Tamiya Spitfire Mk. Vb 1/72 Stanisław Skalski mojo build.

[TheBaron]

1 hour ago, jean said:

dare I say I am puzzled at your URL: Air Wick Life Scents..... or was I directed to the wrong thingie?

Please explain how you use it?

It was the item listed below that one which had me most anxious. Not a great product name from the male perspective...

https://www.woolworths.com.au/Shop/Search/Products?searchTerm=Wax&name=nads-hair-removal-wax-brazilian-and-bikini&productId=232310

 

 

[CedB]

2 hours ago, Rob G said:

The little warmer/wax melter device is great for keeping your decal water warm. Don't use it with the wax, it makes decals not work properly.

 

That's what I'm going to use it for... I'm fed up with the water going cold during long stencil sessions. Thanks for the tip too  

 

I'm certainly not going near THAT wax Tony - oooh nasty!

[jean]

Just a stupid question: how does the wax melter works? On electricity?

For a few minutes I got very worried, not the least because I am the closest cousin to the chimpanzee when it comes to body hair...I'd quit modelling straight away if bikini waxing became a requirement...

What we do not learn on BM! Now it is just a matter of my trying to explain to my wife what a bikini wax tin (with templates!) is doing in my cupboard.

 

JR

[Rob G]

It's not bikini wax, it's room deodorant, in wax (don't ask me why.) The little warmer plugs into mains power and has a small heating element. There's a ceramic dish that sits on top to hold the wax to make the room smell nice. Or it can hold water to soak decals in. It's designed to be on for long periods of time, and doesn't get very hot- 40C maybe. I'll measure mine when I can, probably after this blasted cyclone goes away and I can concentrate. I'll post a photo as well.

[jean]

Hi @Procopius and @giemme, one can see you live in the big First World and not in the muddy middle of nowhere, as you straight away knew what the "device" was for! Or you are well versed in the use of wax warmers...

JR

[Procopius]

38 minutes ago, jean said:

Hi @Procopius and @giemme, one can see you live in the big First World and not in the muddy middle of nowhere, as you straight away knew what the "device" was for! Or you are well versed in the use of wax warmers...

 

It's okay, I can elucidate the mysteries of wax warmers to you, and you can give me tips for living under a deranged geriatric strongman.

[CedB]

48 minutes ago, Rob G said:

I'll measure mine when I can... I'll post a photo as well.

 

Oi yoi! No need for the photo thanks Rob... oh, wait, you meant the wax warmer, sorry  

[giemme]

1 hour ago, jean said:

Hi @Procopius and @giemme, one can see you live in the big First World and not in the muddy middle of nowhere, as you straight away knew what the "device" was for! Or you are well versed in the use of wax warmers...

JR

Much simpler than that, I had already seen that tip for decals before ...

 

Ciao

[CedB]

My decal water warmer arrived today:

 

[giemme]

Ced, can you please post the link where you got this from? 

 

TIA

 

Ciao

[Jaffajake]

We have two wax melters in the house and not once did I think of using them for decals. Nice tip! I might pinch one.

[jean]

20 hours ago, Procopius said:

 

It's okay, I can elucidate the mysteries of wax warmers to you, and you can give me tips for living under a deranged geriatric strongman.

Ours is older than yours, but the principles remain the same.

[CedB]

1 hour ago, giemme said:

Ced, can you please post the link where you got this from? 

 

Sorry Giorgio, I've caught the 'don't promote suppliers' bug from Bill... I got mine from Amazon and the UK entry is here. I guess there's a supplier near you too!

[stevehnz]

I've just read through this after Ced's post in the" what have you bought" thread & found our supermarket chains carry them, might be worth checking that out in other parts. Going shopping this arvo.

Steve.

[Rob G]

On 03/28/2017 at 4:31 AM, CedB said:

 

Oi yoi! No need for the photo thanks Rob... oh, wait, you meant the wax warmer, sorry  

 

Fnarr fnarr. There, I saved you the effort. (What is the world coming to...)

 

9 hours ago, CedB said:

My decal water warmer arrived today:

 

 

Thanks for sharing that with the masses, it'll save me the effort. Now, if you can warm it up and stick a thermometer in it, we can all find out what temperature the water is. I can't use mine right now, the power went out last night. Ironically, that was well after the cyclone had passed on to other pastures. Still out, no idea when it'll be back.

 

 

Also. I wonder what this little international buying spree will do to the share price. Should I buy now?

 

@jean

 I must apologise for not checking the link you shared. When I checked the link I posted before I posted it, it led to the device I wanted. Somewhere in the vagaries of the interwebz, Woolworths rerouted things and tried to sell you something you didn't want. (Surprise surprise!) Your confusion is understandable, and again, my apologies.

 

@Jaffajake

 Good idea mate. Just... Don't.Get.Caught. It may end badly.

 

@TonyTiger66

Wasn't there a Spitfire being built hereabouts? I'll pull my head in and let you get on with it.

[AdrianMF]

Looking forward to seeing more Spitfire

 

Regards,

Adrian

[giemme]

16 hours ago, CedB said:

 

Sorry Giorgio, I've caught the 'don't promote suppliers' bug from Bill... I got mine from Amazon and the UK entry is here. I guess there's a supplier near you too!

Thanks Ced, orderd mine, should be here tomorrow

 

Ciao

[TonyTiger66]

Hello everyone, my apologies for the huge gap in updates  .

A busy and varied time. It has been fine and enjoyable commenting on and reading other's threads in the interim, but my mindset in terms of typing has been elsewhere, in 'application form' land. Moreover the main (very old) iMac became slow again, so I decided to top up the memory yet again. I need to be able to do things with many applications open, lots of multimedia in the background, and this almost exactly 8 year old machine was struggling. I'm surprised it can do anything much to be honest, but also a little relieved. I hope it can last just two more years, until finances may permit the purchase of a newer one.

It is only a mid range one of the time. I had upgraded it to a modest 4GB of memory; now I have 'maxed it out' at a still modest 8GB, but it is a big improvement. I no longer 'notice it' (the computer), if that makes sense? Before I was noticing time-delays and waiting for things.

It's only a few seconds here and there, but overall I think such delays detract from concentration, that they can lead to a kind of subtle stress build up in the old noggin.

It's a bit like, for us older ones, if we had gone to school with pens that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, colouring pencils that were too brittle and once broken, needed sharpening all the time, but with a sharpener that had a wobbly blade, all at a time when an important assessment was due. Same frustration, different writing and creating tools.

All better now, my big aluminium, and glass box of a  virtual pencil is sharp enough again .
 

Thank you to @Rob G, @Biggles87, @giemme, @Jaffajake, @jean, @Cookenbacher, @The Spadgent, @rob85, @CedB, @Procopius and @AdrianMF for stopping by and looking in, I really appreciate it  .

Also thank you all for the very helpful comments and suggestions. Regarding the Spitfire wheels, and wheel painting in general, these are going to be very helpful. 

Pictures will follow a little later, but I want to try and reply in a 'all in one' way to helpful suggestions here, then show how I employed them later in the thread. I will also be posting a series od updates to bring us up to date, step by step. It's not finished yet by any means, but has come along quite a way in the last month or so.

I actually stripped the Spitfire wheels of paint. I didn't like the way they looked. I've taken heed, first of the 'very thin paint allowed to flow' tip, and also of adding a little white to the black to make them look more realistic. The pure black looked very 'toylike' to me, not like the shades I can discern in even black and white photographs. This colour photo from our very own forum is useful in showing how the colour of the rubber compound is much more like a very deep charcoal:

(From http://www.britmodeller.com/walkarounds/aircraft/spitfire/vb597/am34.jpg).

We have to bear in mind that lots of things that are supposed to be black, aren't. Even the most important, sacred black items, may not be:
 

It's interesting how we call the Spitfire wheels 'five spoke', yet to me they looks equally like a solid wheel with five 'hearts' cut out. A lovely design, very tasteful. I wonder how much of that is pure science, related to military and production efficiency, and how much aesthetic was allowed to creep in? I wonder if we should be putting tiny, tiny yellow marks on our Spitfire wheels and tyres, looking at that picture? In 1/72 it probably wouldn't show at all, but in 1/32 I would guess it can be seen?

AdrianMF very kindly said he as looking 'forward to some more Spitfire'. I hope not to disappoint . Although I haven't been writing about it, I have sporadically been working on both the Spitfire and a Yak (Jak) -23 for the Prototypes, Record Breaker, World Firsts and Experimentals Group Build (plug, plug; go on, enter something if you haven't already!).

Quite a bit has been done on both. Dare I say it, there may be a possibility that I could complete something for the first time since, as far as I remember, 2006 .

 

On other threads there has been discussion of the old 'non-completion' syndrome. For me it is often a matter of enthusiasm. As much as I know the Tamiya Spitfire isn't the best in many ways, I'm actually really enjoying building it. It really is a good kit to just put together and learn again, plus learn new things. To note how things could be better (or worse) and just, hopefully, have a completed model that Mrs. T doesn't mind having around the place.

I'm simply working towards it looking respectable rather than spot on accurate (it never could be). Nevertheless, I'm trying to take on board as much as possible about Spitfires of this kind, in the hope that one day I can go to town a little on one, maybe a larger scale one. Just one !

Back to the build, I believe this is where I left it off:

 

I wanted to mention that there was another interim stage. Procopious had pointed out that the seat back, in Spitfires of this kind, was a slightly different colour. This was around the time we had the discussion of what 'badly worn leather' was. Check back in the thread if you haven't read it already; absolutely hilarious !

Nevertheless, I gratefully took the information on board and tried to do a little something about it.  After all my fun with mixing paints 'in situ' I went for a very simple solution; a colour by one of my favourite paint manufactures - Agama. I simply painted the seat back in this Agama P3 M Polish Dark Brown (armour):
 

Due to lighting, in the top photograph (where it has been painted), I don't think the difference shows, but I liked the shade and can recommend it. I love these paints - nice to airbrush and to hand paint. A little tricky for me to get here 'Down-under' due to postage costs - but I will stock up when I get back to Europe.

Next, I decided to try my (often unsteady) hand at very tiny (for me) detail work on the sidewalls. Miggers had suggested that it was mainly black, so this is what happened, again using good old Humbrol 33. I gave it an extremely long stir after what Jean and others said, but it remained glossy. Moreover, I may avoid pure black for this kind of thing in this scale, it looks a bit too strong:
 

I know it's all old hat and a bit pathetic, but I can live with it. I carried on and completed the detail painting. At this stage I didn't realise just how very little (indeed) can be seen of a Spitfire interior through the closed canopy, especially if a non vac-form canopy is used. More of this later, but in the future, if I do another, I don't think I'll do any more detail work than this unless I have the canopy open. It's dark and small in there! I can now see why so many built models have the door open to display the interior .

The instructions suggest that one should join the fuselage halves, then once dry, offer the cockpit assembly up from underneath. Had this been a Sword, Amodel, early MPM, early AZ, I may have had my doubts about that. I may have foreseen great worry, sleepless nights, much use of nan0-saws, scalpels, chain saws and belt sanders, but knowing that this was a Tamiya, putting blind faith into a brand name (a bit like used to with Ford cars, until I bought a car called an 'Orion' ), I decided to trust them. 

I often end up with the cockpit interior assembly stock to one fuselage side wall, with a huge gap on the other side, so thought that perhaps this approach cpuld avoid that possibility. I wonder if Tamiya thought about it in the same way? I hoped so.

Off of the sprunners came the fuselage sides:
 

This is one of the few times I used this type of cutter in this build. I realised very early on that this plastic is very different to the 'short-run' plastic I am far more used to. This is not particularly brittle, nor waxy, but is instead extremely solid, a little like the 'bakelite' like plastic I once found in some late 60's FROG kits such as the Martin Maryland. It's very nice to work with, but a little liable to sprain and or just plain break, so nearly every piece in this kit was cut of the runners with gently repeated craft knife strokes or, in the main, nano -and micro-saws.

I slammed the fuselage sides together, joyous that the engine cowling is integral with the fuselage halves, confident that being a Tamiya, there would be no fuselage gaps or steps at all; there are even locating pins! Yay .

Then I pulled them apart again, trying not to sprain or break them. Just in the nick time I realised that I had forgotten this:
 

I think they put it below the fuselage half with a big number '5' on it to try to stop dozy clots like me from making this mistake (see picture just above this one), but I'm afraid that they simply haven't taken into account all those research trips I made to Holland, Poland and the North of Norway in my 20's and 30's. It was the 'evening research' into international hedonism that took its toll and means that, at this stage in life, I can miss a Tamiya grommet even if it is right under my nose. 

It also took me an inordinate amount of time to ponder how to actually install it and the nylon bit that is its friend. Nevertheless, having had a very good Japanese friend, 'Asato',  at University, I know that they (the Japanese, well, he did) ) like beer, Karaoke and, much as others wouldn't believe it, having a really good knees up on a night out. Tamiya therefore cater for modellers with a past like mine, and a morning like that of many of their citizens on a Saturday, and provide nice clear instructions on how to install the 'Grommet and Bush' (a nice pub in Tavistock) for those in this fragile state:
 

They call it a 'poly cap', not a 'Bush' my apologies. The former sounds like something worn by domesticated Parrots in Yorkshire, but at least I'll not forget it again, name or object .

Now the two fuselage halves really were slammed together and left overnight.

I entitle this "Aosta Wolf Howling Through Byzantine Musk":
 

 

Alternatively "Mancunian Wolf Hound Sniffs The Glove".

Whatever it is, lets hope it looks a little more like a Spitfire when it has dried!
 

Thanks again for reading folks. As always, all (polite) advice and suggestions welcome, in all languages, from those of all creeds, sexes, genders, of all cognitive and regenerative persuasions and with any and all neuroses.

May the farce be with you and here's to a very happy Friday (it's here already in Canberra at 6.38 am) 

TonyT

Edited April 20, 2017 by TonyTiger66
Tidying up

[rob85]

Nice to see this one moving forward Tony! 

 

Rob

[bbudde]

Just like to say hello, Tony. Cheers from Germany.

[Beard]

Glad to see you back at the bench Tony.

 

A lot of people paint tyres a grey-black colour. You can buy 'tyre black' but  Humbrol make a Dunkelgrau which is quite a acceptable (to me).

Also, I think the seat backs on Spitfires were black-green colour. You could paint the bit black then dry-brush a blck-green and it might look like the leather in a 1950s Rover.

[CedB]

Nice work TT and welcome back to the bench - those internals look good to me, nice job Sir!  

[The Spadgent]

Back in style. Bravo TT, as for those little marks on the tyres, I added some on my Seafire. 1/48, just sayin'  great to see this spit progressing I must do one this year. Is it the year of the 1/32?  Is it, is it?  looking forward to more.

 

johnny

[Jaffajake]

And so it begins! Welcome back to the bench, Tony!

[giemme]

Great to see you back at this, Tony

 

Blak details inside the cockpit: I agree pure black in this scale is too stark, you might try with a grey drybrush. My choice is normally dark gull grey, with a soft brush; this way you are not only picking out the edges, but also toning down large areas on your details. HTH

 

Ciao