1/100 WWII P-38 Lightning

**Doubting Thomas** · #1 07-04-2013, 05:02 PM

Hi,

Happy 4th of July. Earlier in the year I made a white model for my mom's
High-school friend who was a bombardier in WWII mostly flying in B-17's.
He was awarded the Dist. Service Cross for a mission with P-38's, his name
is Fred Gong. Fred is in a rest home for seniors now and we paid him a visit.
I presented him the white model P-38 as remembrance of his youthful days
in the Army Air Corps.

Since then I've had this "I want one too!" feeling but printing it out on
standard white bond or photo shopping grey overlays to simulate silver
just didn't seem right to me. I did a search online for silver papers and
read mbauer's articles/search for silver papers here at PM.

As I mentioned in the spring I found a Mylar silver but the Mylar is semi
transparent like the type for Easter baskets so I'd have to back it
up with some bond paper.

While in my local Michael's craft store I bought some silver gift wrap paper.
Earlier this week I printed out my P-38. The silver on the paper is a bit
slick so just touching it made the ink smear. I had to reprint the starboard
wing and then carefully took three sheets of parts outside to spray
some clear Deft sealer on the sheets.

Enough of typed words...here's the pictures thus far.

**Rapidtox** · #2 07-04-2013, 05:31 PM

Good for you, nice story of generosity and memories, who design this model?

**Don Boose** · #3 07-04-2013, 05:41 PM

Looks very good. And the silver paper saga is fascinating.

Well done for your kindness to that veteran.

Don

**MacSongLi** · #4 07-05-2013, 09:09 AM

Great work, and very kind of you. I'm impressed with the silver paper too.

Gary

**Doubting Thomas** · #5 07-05-2013, 10:15 PM

Moving forward with the assembly, The spinners & engine cowlings.
I'll leave the propeller blades off until the end because I will just knock them off if I glue them on now.

If you look carefully at the photo, one of my sections is backwards just aft of the "chin" on the starboard nacelle (left one in the picture). I spent the afternoon cutting carefully at the seam to flip it around so it would match the left engine.

At Rapid: Finding an old model can be a blessing or a curse. I know that my old Maly P-40 has formers that are way off size for it's skins. This P-38 is also an old Polish model with it's own problems. If you are looking for one it's probably a good investment in the newer one by Odd Ball Productions over at ECard.

Last photo is of the tail area. The air scoops came out pretty good. It's amazing what a little bit of paper and some silver marker can be shaped into.

**Doubting Thomas** · #6 07-11-2013, 02:44 PM

Hi,

Here is what the parts look like joined together. At this stage one can
see that it builds a great little plane in the flying position. On my white
model the one I gave to my Mom's friend, I stopped building and put it
on a base from our downloads section for John's B-24 reducing the base
to be 3" long.

1/100 scale was chosen so that it would not take up too much of the
limited space at the retirement home that my mom's friend is at.
I left off the smaller details so that there would be less things falling off.

Last picture shows the business end of the nose. I used floral wire to wrap
the machine guns but it looks like they are a bit larger than they should be.

Now on to the little details.

Jeff

**Doubting Thomas** · #7 07-14-2013, 07:02 PM

Well,

I assembled the landing gear struts, wrapping them on floral wire. Proceeded to the wheels. (Pics 1 & 2). They came out terrible, they just didn't look right.

I went back printed out some covers on bond paper. Then glued 4 layers of cereal boxes and cut them into 3/8" circles. using my fine sanding pad I got down to work on shaping them to like the typical balloon tire. I used the Dremel tool with the ball cutter to give the cardboard a little "dip" for the paper "spoked wheels".

Next was the propellers, superchargers, teardrop air-scoops, front antenna, and landing gear doors. Those came out really well, but hard to see with the bright evening sun.

Jeff