🤣

[FullArmor]

18 minutes ago, crazypoet said:

The max load per-gun on these was 425 rounds.  That would make the full belt a bit over 32 feet long, or about six layers when folded into the bays - these things could get seriously crowded!

Even the “normal” load of about 250 rounds per gun would give three layers of linked ammo in each tray

I wish I had enough belts to actually do this, but I have to go with what I’ve got on hand 🤣

A lot of weight. So if you shoot all the bullets, your plane will fly faster.😁

[crazypoet]

1 hour ago, FullArmor said:

A lot of weight. So if you shoot all the bullets, your plane will fly faster.😁

Useful for running, when out of ammo! 😅