Al Deere's Kiwi III by Airfix in 1/48

[Fatcawthorne]

Right, deep breath, here we go. My first WIP and my first Group Build. Please be kind, although kind and helpful would be a double-bubble bonus!

Having acquired the Southern Expo Hornchurch v Luftwaffe sheet a few years back I am slowly working my way through the options that it contains. As a pre-GB practice run to lay myself down a marker I built Brian Carbury's 603 Sqn Spitfire Mk1A using Airfix's first generation Mk1 kit and am pleased to report that I was happy with the results.

I have to get my tuppence in now that I do not build for 100% accuracy, I build kits because I have a very stressful working life and this wonderful hobby of ours certainly cools the blood after far too many hours in my shop! Therefore I can call a model finished before adding aerial wires etc however saying that I do try to strive for the best possible result I can achieve.

In tribute to this forum and to certain others outside of these hallowed pages who's skills and discoveries I have unmercilessly requisitioned as my own, I can see for myself that every kit I make lifts the bar just that little bit further. Who knows, in 226 years time when I finally finish the 300+ kits in my still growing stash (damn you customers who pay by PayPal - or Airfix tokens as my staff call them!) I might actually build a really decent one!

Anyways onto my submission. I wanted to do do Sailor Malan's 1A together with the He111 that he brought down in Chelmsford as that occurred not too far from my best buddy's house but unfortunately the timeframe of that action fell just outside the recognised duration of the battle. So let's go again. Now Al Deere seems to have had an interesting life. In this decal sheet he accounts for no less than 4 of the Spitfire options and having read his biographies online those just seem to be the tip of the iceberg!

Kiwi III 'R6981' was Al Deere's mount on 15 August 1940 flying with 54 Squadron from RAF Hornchurch. The blurb in the instructions goes on to say:

On 15th August 1940, this aircraft was damaged in combat with Messerschmitt Bf109's over Dunkirk. After nursing the aircraft as far as possible towards RAF Hornchurch, Al Deere was forced to bail out from this aircraft over Kent. The aircraft crashed in Pope Street, Godmersham, near Ashford and was totally destroyed. Al Deere spent the night in Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead having been slightly injured during the bail out.

You really do have to take your hat off to the fine young men of Fighter Command such as this, too many of who gave up their tomorrows to allow us our todays.

Now we have the markings, what about the kit? Now having used Airfix's earlier Mk1 for my warm up act, I was champing at the bit to start building their latest Mk1 offering.

Here are the obligatory Box and sprue shots and having had a choice between going to see Mrs C spend 6 hours of a Sunday singing in the rain at the Long Melford Street Fair with Rock Choir or using my first proper day off for 8 weeks to get amongst some styrene I chose the dryer (and probably more contentious with our female brethren) route.

Now a bit of filling (Perfect Plastic Putty - thanks PC!) of the ejector marks visible in the rear of the cockpit, a bit of Halfords rattle Can priming, some pre-shading and the start of the painting later and we're going great guns! Paints used so far are all Tamiya, with IJN Cockpit Green being my weapon of choice for my RAF cockpits. The Flat Aluminium used for the rest of the airframe has come out a little bit coarser/grainier than planned. Perhaps next time we'll use the Games Workshop's new substitute Mithral Silver as that seems to have sprayed very evenly in the past.

With Seat attached!

Now have I mentioned how fine the cockpit details are in this kit, well they're so fine I immediately knocked the pilot's seat off again!

A bit of a drybrush, adding of the IP decal and a pin-wash using a ready mixed Black Tamiya Panel Line Accent wash later:

OK I might have overdone the wash a bit but hey every day's a day at school!

As everyone else who has reviewed or WIP'd this kit has pointed out in no uncertain terms, dry fit, dry fit, dry fit then glue will be the watchword of this build.

Anyways I have just df/df/df/glued the cockpit into the right hand fuselage half so that's where we are tonight! The sharp eyed will notice the Eduard Sutton belts, I wish I'd brought ones where the "tail" (for the want of a better word) of the main belt would stretch back into the rear fuselage but again there you go.

Time for some ZZZZ's as it's well past midnight and let's hope I can get some more done on this in the very near future!

Nighty night BM!

Edited July 14, 2015 by Fatcawthorne

[Stew Dapple]

Good start Chris, I'm guessing that any 'graininess' in the aluminium paint and any potential over-shading with the panel wash will be hidden when the fuselage is closed up anyway?

Nice to see one of Al Deere's Kiwi's getting done, he certainly lived through some interesting experiences!

Cheers,

Stew

[Ozzy]

Great start, Airfix's new spitfire really does look a good kit.

Ozzy

[Fatcawthorne]

Good start Chris, I'm guessing that any 'graininess' in the aluminium paint and any potential over-shading with the panel wash will be hidden when the fuselage is closed up anyway?

Nice to see one of Al Deere's Kiwi's getting done, he certainly lived through some interesting experiences!

Cheers,

Stew

Stew, you've played this game before!!!! Yes once all was buttoned up all sins were forgiven. Thanks for the kind words.

Great start, Airfix's new spitfire really does look a good kit.

Ozzy

Ozzy, looks can be deceiving as we will find out as this story unfolds! Thanks for the kind thoughts and words though.

[Fatcawthorne]

Anyways lots of work done and very little typing it up so I apologise if this is quite a long progress report.

Despite a bit of an over-heavy weathering wash, once the fuselage was buttoned up you really can't tell in that special, a supermodel is only a lightswitch away, type of thing!

My ham-fistedness has caused me a few problems in this build and despite keeping all mating edges (again NO Ced!!!), clean and paint free I also had the problem of the IP sitting too high for the fuel tank saddle to fit properly so resorted to generous lashings of the sanding sticks to make it fit (and I mean make it fit!).

I had to resort to some pretty heavy duty clamping to keep all the upper nose in line and gap-free.

During the many many many dry fit, dry fit, dry fit sessions I had lining up the fuselage to wing join, there was only a very small gap between the fuselage and the upper wings. Now after df/df/df I had run quite a lot of liquid glue into the bottom of the insides of the cockpit walls, as I thought it would strengthen the fuselage that did feel a little flimsy, and then clamped them tight and I fear that this may have been one of my undoings.

After the glueing of the cockpit sidewalls and its clamping, the fuselage miraculously became at least 1mm too narrow to fit the gap between the wings. Now those modelling fairies are cruel beasts!!!

When I do his kit again (as I will for despite my self-induced faults I think it's fantastic!) I will allow some play and movement to fit a spacer cut from sprue to push the fuselage sides apart to fit properly.

Anyways some 10 thou Evergreen sheet was used to shim the starboard wing joint but despite the airframe being square when glued and clamped, some movement slightly twisted the back of the fuselage to wing joint slightly askew. Luckily this was spotted before the glue had 100% cured and some manual fettling and twisting (some may say extreme violence!) took things back to shape but left some residue of melted plastic along the join lines that needed a good clean up afterwards which lost a little of the surrounding excellent surface detail. Doh!

Did I tell you I broke off the spar that goes between the pilot's seat frame and the rear cockpit frame? The one I broke removing it from the sprue and glued back together again? Well I did and but I replaced it with Evergreen square rod which I have to say looks better anyways (even if I didn't reattach it quite as straight as I'd hoped to. Hmmm, let's move on!).

The clean up was quite industrial, something I wasn't expecting to have to do on Airfix's wonderkit, but as I said I think it was me not them!

Looks like a job for Scribe-r (from RJ Productions if I recall correctly) and most of the detail sanded off was replaced to my satisfaction. Have a I told you I consistantly set low targets and fail to achieve them!

Pop on the cockpit glass with white PVA, then a coat of the internal frame colour after masking with Tamiya tape and a nice finger-pricking new blade in the Swann Morton No.3 (ask me how I know, go on ask me!). At least I didn't stab myself in the face this time which is the danger as you take off your glasses before putting the scalpel down (ask me how I know, go on ask me!)!

A bit of Perfect Plastic Putty filler around the glass,

and then we shoot some Halfords grey Primer from the rattle can.

If pre-shading offends you (and I know it really does for some so sorry in advance) look away now!!!!!

BTW I was listening to Sounds of the 20th Century on Radio 2 whilst doing this. Although the format of this show is so simple, News soundbites and a pick of the music from a particular year (last night was 1979 so The Police, The Specials, Blondie to name a few highlights), it really works for me and at the moment is my favourite show.

Here's a link to the iPlayer if you fancy a listen. I hope this can be accessed by our non-UK members too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0103r3t/episodes/player

And that was the state of play as of last night.

Now today I have put the underside colour on using Brett Green's colour in each panel and then use a thinned coat to bring everything together method, so I applied two colouring in coats and then a couple of all over thin coats.

Now I'm not 100% sure if I would go too far by adding one more thin coat? The photography seems to show a little more of the shading coming through than the Mk1 eyeball does. I know you can always add more paint but it's a bit harder to take a coat off so what does the BM collective think?

Right time to down tools and spend the rest of the evening catching up on what the rest of you scamps have been up to.

TTFN

Edited July 22, 2015 by Fatcawthorne

[Ozzy]

Fantastic progress, your not scared of using a clap. Now I understand better, why people paint black lines all over the place.

[Stew Dapple]

Crikey you had a busy day Chris

I don't pre-shade (I don't think it really works in 1/72) so can't really offer any advice on whether it needs another thin coat or not - but now you've been away from the bench for a little while you should get a better idea when you look at it again what course of action would be best. FWIW I think it looks good as it is but feel free not to take my word for it if you feel differently about it

Cheers,

Stew

[Biggles87]

Blimey, you must have more clamps than Ced! From the photo, the pre-shading looks a little too prominent but we all know that the camera does sometimes lie. I think that the underside of BoB Spitfires was probably quite dirty, especially in the middle, due to operating from unpaved surfaces.

Whichever way you go, it's still looking good.

John

[Fatcawthorne]

Blimey, you must have more clamps than Ced! From the photo, the pre-shading looks a little too prominent but we all know that the camera does sometimes lie. I think that the underside of BoB Spitfires was probably quite dirty, especially in the middle, due to operating from unpaved surfaces.

Whichever way you go, it's still looking good.

John

Cheers Ozzy, Stew and Biggles,

I'm not sure I want the thought of Ced's clamps in my mind's eye for the rest of the day - make the bad man stop!!!!!

I had a quick peek at my handiwork before setting off for work this morning and the underside has now dried thoroughly and actually looks like the photo so I think one pretty thin coat more should do the trick. After that I will lighten the centres of some panels too.

Let's see if I can get near my bench tonight to get that done.

Does anyone have any clever tricks for fitting the undercarriage legs? This really does look like a case of over-engineering for no reason by Airfix and despite following the instructions to the letter the stubs that are in place really don't look like they're at the correct angle for the rest of the legs to point in the right direction. They're hidden at the moment but I will take photos once I unmask the underside.

Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 today mentioned a German phrase (coined by BMW?) of "Verschlimmbesserung," which translates as an improvement that makes things worse, and The Spitfire undercarriage is what I believe that phrase was invented to be applied to!

Again when I build this kit again I will take a far different approach probably involving drilling them out and inserting rods (NO Ced!) and risking snapping them of by assembling the legs at an earlier stage (I have 3 or 4 Mk V's in the stash already so it is going to happen one day!).

Until later my petals.....

[Arniec]

Nice build. On painting. I would tone it a little bit more down. But that would be my preferance.

Cheers,

[Fatcawthorne]

Nice build. On painting. I would tone it a little bit more down. But that would be my preferance.

Cheers,

I agree Arnie C, so I added another thinned coat. And this was how the underside ended up.

The pre-shading is now as subtle as I was aiming for and some post lightening of some panels nearer the end of the build should improve things even further.

The undersides were masked off and despite a schoolboy error of starting to apply scheme B (as directed by the decal's instruction sheet which had the illustration of the two options base about apex but, looking at the pictures (my favourite other passtime!) showed this airframe to be the other one!!!) a start was made on applying the Dark Earth element of Scheme A. For this I've gone with Tamiya's Dark Earth acrylic as I find this the easiest of paints to deal with. Why is it that where there's a 50/50 choice it's 90/10 that you pick the wrong one?

And a second coat.

And lastly a couple of thinned coats to bring it all together before we could get to tonight's work which is one of my favourite parts of modelling. Who can't love blu-tak worms? Not unless you've got no soul. Ok I know the demarcation edges between the colours should be a bit harder, but then you wouldn't get the pleasure of rolling out those little blue sausages between your fingers (NO Ced!!!) would you!

And the same old process of colouring in the panels in a couple or three coats, followed by a bring it all together coat begins again!

Time to leave that overnight for the big reveal tomorrow (my second favourite part of modelling!).

I know a while back there was a lot of hoo-hah over a poorly worded thread asking why do modellers still use enamels when acrylics are now so widely available, but for me this demonstrates why I have moved from Enamels to Acrylics. Learning pre-shading techniques and the use of more but much thinner coats to build up the effect and density would have taken days if not weeks to do what I have achieved in one evening. My two-penneth anyways!

Anyways can't wait until tomorrow when I can lustfully tear away my Spits undergarments to reveal her in her beautiful naked glory.

That's all for tonight, catch you later.

Edited July 24, 2015 by Fatcawthorne

[Fatboydim]

A very impressive first WIP. your Spitfire is looking really good. Regards, Joe

[Ozzy]

Looking good, I'm putting one on my to do list.

[Fatcawthorne]

Looking good, I'm putting one on my to do list.

A very impressive first WIP. your Spitfire is looking really good. Regards, Joe

Thanks Joe and Ozzy,

Why oh why oh why oh why do I always manage an own goal in every single build I do. This time I put the bottle of surgical spirit that I was using to flush the air brush down that little bit too hard after spraying the last, last, lastest bit of the Dark Green and a lovely globule flew through the air to land on the port wing and levelled itself on the valley of Tamiya tape spread between the blu-tak worm crests. It couldn't have been there for more than 2 seconds before I wiped it off. That can't have done no damage now can it I thought. Wrong! Male chickens in the vernacular of James May thought I!

After waiting to let any residual spirit evaporate and for the rest of the final coat to dry enough to take the masking off I started my big reveal.

The spirit had got into loads of little nooks and crannies and had made a mess of a fair bit of the port wing's Dark Earth and had even seeped under the underside's masking to do a little bit of Eau de Nil stripping by the port wheel well.

At this stage I was not up for a full strip and re-paint so out came the sanding blocks and buffers and rubbed back the lifted paint to the point where I was at least happy with it, and re-painted the Dark Earth.

Then out came my worms again and re-did the demarcation, masked it against overspray and shot some more Dark Green.

OK it wasn't as good as I imagined it would have been had I not mucked up but it's still ahead of the game as far as my best modelling to date is concerned.

I then went and lightened the centres of the panels with a mix of the base colours with a couple of drops of Tamiya Sky Grey and although self praise is feint praise I'm quite chuffed with myself at how it's coming along.

A couple of thin coats of my Lakeland Plastics Klear substitute later and I think once we're properly dry we can start sticking some stickers on!

Right off to go and help my 10 year old build the rest of the Hurricane we started after the Essex show yesterday!

[Ozzy]

Nice progress, good save.

Ozzy

[modelling minion]

Oh dear.

Now I want/need a Spitfire! This GB is going to be hard on the wallet if I go with everything it makes me want to build.

Great paintwork, really impressive. I love the result your pre-shading and subtle post shading has achieved, and your replacement Klear seems to work very well also.

Watching with interest, and itchy wallet hand.

Craig.

[Biggles87]

Looking really good. I like the way you can fit the spinner/prop after everything else is finished leaving a nice big hole to fit something for holding it while painting.

I recently bought a Kleer substitute in France, only to find the half full bottle of Kleer which I thought had been thrown away.Typical!

John

[stevej60]

Looking superb the pre-shading really work's well.

[Bodmin]

I agree, that pre-shading has worked wonders. Thinking of trying it on my build.Hope it turns out as well as yours has.

[Fatcawthorne]

Looking superb the pre-shading really work's well.

I agree, that pre-shading has worked wonders. Thinking of trying it on my build.Hope it turns out as well as yours has.

Thanks all (have only quoted the latest posters but the thanks goes to all who have posted kind words), I have to say that even with the odd self-inflicted injury along the way I'm really happy with how this one's going. As a modeller through and through I do have my eye on the next build already and if I can kick on from this build's improved standards then I'm really looking forward to it!

It was sticker night tonight (no piccys yet though as the camera battery's on charge) and I used the Airfix kit decals for the national markings and stencils but found them quite thick and the upper wing roundels really didn't want to conform to the lumps and bumps under them.

Used Microsol that did a bit but still left much to be desired so I hit it with Mark Softer. Now this has left me with white marks on the blue of the roundels.

The plan now is to let everything dry thoroughly and see if the marks remain. If they're still there in the morning then I will be ordering the Sovereign paints roundel colours (or maybe the Xtracolor ones) to touch them up, this may actually be a bonus as it will let me slightly fade patches in the same way as with the main camouflage colours so we're not too down in the mouth about it yet.

Any advice on which range of roundel paints is most suitable?

Thanks in advance and we'll catch up soon!

Edited July 28, 2015 by Fatcawthorne

[Fatcawthorne]

Well we've got the stickers on as per the last post.

I had a bit of a marathon stickering sesh as I had a log-jam of pre-GB inspiration builds (or confidence builders maybe?) waiting for the last of their transfers to be applied.

The display shelf's not going to know what's hit it as all these reach the finishing line at about the same time.

We've also placed our beauty on her fragile but very shapely legs and I was wrong, the angles that the u/c stubs point out at is absolutely spot on! What do I know eh!

She's also had the exhaust manifolds added, a tiny bit of drybrushed aluminium at the wing roots to simulate boot marks and a bit of Tamiya smoke for exhaust and underbelly oil stains.

At the rate Al Deere got through Spits I'm pretty sure they couldn't have got that dirty!

And as mentioned before overdoing the Microsol/Mark Softer on the wing roundels has left white marks. Oh well, after how many saves we've had so far (far more than I make as the goalkeeper for my Vets footy team!) one more won't hurt.

Her's the marks, the printing seems to have been leached out of the decal itself.

Sorry used the poorer camera for these last ones that doesn't want to focus on the close up so well.

I've ordered both the Colourcoats roundel colours and the Xtracolours ones too so we will see what's the best match once Mr ParcelForce turns up in the next day or two.

In the meanwhile as this build has stalled slightly and all the other builds need a flat coat (which is what Kiwi needs too so might as well do them all at once) I started the next build for me in this GB, the Airfix 1/48 new tool Hurricane and will post a thread for that in the next day or so.

Thanks for looking in, TTFN.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Fatcawthorne

[Biggles87]

That's a very impressive line up.

[Ozzy]

Looking good, you have been busy.

[modelling minion]

Looking very good indeed!

I look forward to seeing your Hurricane, should be very good based on your Spit and the excellent line up on your table.

Craig.

[Fatcawthorne]

Right am beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel now and I'm pretty sure it's not just a train hurtling towards us!

Both the Xtracolour and Colourcoats Roundel blues arrived at work a couple of days back and were swiftly spirited home where using my Olfa cutter I cut masks to isolate the blue area.

In the end I only used the Xtracolour as it turned out to be a fantastic match for the Airfix Kit roundels. Now this is only going to end badly as in future I just know I'm going to be tempted (oh go on then just give it a try.... and there lies disaster!) to mask and paint my roundels in future. Ho hum if "that's the way it has to be"............ then so be it, quoting my favourite slug from the movies!

Well in the flesh [and as I have only just found my Digital SLR 5 minutes ago, (in the drawer where it should live - who'd think of looking there!), so the piccy's aren't totally up to scratch having used our little compact camera again] there is some tonal variation that I was looking to achieve by painting over the roundels and that's good enough for me.

Well we've also attached the propeller, given it a blow (NO Ced!!!),- checking that it spins and we are a gloriously happy 9 year old with a cement-covered Stuka for that fleeting moment once more.

As we have a freely rotating propeller I thought the logical next step was to spray our first coats of Windsor & Newton Acrylic Matt varnish to clog it up and stop all that nonsense!

Victory in this quest is so close I can almost smell it, a couple more thin coats of Matt, especially on the underside that is markedly still far more shiny than the upper surfaces, removal of the glazing masking, adding the spine light and some clear colour on the wingtip lights and we'll call this one done. Yes I wish I'd splashed just a few pennies more at Paul's Little Cars stall at Billericay the other weekend as I now belatedly realise that some EZ Line for the aerial wires would have been the purchase of the day but hindsight is always 20-20!

Feast your beadies on where we are now and I hope to do those last few tasks and take some Gallery photos with the better camera over the next day or two.

The Hurricane is speeding along too, I have kept a photo trail of the build so far so will get round to posting my sagas with that beastie as soon as I get a few spare moments.

Keep modelling, TTFN.