Airfix Spitfire Mk XII wip

[Edge]

Hi

Having followed & stolen ideas from a great number of builds over a long time, I thought it only fair to share a build of my own. As the title says, it's the 1/48 Airfix Spitfire XII with Eduard's lovely (but fiddly & 2D in places) etch set. I also have a set of Master brass cannon barrels, True details resin wheels, Rexx metal exhausts & Montex masks (I hate masking canopies!).

I am no expert & I'm very much learning as I go, so any comments & advice is welcome.

And so to the some pics. Taken with my work Pentax WG-III camera (great for holiday snaps, but not so good for photographing models!).

So far I've removed the horrid mold mark on both ailerons, polished off the rough texture of the kit plastic & attached then to the constructed wing structure. Hopefully, the difference between the original (wing) and cleaned pieces is obvious?

I've battled through with the mainly etch cockpit, which I found to be hard work. I learned that very thin superglue is the best for attaching the pieces & that nail polish remover, with acetone, unsticks things when they go wrong! I haven't fitted all of the etched pieces in there because some of them are just too small for me & to be honest the Eduard instructions are quite vague as to where some of the pieces fit.

So that's it for now. Hopefully I can crack on over the next few weeks & keep adding to the thread. If nothing else it'll help keep me focused on the build!

Thanks for looking.

Edge

[Val]

Great start, looking forward to this!

[Biggles87]

Yes, good start. I think you were a little unlucky with the ailerons, moulding marks on mine were not as pronounced and were gone after a couple of swipes with a sanding stick. My only suggestion at this stage is that the throttle quadrant ( not the levers ) should be the same colour as the cockpit.

It's a nice kit, you shouldn't have any problems with it.

Cheers

John

[PlaStix]

That is looking great so far. I've been following Biggles87's build of this kit as I want to make one, probably for the Edgar Tribute build, so I shall be interested to see what you do with yours as well.

Kind regards,

Stix

[Edge]

Thanks for the comments guys, and good spot John, the throttle does stand out a bit!

But that's the least of my problems at present. Due mainly to my ham fistedness, aided by some poor QC at Airfix I've come to a a slight impasse as they say. Deciding that all that lovely(ish) Eduard detail in the cockpit should be seen I referred to the Airfix instructions & noted that the rear of the cockpit opening should be cut out (they have the rear section & centre/sliding portion moulded as one. At this point delicacy, care and common sense left the building & I proceeded to hack the rear sections away using a combination of scalpel, razor saw, Olfa cutter & blind stupidity.



Only then did I think to remove the Airfix canopy to check it's fit, which is where I discovered a rather large air bubble in the plastic.....



As well as the various scratch marks visible. So I've Emailed Airfix to request a replacement part.

Realising that I can't undo the work so far & resort to a closed canopy build I checked the fit of the canopy I have and began to understand just what a bad job I'd made of cutting open the cockpit....





The white section at the top is a piece of microstrip which I've glued & begun to sand to a better shape, but as you can see I have more work to do on the vertical sections. Hopefully some careful glueing & sanding over the weekend will put right some of my ineptitude.

Ah well, at least I'm learning!

Edge

[Biggles87]

I can't see your picture at the moment, don't know wether the problem is at my end or yours. I decided not to use the ' combined ' canopy on mine so still have it and it looks OK, so if Airfix don't have one or are too slow, PM me with your address and I'll pop it in the post for you.

Cheer

John

[Edge]

Hi John

Thank you! Airfix have replied - very quickly so no complaints there. But they don't have stock of the spare parts & have put me on a wait list. I'll drop you a PM in a mo.

Thank you again.

Edge

[Biggles87]

Hi Edge, posted the canopy this morning, hope it doesn't take too long and arrives undamaged.

Cheers

John

[Edge]

Hi Edge, posted the canopy this morning, hope it doesn't take too long and arrives undamaged.

Cheers

John

John. you are an absolute star!

I'm slowly adding slithers of microstrip to the cockpit edges & sanding them to hopefully create a flatter edge.

Thanks again - hope the finished product does justice to your generosity.

[Edge]

Thanks to John (Biggles87) I have a canopy winging it's way to me as Airfix are out of stock at present. Massive thanks to him for the rescue.

I've used microstrip to build up the edges of the cockpit and shaped this with some sanding sticks, protecting the edge at 90° with masking tape. A quick test-fit shows the fit has improved over my previous disaster....

Not perfect, but getting there....

I couldn't help just resting the wing sections on too, just to get a feel that I'm building a Spitfire!

This last pic might highlight where I've polished the grainy finish from the wings, and how that contrasts with the original fuselage texture?

Right, back to that cockpit!!

[Edge]

This morning's efforts concentrated on the under wing radiator. I found that fitting the radiator faces to the housing forced the outer walls to such an extent that the whole wouldn't fit in position. Worse, there was some mould flash right where the radiator body should attach to the wing. So I cleaned off the flash & thinned the vertical walls of the wing section (if I'd thinned the radiators their fit might have been less good).

I then added the Eduard etch to the radiator faces (I'd done the flap & the fiddle bits earlier). Strangely, the etch part for the front radiator was massively oversize....

Which was easily cured by bending it across the top of the Airfix part

And a pic of the back end to finish!

Amazing how macro photos always make the tiniest gaps look enormous!

[Biggles87]

I think you might have got a "Friday afternoon" job there Edge. The only thing I did with the radiator was to send it slightly on a piece of flat wet and dry so that it did not stand out from the wing quite so much. The wing to fuselage joint looks good, as was mine, and yes, you're definitely getting there with the gaps around the canopy.

Cheers

John

[Edge]

Thanks John.

This build was as much about learning as anything else & I'm certainly learning how important patience is.

[PlaStix]

Good progress Edge despite the issues. I'm learning a lot to look out for from you and John - so thank you.

Kind regards,

Stix

[Biggles87]

A tip for you, I hope it's not too late. If you are are making an aircraft with a retractable tail wheel, glue it on when you join the fuselage halves otherwise it is very difficult to get it in place. Ask me how I know? I think the fixed tail wheel will be OK to leave til later.

Hope your canopy arrives soon.

Cheers

John

[Edge]

Thanks John. I've been away with work for a lot of this week, so no progress on the Spitfire. Maybe I'll be able to grab some time over the weekend.

I'm planning on building the other version to you, with the fixed tail wheel as I don't trust myself with any more cutting just yet!

I'll go through the post tomorrow and let you know on the canopy. Thanks again for your generosity.

[Edge]

Time for a bit of an update:

I found a few hours over the weekend to have a little play & decided that I'd like to give the cockpit a wash. So having watched a few tutorials on Youtube, I removed the already superglued-in pilot's office & sprayed everything with a couple of coats of Future, which was a first for me.

Leaving that overnight, I then applied a was of Windsor & Newton Burnt Umber oil, heavily thinned with their low odour thinner. Again, leaving this for the best part of a day, I wiped off the excess with a cotton bud dipped in thinner, then used a small paintbrush dampened with thinner to tidy up. I'm not 100% happy, but for a 1st attempt I can't complain:

I also carried on with adding the frustratingly tiny pieces of photoetch that come with the Eduard set. I managed to 'ping' one of the pieces from the landing gear so had to fabricate a replacement from very thin plastic card. Very frustrating, but I'm quite pleased with the result.

Finally, I gave everything I could think of, and that needed it, a blast of Alclad primer & either chrome (landing gear oleo's) or aluminium (radiators, wheel centres, prop) and added some more etch to the wheel wells & carb air intake

Next up will probably be cementing the fuselage halves together & adding the wings so hopefully my next update will look a little more Spitfire like!

[Edge]

After a busy week work-wise, I was able to grab some time with my Spitfire.

There doesn't seem to be much progress for the best part of 2 days at my desk-cum-modelling bench. I think that by using the Eduard cockpit & not ensuring it fitted perfectly that I have caused myself a few headaches with some misalignment & gaps I'm sure wouldn't have been there otherwise.

Firstly the fuselage halves had quite a gap either side of the cockpit opening

I resorted to pushing some Squadron white filler from the inside of the cowling to reduce my efforts at the front. Then it was a case of fill & sand from the outside in both areas.

Whilst the filler was drying I had a play with the resin True Details wheels. I'd already painted the centres with Alclad aluminium so it was time to break out the Montex mask set, which included masks for precisely this purpose. Unfortunately these are designed to fit the kit parts & were slightly too small for the aftermarket parts.

Fortunately I'd bought a couple of sets of leather punches from Ebay some time ago. I used the 6mm one to punch better fitting masks using some Tamiya tape and applied these before painting the tyres. My 1st choice of paint was vallejo Panzer Aces dark rubber, thinned with vallejo air brush thinner & sprayed through my airbrush. Unfortunately this mixture seemed to thicken into an unsprayable gloop no matter what I tried. I gave in with the vallejo thinner & tried good old Tamiya X-20A, which was no better. Finally I gave Xtracylics thinner a try & this was even worse! Giving it up as a bad job I used trusty Tamiya flat black, thinned with X-20A.

Next I masked the inside & outside of the canopies with the Montex set. This caused me some confusion as the instructions are vague as to which pieces to use on which of the sections. I worked through using trial & error (thankfully the masking material is pretty hardy) then painted the insides with interior green, finished with a few thin coats of flat to protect them.

The next obstacle was that the fit of the canopy pieces was affected by the additional airframe width I'd created by shoehorning in the Eduard set. I used clamps to push in the cockpit sides enough to align the glass sections before running some Mr Cement S into the gap, letting capillary action spread the glue across the joints. Once set I filled the gaps around the rear section I'd created earlier (by hacking out part required to use the open canopy). For this I used Squadron white again, wiping the excess away with some Mr Color thinner on a cotton bud - a tip I picked up on this site. This method leaves much less filler where it's not needed, so vastly speeds up the sanding and polishing process.

Plodding onwards, I attached the wing assembly & added the flaps in the closed position, where I'm trying to leave a tiny gap at the trailing edge to highlight that the flaps and wing sections are separate pieces & are not joined here. We'll see how that goes as the fill/sand/prime sessions go on!

My last obstacle (again self inflicted) came when I fitted the lower cowl. There was a large gap at the rear, which I'm not sure is of my making, but probably is! I added a piece of plastic strip to the rear of the Airfix part & sanded this to shape before gluing the part in place. Once again it was out with the Squadron white, thinner & cotton buds to tidy the seams.

And that's it for now. As I said, not a huge amount to show for almost a weekend's worth of effort, but I feel as if I'm crawling towards the priming stage slowly.

On a brighter note, whist I was in my office/model room, my 7 year old son was in his bedroom building the Airfix WW2 RAF Vehicle Set. The smell of tube glue took me back to when I started gluing my fingers to all manner of Airfix & Matchbox kits in the '70's! Best of all, he was following the instructions well & only needed help on the fiddly bits, which when you see how small some of those pieces are is great!

[Biggles87]

You've done a good job on the gap behind the cockpit which has now disappeared, and looking at your photos has reminded me that I did not remove the tiny pieces of masking from either side of the mirror mounting on the windscreen, I hope nobody's noticed on my RFI!

The lower cowling was not the best fitting part, it's also not quite wide enough and leaves a small step on either side which becomes less noticeable after painting as this is the demarcation between the upper and lower colours.

Keep on keeping on

Cheers

John

[Edge]

Thanks John. I did think the step either side of the cowl was of my making, so pleased to discover I may be innocent!

I've spent my lunch break fashioning a new intake for the nose (I'm sorry I don't know what it's an intake for) to replace the moulded lump that's standard. I'm quite pleased how a piece of aluminium (possibly!) from a tomato puree tube and half an hour with files, sanders & a Mission Models Multi-Tool has turned out. The real skill is going to be keeping it's shape as I handle the model from now on!

Edge

[PlaStix]

Fantastic progress Edge. You are doing a superb job with this one.

[Edge]

Just a quick update on a few little pieces done this evening.

Tail assembly cleaned & attached, with the elevators drooped as I've seen on some Spitfires parked at airshows. Bonnet bulges cleaned & fitted, and suddenly the front end is starting to look very war-like!

I've run a scriber along the panel lines to clean out some of the accumulated gunk & get ready for the next stage, which will be to go over the large parts with micromesh & then I can probably start to think about primer.

That's all for now!

[Biggles87]

That's looking really good. How long did it take you to get the little block in place between the elevators?

Cheers

John

[Edge]

There's supposed to be something between the elevators? Oh no - I'll have to check the instructions!

I did give up on the little fiddly bits that are meant to attach to the undercarriage legs (scissor links?). Both snapped as I tried to remove them from the sprue, despite being really careful. Actually, I'm surprised there aren't replacement in the Eduard set as the Airfix ones were pretty clunky.

To be fair, most of the parts have had some flash or mould seams that has to be cleaned off, and all have the annoying pebble dash finish. I'm loving the brutish looks that the Mk.XII has and that are becoming evident as I add more bits and pieces to the airframe.

Edge

[Biggles87]

There was virtually no flash on mine, so I think you've definitely been unlucky. I shouldn't worry about the scissor links, I'm pretty sure they were n't fitted on the Mk XII and if you missed the little block between the elevators, well I won't tell anyone if you don't.

John