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spitfire

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Everything posted by spitfire

  1. Some words of wisdom from the late lamented Edgar. Greg Painting of the rear fuselage interior aft of the cockpit area on the Mk IX ceased as of 13 September 1943. But the practice of painting the entire interior in interior green likely ceased before that order was published. So early Spit IXs would have been all green, after the above date the unpainted aluminum rear fuselage was common. Check the date of manufacture of your Mk. VIII's serial, I would think the same dates would be true for those aircraft as well. ean, I really doubt that is factory original. By the time the practice of painting the rear fuselage interior was dropped the average life of a Spit was two weeks (or was it two months). And the reason for dropping the painting was it was determined corrosion would not be a problem over such a short period of time. For this paint job to be original it would have had to be a very early build or a post war build. But I would think the aircraft went in for overhaul since then. And I don't think any XVIs were built post war. The dropping of the interior painting applied only to the IX (the Vickers ledger is very specific on that point.) With the VIII being earmarked, exclusively, for overseas service, the painting was probably retained as an anti-corrosion measure for ship-borne transportation. Edgar Cheers Dennis
  2. Thanks Chris, it certainly is nice to see it standing on it's own feet, just the twidley bits now and some paint touch up to do and it's in the cabinet. Thank you Alan, you just have to be inventive in this game and nick away, it's what I do all the time. Cheers Dennis
  3. Still plugging away, time for the satin finish, for this I use Xtracolor XDSS Semi Gloss Satin Varnish, I like to hold the model while I airbrush it, so I very carefully hold one wing tip and aribrush away. However I need to then put it on the shelf so I have to improvise some undercarriage, this time cocktail sticks. And now to start the finishing touches, first up the undercarriage, this was a bit (lot) fiddley, but it's done. And a shot on it's "Legs", the prop is only on loosely for effect. Cheers Dennis
  4. Looking good, sounds like you are having fun with a very well engineered kit, looking forward to building mine. Cheers Dennis
  5. I always like to airbrush markings on my builds for RAF roundels and I use Sovereign Colorcoats paint. specifically ACRN22 RAF/FAA red, ACRN31 WW2 Roundel blue, white is white and yellow is yellow, But I normally use Xtracolor X141 for white and X011 RAF Trainer yellow, I also have used Sovereign Colorcoats ACRN21 RAF/FAA Yellow. Cheers Dennis
  6. Thanks Chris, luckily the green hides touch ups well, they were only small scratches so easily touched up with a brush. I think that it could be time for a satin coat now. Cheers Dennis
  7. More finishing touches and another mistake. This is the exhausts all ready to go just a bit of graphite (pencil lead) to make them look more metalic. And of course I test fitted the exhausts to the boxes that I had installed in the fuselage halves to allow me to fit the exhausts after completing the build, but sadly I did this without fitting the side plates, so when I tried to fit them into the fuselage openings they would not fit. You can see the blanked off exhaust cut aways in the photo below. So I had to trim the fuselage openings, to allow me to fit the exhausts with the plates fitted. This went well but along the way there was some damage to the paintwork which needed repairing, most annoying. Here are the exhausts ready to fit. And fitted And more prep work on the undercarriage, I copied Alan's build and fitted pegs to the undercarriage doors to hopefully get a more positive fit. More soon Cheers Dennis
  8. Looks absolutely spot on, the desert scheme is very attractive. Cheers Dennis
  9. Hi Chris, I use decals so infrequently now that I had forgotten about that technique, I have had success using Klear with decals in the past so thank you for the reminder. Thank you Thom, I think that I will be very happy when it is finished and I am very pleased with how it is turning out. Cheers Dennis
  10. Thanks John and a belated happy new year and all the best to you and yours. Well I checked the decals next day and they all seem to be fine apart from the red fuselage 362, which was very silvered on the clear parts of the decals, as I did not having anything remotely like it in decals or masks I decided to take drastic action and go "old school". Very carefully with a fine paintbrush and Mr Mark Softer I poked under the decal until eventually it came free, I then transferred it to some used decal paper. Then using a new #11 blade I carefully cut away all the clear parts of the decal. This was a bit tricky especially the curved inside parts of the numbers but eventually I finished them and re applied the numbers individually using lots of Mr Mark Softer, we will see how well I have done when the satin varnish goes on. Then I carried on with the rest of the decals, mostly stencils, this was not easy as the instruction were useless when it came to exactly where too position them and the illustrations only included one side of the fuselage. However alaninaustria's superb build gave me the answer for most of them, I did manage to scratch the paint removing an errant piece of clear decal on the 6 and 2 of the fuselage numbers though this will be an easy fix. Next up came the prop, I copied Alan's build and pinned the prop blades to the hub then assembled the lot, and it looks good to me. The kit's attachment method for the prop and spinner was a bit iffy to say the least so I improvised, And luckily it fitted. The next sad story involves the exhausts but I will go into that in the next post. Cheers Dennis
  11. Me too, 1/32 Fulmar and Battle would quickly open my wallet. Cheers Dennis
  12. Great paintwork and finish, looks great. Cheers Dennis
  13. That is really nice work, a clipped wing desert Spitfire, whats not to like. Cheers Dennis
  14. Most impressive and very eye catching. Cheers Dennis
  15. Well by dodging Christmas gatherings and stuff I managed to get some more done on the Re, very enjoyable it was too, though I do not like decals much these seem to have gone on well. I will probably find out when I apply the satin/matt coat, that's usually when the silvering shows up. Cheers Dennis
  16. No apologies necessary but thank you for the condolences. Thank you, it is really coming along now and my enthusiasm has returned. Yes despite the faffing about, paint masks are certainly the way to go. Hope you all have a great Christmas and best wishes to you and yours. Cheers Dennis
  17. Plodding on, though the end is in sight at last, I have been working on the undercariage and was not impressed with the poor and vague fit of the parts so it was time to drill some holes, make some wheel spindles, pins and make some positive attachment points. Luckily I have found a great build of the same kit by a guy known as alaninaustria over on LSP so I could pinch some ideas from his build. This is the result, though still needing some work to tidy it all up. Cheers Dennis
  18. Bad man, though looking at the kit it was perfectly understandable behavioure, so was completely forgiveable. It certainly looks a really well thought out kit, I haven't even opened mine yet as I am determined to finish the two that I am building at the moment, so opening the box would have the same effect on me and I would have to start it as I am partial to Spitfire kits. Looking forward to more progress, presumably after the big day. Cheers Dennis
  19. An absoluetley beautiful build, great paint and weathering, looks very realistic. The MSG codes do look better to my eye but there was an article over on HS that seem to back up Kotares choice of colours, think I'll swerve that one when I build mine though. https://www.hyperscale.com/2023/reviews/kits/kotarek32001reviewbg_1.htm Cheers Dennis
  20. Thank you Adrian, I am really pleased with the way the masks worked, the markings look really good and no silvering. Cheers Dennis
  21. Thank you David, no matter how many times I have used masks I'm always a bit nervous doing it but the results are certainly worth it. Cheers Dennis
  22. Thanks guys, first up is to fix the leading edge and then it's decals all the way, so should not take long, then the fiddley bits. Cheers Dennis
  23. Thanks Neil, I had a free afternoon so I sat down at my bench and just got on with it, I settled on my normal method of using masks to paint the markings. At least it was not a 4 colour RAF roundel where you are removing and replacing mask sections all the time which is a pain but admittedley it is worth it in the end. So a simple Italian national marking should be no problem. I collected these and used the wing markings for the MC202 as they were just about the same size as the kit decals but also the masks look more accurate; First up as usual was to nail down the position of the markings, this was a guesstimate judging by the position on the C202 and C205, as usual I made a test circle using my Offla P cutter. Checking this with the mask enabled me to mark the place to affix the mask using tape. And with the mask in position, note the arrows are there as a guide, the maskings are handed, the axe heads point outwards and the thick ends point backwards. Tape on the mask to hold it together when I remove the backing (transfer tape). Backing removed and stuck on my hand to make it less sticky to hopefully prevent the mask pulling paint off, gosh my hands look old, well I suppose they are. Mask in place and the sections to be painted weeded out. Lots of masking, keeping the tape on the paper and not on the kit. And out with the trusty airbrush, I decided to use Xtracolor Night Black for this, and this was the result. And this And the only damage to the paintwork was this, I will fix this tomorrow as I don't want to handle the model just yet. I'm very pleased with the result. Hopefully I have got it right. Cheers Dennis
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