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1/48 Airfix new tool Hurricane Mk.I P3039 from No.229 Squadron - Completed on 31-10 at 11.50 pm


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very interesting post Peter.

what size beading tool did you use? Ironically considering how many glitches the Italeri kit has they did the fasteners a bit better.

The wing thinning really helps but it does leave me a little disappointed that kit has these issues, as given 'problem' with the old girl I wanted a kit that could be done OOB with minimal work without causing me the dilemma of the bother of fixes or living with faults :weep:

Given the amount of faffing around even a 1/72 Spitfire causes me while trying to do as a simple build this could be a problem.

Still, maybe Trumpeter will scale down their 1/24th kit... though that would I'm sure be covered in divot rivets... Poor old Hurricane.

Great work so far.

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Top work.

Thanks Marek. Your Hurricane build is great too with lots of enhancements and some great painting.

Well, they may be small details but if you have the ability to do them, which you obviously do! Then why not.

You work looks great and is adding to what looks like a very nice kit, so well done

Rob

Thanks Rob. I certainly tested my boundaries of what I can do with this build.

Great work, the cockpit interior is fantastic. What make are the seatbelts ? Should really be getting to grips with mine!

Thanks Blitz23. The seat belts are HGW fabric harnesses. They are stunning, but a bit fiddly in 1/48 scale.

I've been so busy following your Spitfire that this one has slipped passed me, until now that is. It looks like it's going to be another masterpiece, I'll be sure not to miss any more.

John

Thanks John. Maybe a bit too early calling it a masterpiece. But I trying my best enhancing areas which are visible but lacking in detail.

Absolutely superb detailing work going on here on your Hurricane. I think the method you use to represent the fastners is inspired. Very well done.

Thanks PlaStix. Your approach in completing the fasteners is also a great way and a bit less time consuming too.

very interesting post Peter.

what size beading tool did you use? Ironically considering how many glitches the Italeri kit has they did the fasteners a bit better.

The wing thinning really helps but it does leave me a little disappointed that kit has these issues, as given 'problem' with the old girl I wanted a kit that could be done OOB with minimal work without causing me the dilemma of the bother of fixes or living with faults :weep:

Given the amount of faffing around even a 1/72 Spitfire causes me while trying to do as a simple build this could be a problem.

Still, maybe Trumpeter will scale down their 1/24th kit... though that would I'm sure be covered in divot rivets... Poor old Hurricane.

Great work so far.

Thanks Troy. You know, It is all your fault I had to go to this length in making it right :winkgrin:

I used the size 10 beading tool which looked about right. Yes, the Italeri kit did represent the fasteners better, but as you know, has lots of other inaccuracies.

The Airfix new tool Hurricane is certainly not perfect and the longer you look, the more small inaccuracies pop up. But this is the case with any kit. Sometimes it is best just not to look. But for me, the research into this small details is part of the enjoyment I get in building a kit.

There are many builds of this kit happening in this GB right now and even with these issues not corrected, the model is still representing the shape of the Hurricane very nicely.

Personally, I wish Airfix is investing more time to create correct details which can be easily seen (Wing trailing edge, fasteners, landing lights to name some) instead of of adding things like guns, which I think is better suited to be done by aftermarket manufacturer in resin.

Cheers, Peter

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Another week gone and still so much to do. Here are some pictures showing what I managed to do during the last week.

I used some super glue / talcum powder mix to smooth the transition from the plasticard strip to fuselage. I used super glue as I punched some fastener representation into this part of the fuselage and normal filler would most likely peel off under the pressure of the beading tool.

P3039-45.jpg

Turned out ok after sanding over it.

P3039-46.jpg

And here finally with the fastener in place.

P3039-47b.jpg

It did give the metal panel the concave curve which the kit didn't capture. I also reworked the nose, representing the thin metal panels in place on the original aircraft. Maybe a bit of an overkill as this is maybe not visible with the Rotol spinner in place.

P3039-48.jpg

Finally it was time mating the wing to the fuselage. I wanted to have the fuselage in place to protect the cockpit interior before doing some more work on the wing as I would most likely done some damage to the delicate tubing representation.

P3039-49.jpg

After smoothing out the wing to fuselage transition with dissolved putty, followed with Surfacer 500, I was able to rescribe the panel lines, using the RB Production Scribe File which work very well to do this.

P3039-50.jpg

It was a bit challenging to scribe the curve.

It was now time to place the remaining fasteners to the panel under the engine.

P3039-51.jpg

Finally all cleaned up and rescribed. I have to say that it is a bit a pain in the but to work with the soft Airfix plastic. It gets damaged so easily and I think it is loosing its crispness just by holding it...

P3039-53.jpg

P3039-52.jpg

I hope to have it all together and ready for primer application by next weekend.

Thanks for watching.

Cheers, Peter

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Thank you Dan and Rob for your encouragement. As with my Spitfire build, I spent most of the time detailing the radiator.

Here too, some pictures of the real deal hanging on the sealing of the Science Museum.

Hurri-4.jpg

Hurri-5.jpg

Hurri-6.jpg

I first added the missing wire on the radiator intake.

P3039-54.jpg

Now all was ready to give the internal stuff a coat of paint as it will be very difficult to get there after these items are in place. I masked off the plastic where glue will be applied for the fitting to the wings.

P3039-56.jpg

I used this opportunity to try some of the sky paint I had in my stash.

P3039-55.jpg

From left to right is, Lifecolor UA-539, Gunze Aqueous H74, Mr Paint 118, AK Interactive 2015, Xtracrylix XA1007 and Tamiya XF-21.

They are all very close to the hue of sky. Mr Paint is maybe a little too green. I don't get on well with Lifecolor, it just doesn't cover well. AK Interactive is better, but not much. Tamyia airbrushes nicely, but is very flat. Adding some gloss media would maybe solve this. So these three aren't my preferred paint.

Xtracrylix surprised me as it airbrushed very nicely and dried to a very smooth finish similar to the Gunze Aqueous paint. But the nicest to work with is Mr Paint. It is a lacquer, so it smells. But it airbrushes extremely well, dries fast and very smooth, which was the paint I used for the internals.

After painting the radiator surfaces, I glued the housing to the wing and added the stiffeners of the housing sides.

P3039-57.jpg

The Airfix radiators do overhang the housing substantially, so I shortened it by 1mm (here compared to the unmodified part). I also added the holes for the flap actuators. These rods go into the large holes which can be seen in the above picture. I didn't drill them all the way through, but painted them black, giving the illusion that is is an opening all the way through. This allowed me to drill a small 0.5mm hole the size of the actuator rods to center them nicely in these holes.

P3039-58.jpg

I fit the rods like rigging a by-plane. This makes it easier to fit them and after adding a drop of CA, the hole is closed and just needs some slight sanding.

Here s the radiator housing completed.

P3039-59.jpg

P3039-60.jpg

P3039-61.jpg

After putting a lot of efforts into the landing lights bays, I also wanted to somehow show the very noticeable black metal wires on the front of the lamp units.

P3039-6.jpg

But how do I do this on a light with a diameter of just 3mm? First I thought to do it with some wire, but how do I fix them to the plastic? At the end I used the smallest beading tool to add a circle to the center and used a scribing tool to scratch the three wires into the plastic. For the first time I wished for the soft Airfix plastic as the clear stuff was very hard.

I glued the lights onto a jig I made with some acrylic glue. It worked surprisingly well and after filling the scribed lines with black paint, it looked better than I thought. Some spots needed a bit of clean-up with a toothpick.

P3039-62.jpg

I also added some gloss varnish to the surface to seal in the black paint.

Here they are off the jig together with the navigation lights to be painted silver.

P3039-63.jpg

That was it for this week. Thanks for watching.

Cheers, Peter

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Great work, she's looking real nice. Great work on the landing lights.

I'm also building this kit at the moment and I'm redoing the Dzus fasteners. I've left the kit ones on the fabric panels as these appear not to be flush and slightly larger, so I've just sanded them a little, hopefully they will look right when painted.

Anyway I noticed you've missed the fastener either side in front of the exhausts and there is also a panel line there which Airfix missed.

Edited by Tbolt
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Thanks Rob, there will be more to come.

Thanks Tbolt to make me aware of the fasteners (now I finally know what they are called) and panel lines I missed. I looked at photos a lot and still missed them ... Fortunately no drama to add them.

I did notice that the fasteners on fabric panels are of a different style and slightly larger. But if at all, they only standing out by millimeters. The picture below is from the Hurricane at Hendon.

Hurri-8.jpg

But I am sure your way of showing them will work well too.

Cheers, Peter

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very neat work, one point, AFAIK the port wingtip light is green not blue, but can't find any decent photos to show this.

There is this shot

http://data3.primeportal.net/hangar/mark_hayward/hurricane_iia/images/hurricane_iia_23_of_31.jpg

which shows some bulb detail. I have a couple of pics of the Hendon plane, but they are not as clear due to low light.

HTH

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Oh boy. I am colour blind! I meant to add green :banghead: No idea how I ended up with blue... Too late now as I glued them into place last night.

But the one I have in my 1/72 scale Hurricane where I definitely used translucent green paint actually looks more like blue. So it is green just looking like blue :mental:

Cheers, Peter

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Thanks Rob, there will be more to come.

Thanks Tbolt to make me aware of the fasteners (now I finally know what they are called) and panel lines I missed. I looked at photos a lot and still missed them ... Fortunately no drama to add them.

I did notice that the fasteners on fabric panels are of a different style and slightly larger. But if at all, they only standing out by millimeters. The picture below is from the Hurricane at Hendon.

Hurri-8.jpg

But I am sure your way of showing them will work well too.

Cheers, Peter

That Hurricane looks like it may have had a couple of extra coats of paint on top of those fasteners, blending them in a little more, but of course they are not very thick anyway. I'm now thinking I might remove them, because the moulding isn't sharp enough to show them up well now I've sanded them down a little and they might blend in too much after painting- the moulding on Airfix's Spitfire is sharper here.

As John says, green nav light lenses often look blue and I usually paint mine a blue green mix.

Edited by Tbolt
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very neat work, one point, AFAIK the port wingtip light is green not blue, but can't find any decent photos to show this.

There is this shot

http://data3.primeportal.net/hangar/mark_hayward/hurricane_iia/images/hurricane_iia_23_of_31.jpg

which shows some bulb detail. I have a couple of pics of the Hendon plane, but they are not as clear due to low light.

HTH

But that ones is red. The starboard one is green/blue. That picture is a good example of how dark the lenses are though when not lit.

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Thank you Nick and Stix. Always nice to see some positive feedback.

The last week was the week of "lights" with the Hurricane. I was hoping to have it primed by now, but things took much longer than anticipated. Here is a picture with the navigation light in place. I hope I have the red light at the correct side - I think so.

P3039-66.jpg

Then there was still a bit of tidying up in preparation of priming the model. Like with the Spitfire, the Hurricane also had a a rather large gap between the vertical stabilizer and the rudder, so I decided to reduce this gap by adding a 0.4mm shim.

P3039-64.jpg

And then I noticed that I managed to brake off one of the aileron hinges without noticing it. So I had to re-make it.

P3039-65.jpg

I also reworked the gun access hatches fasteners to bring them in line with the engine cover fasteners.

P3039-67.jpg

The gun openings needed a bit of work too as Airfix represented them in a strange way with the circular barrel from the top.

P3039-69.jpg

Here The fun started to finish off the landing lights. I made a template with masking tape to create the clear cover.

Bending the clear cover over the wings didn't work as the bend is too tight, resulting in tiny stress cracks.

P3039-70.jpg

So I had to pre-bend the clear cover before fitting - but how... It didn't work with a hair drier or hot water, so I tried with a candle. and if holding the clear plastic at the correct distance to the candle, it bends by itself to the correct curve!

P3039-71.jpg

Now it just needed to be cut to size.

But to get to that stage needed a bit of trail and error first!!!

P3039-74.jpg

And it worked. Here is the cover in place (just clipped on) and you can hardly see it.

P3039-73.jpg

Now I had to fit the light itself to the opening and this created lots of head scratching. Here it is held by a toothpick.

P3039-75.jpg

I need some kind of jig in holding it steady when applying the CA glue. And this is what I came up with...

P3039-76.jpg

And it worked!

P3039-77.jpg

Now I have to glue on the covers to finish the landing lights. Not sure yet if I use white glue or odorless superglue. I have to think that over first.

After that some masking and I am ready for applying the primer before adding the HGW positive rivets - lots of them.

Thanks for watching, until next week.

Cheers, Peter

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