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Resin. Why does that word fill me - and I suspect others - with unease? Probably for the same reason the Vacform in "Multimedia kit: vacform, resin and white metal" does. Is it because I think resin is outside my box? Except .... I sometimes use resin aftermarket items, and don't appear to have had many problems with them. Nor, apart from from some wobbly cutting, did I approach the vacform sails in boat kits like HMS Victory or Cutty Sark (the airfix ones) that I built as an early teenager with any trepidation.. Perhaps it's a natural thing when mainly dealing with injection moulded plastic to view the guys who do things in resin and/or vacform as somehow more advanced modellers than you, just a weedy, injection moulded man.. But yes, I have just made a resin kit. My first one. To whit, the Magna Models Polikarpov ITP (M-1). Nope, I'd never heard of it before I bought the kit at the Gloucester IPMS show way back in 2019. Apparently it was a design for a heavily armed fighter, but it never got over a problem with the engine which wasn't able to give it the speed required. But for £6, surely the kit couldn't go wrong? Hmmmm .... Deafening silence. Before I go on to the finished model, here's a couple of photos of the box, and the resin, vacform canopy and white metal parts - the resin parts have been separated from the casting blocks. Now I'm not going to lie, making this kit was a touch problematical. That's because I failed to read the instructions properly. yeas, I know, but in all honesty, how many Britmodellers have done the same? What I would have seen in the instructions was a command not to cut the locating lugs off the wings as well as the casting blocks. Yes, you guessed, I cut the wing locating lugs off. So I got around that problem by using a brass rod pin going through the fuselage to pin the wings to the fuselage. Surprisingly, for me, that worked! Was there a next problem? Cutting the vacform canopy to size, perhaps? was there a reason why 2 vacform canopies were provided? Nope, the first canopy cut and sanded out of the excess quite easily. Anything else? Well, painting wasn't too bad; I gussied up the cockpit, painted some seat belts (not easily seen) and some attempt at an i/p, and used used Mr Masking compound around the wing root air intakes and wheel wells to give a pretty clean paint job there. There was minimal paint bleed under the masking tape on wings and fuselage, easily cleaned up. The canopy masking went fine. My word, this is sounding easy, isn't it? Actually, given there are only 21 parts altogether - 9 resin, 1 vacform and 11 metal, I think I can be excused thinking that I shouldn't have found it difficult. The minimal decals came from an old, long abandoned Mig 15 kit - Magna didn't supply any decals. Paints by Tamiya and Mr Color, varnishes by Windsor & Newton Galleria. Would I do another resin kit? I don't know. I know that there are some resin kits around (I do read reviews) which are more akin to injection moulded kits, but what I'm thinking of are the type of resin/vacform/white metal kits err .... like the whirlybirds Sikorsky S 51 dragonfly that's in my stash. Hmm .. maybe I'll give it a go, after I've retreated into my injection moulding comfort zone for a while!

Here is my completed Magna resin Albacore. It's been a while on the stocks, partly because Magna kits are pretty much the basis for a build, albeit usually accurate, so in the end turn out looking good. The multi media; resin, vac form and white metal, nature also is challenging and the canopy masking was a labour of love of the first order. I have no idea how many panels but I think it was around 30 and no two were the same and all, or nearly all were of an irregular shape. I also decided as the airframe is pretty big I'd add some resemblance of rigging using SBS etch. The transfers with the kit were unusable and so were replaced by some from Printscale who do a sheet with loads of Albacore options on it. The model is brush painted with Xtracrylix Extra Dark Sea Grey/Dark Slate Grey over Night and matted down with Liquitex varnish. The Albacore is finished as BF653 of 820 NAS on HMS Formidable during the Torch landings, hence the US markings. WIP thread is here Here she is waiting to be bombed up for a sortie over the North African coast She's a bit of a beast and my opinion a strangely beautiful aircraft. The Magna kit has captured her chunky lines very well.

I started this Magna, mainly resin, with a sprinkling of white metal and an enormous vac formed canopy in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations GB in the latter half of last year. I got quite far along but stalled at the canopy mask stage and failed to finish it in time. It didn't go to the Shelf of Doom as although it's challenging by its nature it's not inherently a bad kit. It's down to my reluctance to attack the masking of a very complex canopy. I did start with strips of masking tape but there's not that many long straight lines of framing. It's like a greenhouse made out of glass offcuts. Anyway it's been sitting on top of my box of tools so it's getting lifted on and off multiple times. I spent a few hours masking the canopy of my Fulmar so thought, while I'm on a roll let's get the Albacore done. The build to date can be found here in GB. So here's where I've got to after an hour or so of masking. One side almost done and I'll move on to other tomorrow. It's painstaking work, with both the complexity of the framining and the relative lack of anything more than faint outlines on the plastic. There's no rush so I'll take a deep breath and continue when I've a few hours tomorrow.

So far I've effectively finished 6AFVs and 2 on the way to completion with a half finished Sa Gladiator. The AFVs have been straightforward builds and although the Sea Gladiator does need some conversion work from the Airfix Gladiator it's a fairly decent build. Therefore as a final contribution (but never say never) I'm going for something a tad more challenging. The Albacore was a much maligned aircraft, it seems to have suffered from not being a Swordfish but was an effective torpedo and dive bomber and gave sterling service, particularly in the Med. Although it was intended as a Swordfish replacement it's performance was little better although it gave a significantly more favourable environment for its crew. But it sank and damaged a considerable tonnage of Axis shipping as well as finding use as a bomber in the Desert and all around the Med. They were also used in the Norwegian campaign and to mine German ports and waterways. The Albacore has been poorly serviced in kit form and a Swordfish conversion would be a mammoth undertaking. Special Hobby do box it in 1:48 and threatened one in the gentlemans scale a few years back but that never came to fruition. This Magna kit is the only one to my knowledge that exists in 1:72 and even then it's not easy to find. I picked this up, I think from a second hand dealer, at SMW a few years back always intending to build it. As a good Scot it looks like I did get a bargain. I have no illusions that it will be a challenging build but I do have a few months so I'll give it my best shot.

Source: http://www.aim72.co.uk/page6.html V.P.

Can I join in with this? Even if it is going to be in RN colours, probably a 771 Squadron bird, based at Culdrose in the early 1980's, It's an absolute challenge for me. Everything I would rather avoid: resin, vac formed transparencies, limited run (and boy oh boy does it look limited run), the need to use cyanoacrylate (lots of glued fingers but parts falling off) and masking windows and the cheat line. Apart from that a straightforward build.

Hey all! I just picked up a Magna Models Spearfish, still sealed in its factory stapled bag, and found it wanting of propellers. That and one of its resin landing gear doors. Anyone here know the contact info for Magna? I've looked online but those cites only go to resellers and not the company itself. Failing that, what's a good source for the big Rotols the Spearfish used? Is Chris57 still active on this forum? I messaged him after a fellow Britmodeller listed him as Magna's UK sales agent. Alas, no response yet so I thought I'd put this out here for a wider viewing. Thanks, Madoc

I was a bit dubious about buying this one, but if I wanted a Devon in 1/48th it was the only choice. I needn't have worried too much, the castings cleaned up well though there were some air bubbles just below the sure that needed attention. Though the nose section is hollow and filled to the brim with lead shot she is a determined tail sitter so a piece of clear rod is providing the balance. The clear dome over the canopy is provided as a two part vac form and to be fair I don't know how else they could have done it. Beyond my limited skills to make anything of it, I fettled a spare Beaufighter camera dome until it fitted.Not 100% prototypical but close enough for me.

The Bristol 148 was an army co-operation prototype built to the same specification the Lysander was. According to the information in the kit's instructions, it successfully met the specification's requirements but was passed over in favour of the Lysander. Wanting an excuse to test some of African air force decals from the Zotz sheet before using them for an African L-39, I decided to build the Magna kit as a COIN aircraft, as it would fit in nicely with WWII surplus aircraft used in post-war colonial conflicts. After doing some research (i.e. reading Wikipedia), I decided that this Bristol 148 would have been an ex-Force Publique, ex-Katangese Air Force aircraft pressed into the FAZ's ranks. The extra armament would have also been WWII surplus, I guess. The Magna kit required more clean-up and bubble-filling than other kits of theirs I've built in the past, also suffering from an oversize instrument panel. I replaced it with a female copy of a Hurricane panel pressed into Tamiya two-part putty. The Lewis gun was replaced with a Vickers K, the propeller was from the AZ Spitfire VI kit, the cannon from a Hurricane kit and the rockets left-over from a Valom Bristol Buckingam kit. I carved in access panels for the cannon on the starboard wing, as the original 148 only carried guns in the port wing. The decals are from Zotz's Roundels of the World set and the serial numbers from an AML Oscar kit (the Oscar in question was given up in disgust a while ago). The model was brush painted with Humbrol enamels (83/149/150 for topsides, and a 5:2 mixture of 34 and 25 for the underside). I tried out salt weathering on this plane for the first time, though I think it came out rather crude. Thanks for looking!