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!

Thank you HL-10! The Blitz was a blast to build, paint, and weather. I just wish Italeri wouldn't force their customers to cut open the bonnet and doors to reveal that fine detail! Thank you fredben! One has close to limitless options when weathering these. There's very little that isn't "correct". Just throw all the pigments and washes you can muster at them!

Thanks for your comment John! I'm glad another one of these beaut's are being built. I myself will probably paint what Airfix calls "wheel wells" with zinc chromate yellow and leave it like that... I'm lazy! If you'd like to post pictures of your progress in this thread, be my guest! The more Airfix 1/24's, the better. Haha thank you Rodders! I learned the palette trick from a finn by the name of Juha... a far superior modeller! Maybe it's the key to success. The product line is currently at a little stand still as my medium head assembly for the airbrush seem to have clogged up when using Vallejo's primers, so it's taken apart and put in acetone for a few days. I do have my fine head assembly along with the fine needle of course, but I do not have any detail work to spray paint yet. So... until the head assembly is cleaned up (I tried by hand but I just couldn't get into all the tight spots), there won't be any worthwhile updates.

Thank you BerndM! I'm glad you like them! Thank you Noah! Weathering has the advantage of hiding small errors...

Thank you Martin! If all goes according to plan, this will be the first aircraft kit that I finished using an airbrush... this or my 1/24 Airfix Spitfire. Time will tell! Thank you Chris, glad to have you aboard! Here's an update. I did what my friend Anders told me at the LSP forum regarding the misshapen GMF tyres - namely dropping them into some hot (nearly boiling) water for a few seconds, and then fish them up and give them a little squeeze. It wasn't perfect, but they're far rounder than when they arrived! The rims slips in... ish. So! I started modifying the (normally unseen) kit wheelhub that is supposed to go between the original rim halves and slot into the landing gear leg. The GMF wheels came with holes instead of any kind of attachment point, so I was forced to make something resembling one. Incoming bad pictures! I took the kit part (no. 2) and cut around the stick in the middle with a plier until there was no wheelhub left - resulting in this little device (no. 1). I then glued this stick into the kit landing gear, and voilá! The GMF wheels fits. Not the best solution in the world, but hey... it works for me.

Thanks for your comment, woody37! I quite like the detail straight out of the box actually! All one has to do is paint it up... Here's a small update. I've added more stuff inside the right fuselage half. There's a LOT of stuff that has to sit in the correct slot and angle before mating the two halves together. The fact that I like to have stuff movable doesn't aid me in this regard... I take one piece at a time, glue it into its slot, tape the fuselage halves together... and let it dry in position. Piece by piece. Time consuming to say the least. I still have the engine, firewall, cockpit, and tailwheel to install before I can slap this stuff together. At the moment I'm detailing the firewall, so I'm inching ever closer...

They're all 1/24th scale and all from Italeri. I detailed the engines on all of them with wiring and whatnot - except the Land Rover because it didn't have one. Anyway - we need more military vehicles in 1/24! Willys Jeep - lots of new weathering techniques for me on this one, including first-time dusting with airbrush and using pigments. Opel Blitz... doors and hood/bonnet closed up. Which in my opinion is silly in this scale. So I cut them all open. They didn't fit too well afterwards! Oh well. At least one can see the engine and interior now. Land Rover 109 LWB... I built this one in thirteen days! I forgot to paint the bottom tail lights red though... I fixed that last month. Oops. Scratchbuilt rear wheel wells and partial floor as it didn't appear to exist on the kit. And finally another 1/24 Willys Jeep .. this time with the M2 machine gun. One of my better builds in my lifetime.

Thanks a lot for your comment, Grayson! I do try my best to make it something special...

I ordered the diamond treaded wheels from Grey Matter Figures because the kit ones were crap. Sadly the tyres was slightly misshapen so I couldn't fit the rims in them properly, and the tail wheel's rim started to come apart when trying to smooth out some rough spots. Rotten luck! Kit wheels for the time being then. I finished painting and weathering the tailwheel assembly. I also added some oil stains on the engine. Not so easily spotted but oh well... less is more.

Thanks a lot JimHead! Love me an old Airfix kit. And when I get sick of the flash, I build Trumpeter kits.

Thank you for your comment. I have not seen any complaints about the kits dihedral... only the complete lack of wheel wells seems to bug people out. The windscreen is also supposedly an absolute horror to fit. Anyway, I'm really not much of a scratchbuilder, so I don't think I'll touch anything with the dihedral. I build all my kits OOB with minor tweaks, such as seat cushions and tape belts (Radub ones when I can afford it) - but anything major such as wingspars, wheelwells... anything involving measuring, cutting, and measuring some more puts me off instantly. Some people like to do that stuff, but I just cannot be bothered as it takes all the joy away for me - and joy is what the hobby is about after all.