Sparzanza

Thanks John! I can now resume my sanding and filling! Thanks for stopping by Ashley! I too built this kit as the Big Beautiful Doll, albeit I was around 14 years of age soooo... 16 years ago. I sprayed it with silver paint that I bought for a nickel at a gas station. Good times! Glad to have you aboard!

Great to be back! Thanks for stopping by! Thanks John, much appreciated! Well, I'm quite pleased to inform yous that the filling of the wingroot seams is more or less complete - and no surface detail lost by sanding. All excess putty was removed with cottonbuds moist with acetone. Still having some paint left in the paintcup after an airbrush session (1/48 Tamiya P51-, I sprayed over some of my sanding, filling, and rescribing efforts underneath and found some flaws that will need to be corrected before priming with aluminium. This area seems to be well done though:

Well I plugged the hole in the airscoop with some sprue and superglue, wuewuewue. When it's dry, it'll be sanded smooth and flush. I don't know whether I'm supposed to attempt to preserve the panel line across it though, as I cannot find any proper reference pictures of the scoop from underneath. If anyone can help out here, please do so. And then I got bored waiting for it to dry, so I decided to glue the tailplanes in place so I wouldn't have to do it after painting and make it look messy. I'd rather spend an hour masking carefully than four days of sanding/filling and painting. Anyway, they clicked into place easy enough, but there are still some minor gaps to be filled - much like the main wing roots. Looks straight to me!

Thanks Tom! As you wish, here are more updates! I have filled some of the gaps now with Tamiya white putty, and cleaned off excess with cottonbuds moistened with acetone. Still some gaps to fill, and the intake scoop thing underneath will require something more than just filling it seems....

Well, gluing the scoop underneath in place, I found more gaps to fill. Woooo.

Thanks Val! An update for you all - wings joined with fuselage! Woooooo!

Thank you Andy, but the windscreen is currently under restoration. I glued the wheel bay doors in place; had to scrape off some of that aluminium paint for the hinges to make them really bite with the Tamiya extra thin cement. I will paint the hinges aluminium later on. I also took the opportunity to glue the odd looking intakes over the old ones. Don't know why, but the Mustang "Edmonton special" that I'm depicting had these intakes, so on they go. Here's a little sneak peak of my rivet removal progress. I'll keep some of them on, but most of the fuselage will be smoother than a smoothie.

Well the fuselage's been closed up... the surgery went a lot smoother than I expected. I have filled all the gaps (not as many as I first thought), the biggest problem was the fuselage halves not lining up properly around the rearwheel bay, air intakes and whatnot. I did my best to remedy this with stretched sprue. I am currently in the process of sanding all the rivets off the fuselage - well most of them - I made this decision after studying numerous reference pictures. I am also struggling a bit with the windshield - it just won't sit right. I had it glued on for a while; tilting it forward made it line up nicely in the front but left gaps in the back that I filled with Micro Kristal Klear. However, I realised that no amount of paint will hide that sloppy work, so off it went and I took the opportunity to sand off the crack in the side that appeared when cutting it off the sprue. Gradually sanding with finer and finer paper and finally giving it a round with the buff stick still left the windshield looking a bit milky though, so I will give it a bath of Future later on. The crack that I sanded off is visible on this picture, right hand side, bottom ... quite evident. But hey, the engine framing is all seamless and beautiful: And here's some progress with the bottom wings:

I find Humbrol 191 to be a good substitute.

Beautiful, neat, and tidy. I love it!

I have a few from the BoB film... Not saying they're authentic or anything, but this is how I see people dirty up their Spitfires when building kits.

I'm the same Andy! As long as we know the detail's present, right? I appreciate the comment!

Right then! These are the last images you will see of the Mustang in two halves. I've just got a couple of tiny fiddly bits to tidy up and it'll get closed up. The engine, firewall, instrument panel, cockpit floor etc are all glued into place! Phew. EDIT: Oh, I see I forgot to clean up the wash on the oil tank! Thank you Mr. Cellphone!

Thank you Andy. My Red Tail one is next on the list after this and the Spitfire! Great idea of Airfix to give us that decal option.

Thank you Greg! And here it is! With the airbrush nursed back to health, I have managed to finish the firewall: Onwards!