Kitchen Modeller

Looking great Sam - that masking job on the canopy is coming along... not my favorite job! Let us know what color mixes you end up using - I have a mk1 spit in the queue

Painting begins So as previously mentioned, I’m continuing in my exploration of planet alclad - so wanted to see if I could recreate the high speed silver with an alclad paint in my possession- I don’t have the full range and I suspect that the basic aluminum colour might have come closest. But the 2 colors I was playing with (which I had) was polished aluminum and dull aluminum. Here’s the pic of the bird we’re doing: As you can see it’s a fairly dull light grey here - textbook HSS - however it does have a certain sheen - something that hhs paints that I’ve seen never seem to have - the refurbished present day version looks like this: Not 100% accuracy to the original as verified by the veterans who do the walking tours at the airforce museum here in Christchurch- but you can see the reflective quality to the paint. So going back to the milk bottle tops I prepped for paint: So the one on the left is alclad polished aluminum- the color is off but it does have the sheen I’m after - the one on the right is dull aluminum- probably quite close to the correct colour but it’s proper dull. Zero light refraction. So my plan was to use the polished aluminum but then use some post shading, weathering and clear coats to bring it closer to what we’re after. So loaded up some paint into the airbrush and let rip: Depending on the light hitting it, it actually came out not too far off from that hss tone - but with the added bonus of being very reflective. I mean that light reflects off it - not that’s It’s thinking about that argument it had with the T11 next door. Next I went in with some post shading using a little alclad steel mixed with the base colour - I masked off panels and very lightly sprayed along the edges... I was attempting to create that stressed metal look while also weathering the airframe - I realise that it looks very shiny in these last images - however this will be toned down later on. On the underside I didn’t mask anything and just freehanded the post shading. I went back over areas where the effect was too much with the base colour - these paints are pre-thinned so no need to worry about getting the mixes right. They dry very quickly which means you can paint a lot more in a short space of time. Hopefully you can gather what I’m trying to do here - it’s not going to be on the money in terms of accuracy but it’s certainly heading in the right direction- I feel anyways This will get a couple of coats of aqua gloss - more in an effort to tone it down and also get it ready for decals and washes. Hopefully happening over the weekend. Comments on this are welcome as always - am I heading too left field? Cheers John

Thanks Smithy painting started tonight and so far so good - update coming soon!

So spent a bit more time on fixing duty getting this ready for paint... I worked the wing roots to attempt to get rid of those putty inclines - I found some more holes so plugged those with Alclad micro filler and sanding them flush. Rescribed and re-riveted the lost details... The model was then cleaned off in prep for the 3rd attempt at priming And got there in the end - I sanded down the model with P4000 - to P12000 sanding sponges - really more like buffing it - I also re-did some rivets that were almost invisible... And recribed some lines to define them a little more. Although this is the best iteration so far, it's still less than perfect - but at some point I think I have to accept that it's probably as good as I'm going to get it... so I'm moving on...! Next up is the glossly black base coat in prep for the Alclad - Previously I've used Alclad black gloss base for this - however, I really didn't want to use it this time as it's so hit and miss - and takes days to dry - I discovered that alot of folks use Mr Hobby GX2 for the this job - so thought I'd give that a go. I thinned it about 40/60 with Mr Leveling Thinner and sprayed it on fairly wet - gave it 2 coats - then gave a final coat with mostly thinner - 10/90 paint to thinner as apparently this makes it shine more and makes it go rock hard. This came out pretty well and should be a good foundation for the alclad - It dried within minutes which is also a great plus - next up - painting begins...:) Cheers John

Thanks Clive Thanks Reini - I have the Airfix kit too - plus a big sheet of photo etch to go with it - it will be another RNZAF one - not sure when I’ll get to if though... Thank Smithy Thanks Geoff - I’m aiming to get the sanding scratches and those rough bits on the wing roots sorted out in the next day or so - then more primer and then paint (at last!!) so hopefully later this week

Hello folks - another update before the weekend comes to close... leaving off from last time I put some filler on those tail boom joins... Again with the Tamiya filler... that was sanded off after a few hours and this seemed to do a good job of hiding those seams. Getting a little closer to primer time I wanted to sort out the canopy - on the actual aircraft, the front section has a slight dark green tint. I wanted to recreate this - so went about tinting my first canopy. I mixed up some Tamiya clear smoke and mixed in a little clear green - this was thinned with Tamiya lacquer thinner - about 30/70 paint to thinner - I then sprayed the inside of the canopy very lightly - in a few seconds I had this: I probably went a little heavy even though I was trying hard not to:) Colour is probably a little too green but otherwise I was happy enough. This was then masked up using the precut masks - which fit pretty well. I added some details to the rear of the cockpit with some copper wire - just add a little more detail - I’ll paint this up later- added the gunsight also... I then glued the front section in place with Tamiya extra thin - I glued the rear section in place with pva glue so I can remove it later. It then occurred to me to test how nose heavy the model was with the @clive_tmethod - I blu tacked a round pen at the point of the rear under carriage... Yay! She’s actively trying to face plant. With my fears allayed I was finally able to move in the knowledge I wasn’t building a tail sitter. The canopy was a pretty good fit but not without some little gaps so I put on some perfect plastic putty and wiped away the excess... With that I decided to pull the trigger on the primer - I knew there would be issues still but I wanted to get a good idea of what needed work and what didn’t... so I mixed up the usual mr surfacer 1500 black - thinned with mr leveling thinner. I put on one light coat which gave me a good idea of where the problem areas where - before I thought to take a photo, I attacked the model with sanding sticks, smoothing out the rough areas. I also did some re scribing on spots where I’d wiped out the panel line. I use this tool from Tamiya which works great on those curved areas - I push it lightly along the panel line until I get a more solid path - then pull it until the line is sorted. The second coat of primer then went on. This time putting down 3 coats... So the results where mixed I think - on one hand those gaping seams are gone - however my over zealousness with the filler application resulted in some slight putty “hills” going over the wing joins. These are more obvious in some places- but other than this I think it came out okay - it was an experiment trying this so I’m chalking it up to experience. Hopefully it wont detract too much from the overall model. None the less there were still areas that needed fixing - mostly small scratch marks that I hadn’t picked up on earlier so more a sanding I go... Well I got to the primer stage which I was happy about - I’ll just be remaining stuck on the primer stage for another wee while - however when the next coat goes on, it should be the last. Then we might actually be close to getting to the fun part. Thanks for checking in! Enjoy the rest of your Sunday John

That's a great idea Clive - I'll try that on the model and report back in the next update Wish I'd thought of it sooner! I saw an Irish Air Corps one fly at an airshow when I was 10 - it really left an impression:)

Thanks mate:) I have to say, I'm enjoying this build very much - It's nice trying out new techniques for things - whether they work or not is still debatable! Also, I just love this aircraft - such a simple but beautiful design - this won't be my last vamp - I have the Airfix T11 in the stash.

Thanks for that Reini - My fingers are crossed I guess it's possible that I didn't put in enough which would really annoy me as I had room to put in some more - I was afraid the landing gear wouldn't be able to take more weight! It certainly feels very heavy but I've never used weights before in a model so if I have or not is anyone's guess! Stay tuned to find out (exciting!)

Don't exaggerate Stuart - there's only half a bucket on there tops.:) I wasn't 100% how flush the wings were with the fuselage join so I wanted to give myself some leeway on either side - I still probably went over board though! As you say, primer will tell all. Thanks Sam I'm probably going to wait until after the primer before I properly assess how much rescribing is needed. Some lines will disappear entirely which is fine as most of the lines on the kit are not on the actual aircraft (or just invisible) I have some tools which I'll use for the curved parts - not looking forward to that must be said I think it is Adam yes. Hi Graham - I was aware of that - however this build is an experiment in my use of Alclad paints - I want to see if I can achieve certain finishes with different shades and different techniques - Will this come out looking historically accurate? Possibly not but it's the journey, not the destination Seriously though, I looked at using some paints that are more geared towards HSS and model that were finished in them - alot of them looked fine but I want to see if I can push the boat out a little - which is where the fun lies for me. Will I succeed? Who knows - but I'm betting I'll some fun along the way.

Looking really good - the paint job really elevates the kit and scale - I would be really pleased with that! I'm sure you've worked out by now that you can use any poly cement to glue plasticard - so your revell glue or mr hobby glue will work fine. Getting some plasicard with different thicknesses is a really good idea - it's easy to work with and has endless uses as I see you've discovered All of your modifications look great. Really adds depth the kit.

Hi all - so I've been working away on the little vamp... gluing things on, filling things in and lots and lots of sanding... After a few nights of drawing lines and many aborted attempts at following those lines with a riveting tool - the wings were finally done. With that, I was able to glue the wing halves together and attach them to the fuselage. The fit was... okay I suppose - There was going to be gaps top and bottom no matter what way I put them in - so I opted to minimise the gap on the upper section and deal with a larger gap underneath. At this point there were sizable gaps and steps all over the model - I would usually reach for the Perfect Plastic Putty to deal with these but thought I'd try another solution - Tamiya Putty - This was the first putty I bought but didn't have much love for the stuff. It never seemed to behave properly - coming off in clumps whenever I tried sanding it - turns out I was missing a vital piece of information - after applying, it takes a minimum of 6 hours to cure. Of course, it doesn't say this on the label , I just picked this up after reading some articles on the interweb. I've read that alot of modellers really rate this for filling large gaps so I thought I'd give it another crack... There was a step right in front of the cockpit, so decided to fix that first: After letting this dry for a few hours, I sanded it back: Not bad - however I put another layer on there to fix those little holes where I hadn't pushed the putty down far enough. With that sorted I did a quick dry fit with the canopy front: Not a bad fit... I will need to sort out a wee gap there but nothing too serious. PPP will do the job there I think. On to fixing the wing root seams - I wanted to fix these as much as possible as NMF paint jobs do stellar job of high lighting little gaps and imperfections on the model. I was going to go hard out on this! Firstly, some masking to protect my riveting work... Then a heavy dose of Tamiya Putty... Mmmm - It's possible I may have over done this Either way, many an hour of sanding lay in front of me. The following night, sanding began in earnest... Using varied sanding sticks and sponges, I whittled down the white stuff.. This is at about the half way mark - when this stuff cures, it really becomes rock hard so I needed to go in quite hard with the sanding. After a couple of hours, the filling job result started to present itself... So still alot of smoothing out, re-scribing and riveting to do but I thought this wasn't looking too bad - the wing root joins should be quite hidden which was what I was after. I did a quick test by brush painting some black over the joins - of course I forgot to the take a picture but everything looked pretty good - you'll have to wait for the primer to see if this assessment is correct With the lions share of sanding sorted, I put together the tail assembly: I riveted the horizontal stabiliser before doing this of course: Then glued the tail in place - it was gappy Doesn't look too bad here - I didn't take a picture of the underside which is much worse - I'll carry out the same procedure on these gaps and hopefully make them go away... So it's slow going work at this stage - I'm hoping to put some primer down over the weekend but we'll see how I go with the final prep first - I have a feeling there'll be a quite a bit of work involved... Thanks for looking in! John

Thanks Stuart I could have easily enough but thought I’d better hold back in case the landing gear couldn’t take the weight! It’s quite weighty as it is - but gives the model a nice feel - like it has substance...

This is great - very nicely done and I love that scheme - nice photos too. My only (small) suggestion would be to slightly weather that tail wheel as it looks brand new compared the rest of the aircraft A minor quibble on an otherwise brilliant model

Thanks AW - it was a pretty simple modification in the end and easy to do. I did get some modelling time over the weekend (in between watching the rugby) so have a little progress to show... I was able to start the process of closing the fuselage - so I added those wildly inaccurate engines I gave the engines and cockpit floor a wash of Tamiya panel line - brown and black... The cockpit bulk head and seat were added: The seat belts were added - as you can see they are slightly undersized but I think I'll get away with it - I gave these a coat of panel line wash, just to add some dirt. I then had to think about how I was going to front load the model with some weight to avoid ending up with a tail sitter. I bought these fishing line weights ages ago... I think they're made from lead - as they are, they were just a little too big to fit anywhere useful - however I was able to put them into my vicegrips and gave them a squeeze... I was even able to break them into little pieces so with that I superglued some of these into the fuselage, making sure they were all positioned to the front of the back landing gear. I had to file down one of them to get a clean fit of the upper fuselage - after the control column was added I could close this baby up... I added the nose section... A little filler will be required there I think... All up I was happy with this - the fit wasn't perfect but I'm confident some filler and sanding will fix any issues. I was then able to turn some attention to the wings: I sanding down the control surfaces to try and reduce the block like appearance they had - I'll do some more work on this once they're glued. I put in some rivets on the underside of the wings: There's a couple of lines that went wrong there but the rest went in okay... I was happy I was able to get the fuselage closed - it's nice to hit these milestones - hopefully this time next week some painting will commence... Thanks for looking in... Cheers John

Hi All - an update at last - I've been moving pretty slowly on this so far - work commitments are impeding my modelling which is a pain but I have made a little progress. On closer examination of the PE fret I purchased, it seems it wasn't designed for this kit - it was designed for the heller version - so some of the bits were too small or too big - I could still use some parts but I planned on using the kit instrument panel - however I stupidly lost this when I was painting the cockpit parts - I could still use the PE IP however but some modification was required. I basically needed something to hold the IP in place - so cut out some plastic styrene card to the right shape... You can see how much smaller the PE IP is relative to the kit version - but hopefully I could make this work... I trimmed off the excess plastic and tidied this up a little - not perfect but hopefully this will do the job... Another issue I had was the exhaust nozzle - this is what the kit version looks like: Compared to the actual version: I thought I could improve on this - even with my limited skill set I cut off the kit nozzle: I sanded down the stub to remove that step you can see... I then got some evergreen plastic tubing - 6.7 mm - cut off a little and sanded it down to reduce the diameter. Then a quick dry fit: It still needs some tidying up but I think this will work. And a decent improvement I think The cock pit seat got some cushions - made from milliput... Which was allowed to cure and then painted up... Some of the PE was added to the cockpit walls: It might be for a another kit, but these bits certainly work fine here. Just a wee note on the engine block - I did a dry fit to see what level of visibility you'll have of the engine block after it's been installed... This is with light pointed directly into the intake - Basically zero visibility - you might be able to make something out but I'm not going to worry too much about it - I'd rather concentrate efforts on details are are actually visible That's it for now - there's a few things that need sorting out before I can get this fuselage closed (I'm well behind schedule) Get the cockpit finished - finish work on the engine nozzle and also sort out some counter weight - otherwise this will be a tail sitter - I have some ideas on that so hopefully that will work out. One thing I could do with some help with is the radio box behind the pilots seat - if anyone has a decent reference photo of this I'd love to see it - I haven't had much luck looking on the interweb. Thanks for looking in... John

Thanks Smithy The nice lines are due to the kit - tamiya know how to present nice panel lines! Weather is indeed improving here but still a chill in the air down here in chch - though all anyone’s talking about that thing happening over in japan Thanks Sam - I’m staying with the nmf for the moment with a RNZAF Vampire. There’s a wip but must be said, I’m going slowly - but there will be an update soon..

Great work again Sam - You did a great job on this as well. Your oil work on the weather came out very nicely You've made me want to do this kit

This is awesome - great idea and well executed

Thanks for the kind comments guys

80 spitfires? You have to post a photo of that!!! Nice spit - have this kit in the stash and can’t wait to start it

Thanks for posting that link Andre - some really nice shots there that be be very useful

Thanks Steve - as nice and reasonably priced as that engine that Andre found, I'd imagine that it would it would still take while to reach New Zealand - The fuselage is getting closed this week dammit lol Yes, I have a schedule!

Please don't tempt me Andre lol

Its not the best rendition obviously- however this part is going to be quite well hidden so I guess the kit designer didn’t think it needed to be too accurate. It’s probably not as far off as you think looking at this photo