Alex Gordon

I realise you know what you're doing but it doesn't hurt if you keep your fingers out of the way. Good work so far by the way.

I have one,have had since 1991 and it's still a "work in progress" . Replicating the rivets on the upper fuselage joint is interesting,I'm going to some creative aluminium foil rubbing to do that,taking the foil edges to adjacent panel lines which are deep enough to hide a few sins.The mainwheel bays will have to be scratchbuilt.The engine can be made to be a thing of beauty as can the cockpit.Other than that I couldn't tell you of any dimension or shape snags,I've never looked at it from that point of view. Have fun and tell us all how you get on.

I s'pose it does demonstrate an understanding of string theory...

I'd like to echo what georgeusa wrote.I don't know how you do it either. Top notch work old fruit,well done .

If you've not built one you might find my build thread useful https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235080040-roden-gloster-sea-gladiator-in-148th-scalefinished/ Have fun and enjoy the kit .

This thread might be of use https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/37983-sutton-harness-help-needed/,and I might just have proved myself wrong . Edited to add; This thread might be of use too https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18351-sutton-harnesses-for-the-spitfire/

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G'day Pat, The more clued up among us will have the finer points to add but this is what I did with mine, I seem to think that initially the lowback XVI had the QL harness,the finer points of the differences between that and the QK have escaped me.The shoulder straps went over the thingy above the seat and down to the attachment point on the frame behind the seat,likely the same one for the earlier varieties of the Sutton Harness. I am inclined to think that the thingy above the seat was probably a roller of some variety to allow free movement of the straps while in use.I stand to be corrected as per usual. Hope this is of use.

Good luck on your travels and don't be away from the bench for too long, .

My Crikey,you've certainly pulled the bungs out on this one old fruit.Well done Sir,.

I haven't made many of these so don't take this as the definitive method,I used painted masking tape strips on this one The fact that masking tape is paintable and self adhesive is what made me take that route and I found the job relatively painless as a result.Next time I'll use a sharp scalpel blade for cutting the tape.The build thread for this one can be found here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235093713-airfix-scots-grey-in-54mm-scalefinished/ if it's of any help. Good luck with your build.

Go for it old chum

@AdrianMF It's been a pleasure old chum.I've had this one on the go for the last four years,haven't worked out how to do the rigging yet. There's also a Revell 1/570 Queen Mary that came my way part built a couple of years ago.I might even tackle that Smer Walrus that I've had for over twenty years. Enjoy the piccies,the last four will enlarge up to truly huge so that the full horror can be seen properly.

G'day Chums,may I present my attempt at the 1/600th scale Airfix HMS Belfast,the build thread is here. My thanks are due to Adrian,Martin and Tony for doing their bit,Enzo for herding cats and all who looked in and encouraged. Particular thanks are due to Jeff (Arnold Ambrose) who has been very helpful with research and understanding. Cheers all,hope you enjoyed.

Hello again Chums, Jeff,thanks old fruit. There has been a flurry of touching in of paint removed by handling. The forward Director Control Tower has been fitted.The bottom plate mounts on the cylinder on the bridge deck and the wall behind it so paint had to be scraped away for the glue to work. The screws have had another lot of ground up pencil lead.This was put on with a white spirit moistened brush and then,once dry,spread about and polished using a dry brush. I'm quite pleased with these,to the naked eye they look the part. Anyway after a squirt of Vallejo satin varnish to unify the finish I'm calling this one done. These next piccies can be enlarged,they are full size straight out of the camera. What would I do differently? Not work to a deadline for a start.Some of the painting methods didn't make for an easy life so the approach to that could be altered.The next one will have the build sequence better planned. This build took me out of my comfort zone in several ways,the kit itself,a new to me camera which took some setting up and a whole new and unfamiliar area of terminology and research which I'm still out of my depth with.The only part of the paint job that was airbrushed was the varnish coat at the end,I've enjoyed reaquainting myself with some long neglected brush skills. My thanks to Adrian,Martin and Tony for doing their bit,Enzo for herding cats and particular thanks to Jeff for some welcome and necessary enlightenment.

G'day KJD, As Jeff says they have been made to slide. There are slots in the upper deck section. The fit with the doors is sloppy but packing out with a strip of plastic card,I think I used 0.5mm here,made things a little less arbitrary. The slots in the lower deck section were backed to prevent see-through but the tabs on the doors didn't need to be altered. They do now slide but fitting them is entertainment itself.Looking back a blob ot two of Blu-tack to hold them in place while the decks were inveigled together might have prevented some profane rhetoric and carpet crawling. My thread is here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235124300-airfix-hms-belfast-in-1600th-scalefinished/ if it's any use to you,good luck with your build. Thanks @ArnoldAmbrose Jeff for chipping in.

G'day again Chums,some more progress. Jeff,thanks old lad.I did try to make the gunners shoulder frames but I just couldn't quite get them small enough and it would take me a week to come up with a jig to bend them on.Add to that the blunt end of the gun seems to need extending a little,if I wasn't on a deadline I'd probably give it more of a go. Adrian thanks old chum.Cutting the shields off was dead easy,gluing the replacements on was another matter altogether.A couple of them are entirely reliant on the strength of the coat of paint to hold them on.I would think that,when first released,the tooling was very crisp,even now it gives some of the recently tooled kits a run for their money.The stairways alone are not far off the same thickness as the trailing edges of the Airfix 1/48th Hurricane wings. A dry fit of the forward deck revealed some hole filling that required attention. A few drops of sprue-goo were applied and left to set.These will also serve to reinforce the locating pins in the holes,the fit of all of those being less than tight. While that was sorting itself out the anchors were sought out. These were cleaned up as best I could and offered up. They were sitting well away from where they should so the back of the centre elements of the anchors were thinned a little and the hawse pipes were rattled a little to allow them to sit closer to the hull. That seems to have done the job. Two of these capstans are for the anchor chains,the other one goes in the centre of the aft deck.These will be painted light grey while they are still on the frame. The hole filling has been fettled and hidden under a coat of white paint and the deck has been glued into place. The remaining four stairways have been thinned.Their locating holes were too big. Some small masking later and the ladling in of yet more sprue-goo means I now have to wait on setting time before I can button them up. This bit sits on top of the bridge just ahead of the mast.It is a three part affair and two of the corners aren't there meaning that it is handed as to which way round it faces.Guess who didn't spot that when he put it together a couple of months ago and got it 90° out and had to break it apart and reposition it before painting.I still don't know which is the front or back either.I was going to make a replacement lattice structure for it but I'm going to give that a miss this time. Anyway,the frames are now empty so all that remains is to fit the last of the bits and tidy up the paintwork where handling has worn away the paint. More soon Chums,thanks for looking in.

Hello again Chums,a little more to show. Adrian,cheers old chum.I was sorry to read of your "entertaining" week,not wanting to tempt fate but at least it's not snowing. Jeff,thanks old lad.I was perusing your USS Mullany thread earlier today and am still quite taken with the work you've done there.Thanks for the gen on the Oerlikons. Image from Pinterest. What is it about us modelmakers as a breed that makes us take a sadistic delight in encouraging ever finer and more difficult work and a masochistic one in performing it.I cut a strip of 10 thou plastic card to the height of the Oerlikon gunshields. I then cobbled together an experimental stop bench from a few bits of wood I had lying around. I set up a stop for around 1mm,this seemed appropriate for the size of the shield elements,and cut sixteen bits.They're not all quite the same size,as I said the stop bench is experimental but it made the job lots easier. The kit shields were cut off and paint was scraped off the spots where glue was going to go. The twiddly bits were set up on their edges on a piece of masking tape to make them easier to pick up with the tweezers. One side of all of the mounts was worked and then the frame turned over and the other sides attended to.There's a good couple of hours work in these few piccies. The forward mast has been glued into place and the forward superstructure clamped and fixed using the holes through the deck routine for applying the glue. The Walrus is nearly there.I've given up on the fuselage roundels on this one,I don't have the tools to make the masks easily so it'll have to go without. Thanks for looking in Chums,more soon.

This video might be helpful

G'day again Chums,I've just realised that there's less than two weeks to the finish line and I ought to pull my finger out. Adrian,Jeff,James,thanks chaps. Richie,thanks old fruit.The 4"guns job was made easier by setting them up on the blu-tack blob.Things don't move around too easily so the process is more controlled and less fraught.They look even better under a coat of paint. I don't know what these bits are properly called but there is one at each end,flag dangling for the use of. While they are prime candidates for wire replacement I've just cleaned them up and they will be used as is. The aft main deck has been glued to the hull.The hull had to be pulled to with tape to close some fairly large gaps. The aft Carley Float racking has been fitted to both sides and requires some fillery to make them one with the deck. The forward gun ranging radar (I think that's what it is) platform has been put together. The trestles have had a couple of coats of gloss black paint.I dug out the little bag of self adhesive felt feet,I don't want this to damage anyones 17th century French Polished Boulle table. Removing the masking revealed lots of paint creep underneath,insert your own pointed Anglo Saxon diatribe here,it won't be too far adrift from mine. There was an hour of fancy brushwork with the cellulose thinners which cleaned off the unwanted without staining the stone too much. Taking the tape off the hull caused a little bit of paint lift,this bit and a smaller area on the other side which won't take too much to sort out. There are half a dozen staircases to be fitted. Some light thinning does wonders for their appearance.There is also a top and bottom end to them,I nearly didn't spot that one. There are also eight 20mm Oerlikon AA guns to clean up and paint before fitting.Thankfully the way they've been located on the frame makes this task so much easier. The mast upper sections needed a little attention,this one for the aft mast had to have the mounting socket dug out.The other one didn't. Once glued and set the lower portions were painted white,the upper bits can wait until after fitting. The aft mast locating holes were too big.Some sprue goo was inveigled into them and then the mast pins pushed in. The 4" gun rigs and the shelters have been fitted. I turned my attention to the unfolded Walrus.I've made a propellor but it didn't look right without the engine.I chucked a length of runner into the cordless drill. Five attempts later I had something that will look good enough under a coat of paint when sat on the top of a badly scratched 17th century Boulle French Polished table. More soon Chums,thanks for looking in.

A sharp saw,take your time and the touch of a midwife.It really is the job to let the saw do the work on.You might find that the material you've packed the part with causes the blade to drag,just go gently and the flatter you can keep the saw means more teeth in the cut and makes things a touch smoother. Hope this is of use.

It's when your mind is writing cheques that your bladder can't cash.

Hello again Chums,edging ever closer to completion. Adrian,thanks old chum. Jeff,cheers old fruit.I've been quietly watching your HMS Sheffield build in the Southern Europe GB and am finding it very informative,keep up the good work. The roundels on the Walrii have been finished,the masking for the blue worked a treat but the red dots didn't so I dipped the sharp end of a new cocktail stick into a drop of suitably mixed Roundel Red paint and daubed it on that way instead.The folded Walrus has been glued into place meaning that the forward superstructure can now be fitted. I decided to replace the plastic 4" guns with wire.I had some slightly wider diameter stuff in the form of a coil of telephone cable in the big box of relevant goodies so I chopped off a couple of lengths and started to work them into something useable. The twisting was first rolled out using a flat lump of metal,the blade of my square here.The insulation was then stripped off and the wire re-rolled.The two lengths were then pulled between two pairs of pliers,this stuff is 0.55mm diameter and I managed to stretch them by around ¼" before anything snapped.This helped the straightening and brought the diameter down to nearly that of the plastic components.Next time I'll pull them straight first and then strip them off,it'll probably save a lot of messing about. The next bit was time consuming.Lengths of wire were cut,chucked into the pin vice and one end filed flat.The plastic gun tubes were cut off and the wanted bit filed flat on the top and cleaned of flash and filing dross.Each one in turn was placed on a blob of blu-tack,the wire positioned and then superglue applied using the end of a piece of wire. Once all had set the untrimmed back ends that were going into the shield were trimmed off. This is where I found out that the cylindrical bits sticking out of the bottoms of the mountings are,in fact,ejector pin towers and should have been removed because they make the guns sit above the tops of the shields.There will be paint in the near future. I turned my attention to the masts.Four components make up each one,the main and upper bits and two stays each. I did think about making some from wire but I decided to see how the kit supplied items looked after some cleaning up.Once that had been done I offered up the forward mast bits and thought that something wasn't right when they didn't mate up.A quick squint at the paint diagram revealed that there should be a backward rake on both masts,all was well and the bits could be glued together in a way that they can be removed for painting before permanent attachment. Thanks all for looking in,more soon.

Showing fine for me,from your Typhoon thread.

This thread might be helpful https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235118128-raf-phantom-question/ .