1/48 Tamiya Brewster  Buffalo Mk.I

by Ceki Erginbas

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Turkey Victory Day 2008

 

  Here is my 1/48 Brewster Buffalo Mk.I.  which was flown by pilot officer Noel C. Sharp. This  Buffalo was  assigned to 488th squadron of the Royal New Zealand Air Force  and was located in Kallang Singapore in late 1941.

  Tamiya's   61094 box numbered  Brewster B-339 Buffalo "Pacific Theater" kit was used for this build. Model is basically  the old Tamiya Buffalo moulding  supplemented with some new pieces to be able to build a land based Buffalo B-339.  Overall the kit shows its age in terms of detail and fit.  But it still looks nice  when finished.  I have completed this model out of the box, and  I am happy with the result. But if you are a modeller who wants to build a detailed Buffalo, I strongly recommend you supplement this kit with some aftermarket products, especially for the  cockpit and the landing gear bays. 

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  Construction and interior painting was done according to the guide.  Canopy masks included in the kit were used.  Although these seems nice, it is hard to cut these properly. I think I will keep using Bare Metal Foil as my masking  material for the future models.

 For the upper surfaces  H-72 RAF Dark Earth and H-73 RAF Dark Green  from Gunze Sangyo Acrylics  was used. For the lower surfaces,  H-74 SKY (duck egg green) from Gunze Sangyo and  X-18 Semi-Gloss Black  from Tamiya acrylics were used.  These were then covered with X-22 gloss coat from Tamiya Acrylics. 

   Although the markings I applied are also included in the box, I didn't use those since they were  in usual Tamiya thickness. Rather, I used "Buffalo's Over South East Asia Part II" decal set from Aeromaster.  These decals are great in quality, very nice colors, and much thinner  than the box counterparts.
 
     After the decal application, another coat of X-22 was applied. Then local washes were applied with  burnt-umber oil paint  thinned with turpentine.  This was followed by a flat cote with micro-flat.   At last  a highly  thinned  XF-1 (flat black) and X-19 (smoke) mixture was  applied very lightly on the decals  and the panel lines  for a final weathering effect. This mixture was also airbrushed to the overall aircraft  in flight direction.

Happy Modelling Everyone !
Ceki 

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Photos and text © by Ceki Erginbas