Bill Livingston

That looks very nice... well done

Thanks Ray. Not my finest moment but I'm just down to a few finger bandages just on my left hand now... the right hand has had bandages off for a few days.... so all good. In the meantime, I have been on and off modelling a 109G-6A/S which I hope to paint this weekend and then start my Spitfire for this group build. (I will get round to finishing the Hurricane at some point, but that was what I was building when I had my little accident and I wasn't really enjoying it anyway... the Eduard 109 got my mojo back again (and now all I have is a few fingers to deal with, but no nerve damage, which was a concern at first). And here is where I am with the 109... But getting back to your build... congratulations again... I will be joining you in the Eduard Spitfire Mk1 over the next few days... it looks excellent in the box (and reassuringly familiar!)

Congratulations on a very fine build, Ray. I have been following this Group Build very closely, your Me110 in particular. I will be able to start modelling again this weekend (I had a hospital required accident when I embarrassingly fiction burned both hands on a rope I should really have let go. The drop wouldn't have been a problem, but instinct takes over and when you start to fall, all rational thought goes out of the window and you just grab the rope and hang on!). Anyway, as usual lots for all of us to learn from as usual and I may well pick up a 110 at some point. I have never built one, but they always look great. Lots to learn from here and I'm happy you report that the comments from a few reviews seem to be overstated in terms of fit issues. Looks absolutely superb. I can see why you say you would do more work on the gunners seat, it's surprisingly visible. It's surprising how small an Me110 actually is, especially when compared to single seat fighters of the time. For some reason, they seem much larger in photos...

Several of us have entered more than one model in the gallery... what if we were each to remove all our entries apart our own personal favourite? I think you count the number of members, rather than the number of entries, you may get closer to the 72 maximum... so one entry per member would work... Just a thought...

It’s a really well engineered kit, isn’t it! Looking good... it’s going to look fabulous added to your growing collection of Spitfires

I have been away for a few days as work got in the way again, so I haven't done very much this week. However, this evening I managed to drill out the indicated openings from Troys post and then deal with the navigation and landing lights... (Thank you Troy, again, that was a very useful post). I still have some tidying up and polishing prior to painting, but it was an easy re-stat after a few days of distractions. I drilled a short hole in the navigation light from the rear and then filled the holes with clear red and clear green. I then sprayed the back of the landing lights with Vallejo chrome to simulate the reflector. I then wound some thin black coated wire round a small cylindrical punch which happened to be the same diameter as the lights provided and added that to the outside of the front of the lights. Three small partial spirals were then put in place and held with gloss varnish. I then filled the front of the lights with gloss varnish and have let that set. It will take a while to fully harden, but once that has done - hopefully overnight - I can then trim the edges and set them into the mounting in the wing. (I should have done this before closing the wings... but I missed that and now will possibly have a little bit of a fiddly job... but nothing thats insurmountable). I then added the wing tip navigation lights and then sanded and polished them on place... 1000, 2500 and then 8000 grit foam polishing pads made short wok of them... I'll use the same for the landing light glass when thats ready tomorrow. Tomorrow I should be able to fit the remaining two lights, sand and polish them to conform cleaning with the wing and then complete the rest of the airframe assembly. Thats pretty straightforward I would think... although I suppose that depends on how well the tailplane fits to the fillets... I had already sanded the fillets after filling the sink holes... so hopefully they didnt change in shape or taper too much!

I haven't used much of the Vallejo paints. The only one I have airbrushed recently is the Vallejo metal paints and then only in either my Neo or Revolution... and I didn't like it much... very grainy. I use Tamiya and Gunze most of the time, but have just started using Lifecolour as well... (that needs a LOT more thinning) and they all spray beautifully... thinned with either Levelling Thinners or Isopropyl alcohol... (IPA particularly when I am doing really fine work with filters and post shading with less than 20% paint and thinning down a long way...) Seems we are therefore doing much the same thing both in terms of thinning and air pressure. I hadn't picked up on the Vallejo and Ammo paints though... but like you it seems, I haven't had great experience with them

You shouldn't have any problem at all spraying acrylics with a 0.2mm needle. I have four Iwata airbrushes which I use for different things... and the 0.2mm set up in the HP-CH is the one I use for most of my airbrushing. If you are getting drying on the tip and clogging, then you need to reduce your air pressure and increase the thinners in your mix. I tend to use around 15psi and with Tamiya or Mr Hobby acrylics. For base colours, use 30%paint and 70% isopropyl alcohol as a starting point and paint really close to the surface... no more than an inch or so.... and for filters and panel weathering and so on, 95% thinner and 5% paint... Practice on a sheet of plastic before spraying the model and make sure the paint is wet when it hits the plastic, but the thinners evaporate almost immediately and it appears dry within a few seconds... but 0.2mm isn't a problem with acrylics.... in fact, changing to a 0.2 improved my airbrushing immensely as I had to learn to paint finer and closer and that gave me a massive amount of extra control... I have seen a lot of people airbrushing from the same sort of distances they would normally spray aerosol paint cans... it is completely different. Airbrushing isnt fast, but it allows you to paint really fine layers of paint or even multiple layers without losing any detail at all...

I agree with everyone else... it looks absolutely stunning. I think thats one of the prettiest of all Spitfires. (I think I am going to build one as well... As I think I said before, I passed it by thinking it was a silver Spitfire... I should have paid more attention when I went through the Eduard kit working out which options I would go for)

Thank you, Stew, Chris and Ozzy... And particular thanks for the pictures and explanation Chris, those will be very helpful. Not been able to do anything this evening... the real world got in the way, but I will pick this up tomorrow.

Me too... Only a couple of weeks or so and it should be here assuming everything goes to plan with distribution. It should be something special... I saw they were doing a Merlin for it too... Now THAT could be interesting... And thank you from me, too. I have only just joined Britmodeller and this group build was so enjoyable. I 'met' a whole host of really helpful and supportive modellers and any improvement I have made over the course of the last couple of months was purely down to the support, encouragement and help I received from so many here on this group build... it was a fabulous welcome to the world of Britmodeller... I cant thank you all enough.

Same here... I spent years modelling ships trying to find a good matt varnish and have probably tried everything. Without doubt, Winsor and Newton Matt Varnish is by far the best I have found.

I did that on one of my builds in the Spitfire group build. The pilots were fined if they left their flaps down after landing - or so i have read. I dropped them on my Spitfire as I wanted everything open and down... and the challenge of getting them built and looking good. I also really enjoyed doing the flap indicator on the wing top. I lost mine from the Eduard flap set PE and built one from scratch... (they went in the shredder when I was clearing up my bench. I had stuck them on to a bit of paper so I wouldn't lose them and then forgot!!!) Its probably my favourite part of the whole model! Good luck with them... I think they look really good down. Makes the Spit look like a 'bird of prey' when looked at from the rear...

I had a quick go at a rough sanding just before I went off to bed... and then photographed it low and at 3/4 view to show how it works. Seems fine. I will sand it smoother tomorrow after work... that was 400 grit... but I will go up to 2500 to get it clean enough for painting. Still no filler Thats not too bad. A polish and a rescribe and it will be fine. I can also replace the fasteners and drill out the holes properly. Its actually feeling pretty solid now and it looks like its in one piece... I'm going to take off all the fasteners around the nose. They should be flush and sharply defined... they look very prominent and much too soft on the kit... I'm pleased with the fit though... the underside of the nose now looks right and the wing root is as close to perfect as I can get... so not a bad evenings work. Right... off to bed... its 2.50 in the morning and I have work tomorrow!

Well, I managed to get the wings fitted... with no gaps along the wing root and everything level... same along the other wing root. I even managed to get the wing trailing edge to line up... The tiniest amount of filler will be needed, and only on the edge of the join, not either the upper or lower surface, but I couldn't adjust it any more... thats as good as I could get it without filler. I will have to try and reduce the trailing edge as it is very thick... but thinning it while the wings were separate would just have left a big step, so that wasn't really an option. These things come at a cost though, the leading edge of the wing where it fits into the fuselage leave a big lip. Gievn that the wing root is fine all along its length, but there is still a step between the front of the wing and fuselage join. If I reduced the lip at the front, the entire wing root would have a step. In the end I decided it was far easier to blend in the compound curve under the nose/wing join than fill the wing root, I think it was the best compromise. The rather soft edges prevent a really fine join there anyway, even if it all lined up, as the lower wing and the edge of the fuselage nose has really soft edges anyway... so it would never have been a clean butt joint, there would always be a little dip where the sections met. Sanding it all down and describing the panel lines is a much easier option and I negate all the fit problems at the same time. As you can see, it is quite severe... However, it should be completely flush with a very fine panel line... which is actually very easy to do. Here is a contemporary photo showing what this join should actually look like... its actually a much simpler series of joins than the kit seems to suggest... It will actually be very easy to fill that front section and then sand it down to this... and all those catches are flush, so it is fine to sand them off and replace them with a circular scriber pressed in to the plastic and then a tiny hole partially drilled in to the centre of each one. Even the little opening on this side of the nose is flat... no ring/bulge round it as there is on the kit... just a plain hole with some rivets round it. I'm quite pleased where I have got to on this, fit wise, although it was a bit of a struggle. And I pleased I kept up with my wanting to get parts to fit with no filler if at all possible... although maybe it is a little bit of wishful thinking when dealing with a rather softly moulded Airfix kit. Thanks for reading... Bill