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Spitfire PR.Ia N3071 - Airfix 1/72


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Hippy Bathday Ced!!

Sorry I'm late to the party but I've been painting all day....walls, unfortunately.

Hope you had a great day!

Have to say Shorty #1 looks a right monster - are you sure he's not 48th scale?! :lol::D

Keith

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Nice interior work as usual Ced.

Happy Birthday!

Thanks Cookie :)

I agree, Ced: the cockpit looks great!

Cheers

Jaime

Thanks Jaime :)

Very nice work Ced, and another fantastic subject!

Sorry I am so late, busy few weeks it would appear

Rob

Hi Rob, glad you could join in and I hope work quietens down soon :)

Hippy Bathday Ced!!

Sorry I'm late to the party but I've been painting all day....walls, unfortunately.

Hope you had a great day!

Have to say Shorty #1 looks a right monster - are you sure he's not 48th scale?! :lol::D

Keith

Thanks Keith :D

Looking good Ced, nice work mate:)

Cheers,

Stew

Thanks Stew :)

Oh and happy birthday Ced!

Rob

Thanks Rob :)

I raised the required number of glasses from you all last night :drink::drink::frantic: and for some reason I'm feeling a little, er, fragile this morning. Can't think why... :zombie:

You might want to remove the gunsight, Ced. I don't think it would have one.

Thanks Simon, good point, now chopped off and i/p touched up.

I think that's all I'm going to trust myself with for the time being... grnghhhh.

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Thanks John :)

Feeling a bit better, enough to sand and finish the fuselage including sanding off the aerial position (I checked the reference shots) and the top light which I'll replace with Kristal later:

27057173300_6aa120502b_z.jpg

Untitled by Ced Bufton, on Flickr

Hmmm, better sand off the aerial post on the rudder too.

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Simon fitted a rudder actuator to his build so I thought I'd give it a try:

27262456411_5e5df5b458_z.jpg

Tiny by Ced Bufton, on Flickr

My next size rod was too big and that stuff's tiny - how do you glue it?? Dipped in Contacta and tweezered on. That's fifteen minutes of my life I won't get back and I'll be surprised if it's still there at the end. In future I think I'll ban anything I have to photograph with a macro lens.

Oh, and I've sanded off the aerial post on the rudder.

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Thanks Simon :) Stretched sprue is a technique I have yet to try... I'm (lazily) buying the packs of styrene at the moment.

Thanks Jaime, good tip :)

Feeling much less fragile this morning so I chopped off the inner wing locating pins and stuck the wings on with Humbrol liquid poly:

26740646033_a2494be404_n.jpg 27249506052_436be8da86_n.jpg

Untitled by Ced Bufton, on Flickr

I like this because it has a brush in the pot and doesn't flash off as quickly TET, but for some reason my new bottle doesn't seem to be sticking as well as the old one:

27250156522_327abd1857.jpg

Odd. The old bottle, now used for sprue soup, has a blue and grey label and the new one a white and yellow. Hmmm, perhaps they've changed the formula? Anyway, I ran some TET down the gap and pegged it again and when that was dry filled in the gun ports with some Humbrol filler:

26740735694_8665cc6149.jpg

I've also started tackling the scary canopy. As suggested I filled it with BluTak and chopped the main spare bits off with some small scissors - it's quite tough:

26740283284_44c052dfc3_n.jpg 26740313444_0865948744_n.jpg

I had a quick look on YouTube for a tutorial but could only find ones that said "chop off the spare and then sand to fit, checking often" so I guess that's it. The instructions don't really help as they show two parts to the canopies and the vac form is obviously in three bits. Anyway, I've completed the masking on the kit part and marked the waste areas of the vac form ready to shape it later:

27347698305_ef6130bb7c_n.jpg 27314587466_9c90f270fb_n.jpg

I guess I'll have to paint that by hand after fitting.

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I suppose you could mask it now, although you might need to mask the inside to.

Good luck with the cutting.

Edited to correct grammar.)

Edited by Beard
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Thanks Simon :)

Good idea... I could mask and spray it on the BluTak? I'll have a think.

A bit of glue, a bit more filler and suddenly there's a Spitfire ready for primer:

27278897841_a37b72362d_n.jpg 26742200064_0ccf0d99fb_n.jpg

Untitled by Ced Bufton, on Flickr

White primer for this one I think.

Radio 4 is currently playing a Soundstage programme about the Wildebeest migration so sorry, you get this again:

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Hi Ced,

Interested to see how you cut the vacform canopy, as I have a set for my Do 17z (in case the kit's aren't transparent enough). Good tips so far.

Cheers

Jaime

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Edited as I didn't refresh and missed your other posts.

The tail will come out very nicely once primed, it will smooth it out a treat. I hate close ups.... Poor light and far away for me every time....

Nice work sorting out the wings, is the white primer you use the same brand as your grey??

Vac form canopies are tricky to cut but look good on. I painted mine by hand as I was worried about putting a knife through it... But saying that I managed to do the same with my ju88 canopy last night.... You know you should go to bed when the pressure you think your appying is enough to just go through tape, but it actually goes through that the plastic and your finger. I think I got away with it though.

Very much looking like a spitfire

Rob

Edited by rob85
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27262456411_5e5df5b458_z.jpg

In future I think I'll ban anything I have to photograph with a macro lens.

I was just looking at this again Ced, & thinking what nice paving slabs Airfix have moulded there....!!! :winkgrin:

Keith

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Thanks Jaime :)

Thanks Rob - yep, Stynylrez white has been applied but Flickr is refusing to update my folders so no pics until it sorts itself out. Ju88? Where's the WiP?? :)

Thanks Keith :)

Glad you enjoyed the Wildebeest. 'Bird box Studio' have some great stuff on YouTube (always makes me chuckle) but they seem to have stopped about 5 years ago - shame.

Paving slabs? Indeed. I was re-scribing the lines earlier and thought "Hang on, these joins were supposed to have been puttied" so I checked the few reference shots and sure enough, few panel lines (let alone huge gaps). I've spent the afternoon washing Liquid Green Stuff into the panel lines and a few places where the filler hasn't worked.

Maybe Flickr will sort itself out and I can post some pics later (or maybe not?)

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I just caught up with this Ced. A very belated happy birthday!

This build has gone at an astonishing speed; well done that man. No compromise in quality of build either.

I have to say this adventure made me actually lol! Especially the 'off to the city dump' bit! :rofl:

I needed a flipping good laugh too, thanks :)

Thanks Keith and Simon, great advice :)

To avoid the resin seat (another "Ooh, need patience for that... later" part) the paint for the roundels arrived from Wonderland this morning (great service) so I thought I'd 'go toddler' for a bit and have some fun with paint:

27186124082_37cb37e902_z.jpg

Untitled by Ced Bufton, on Flickr

My mood is not at its best at the moment (I probably need more sleep) but I spent some 'happy minutes' with MS Word to print some labels for bottles. Nightmare. As an aged Software Engineer / Systems Designer I always get cross with this stuff. "Where the heck have they put that? I want to format the text so it should be there... no, it isn't." I should just write the things (if I could remember how to write).

I printed out the note I'd made from this thread which says:

Using Tamiya acrylics the following are good mixes:-

Dull Roundel Red - Mix of 75% flat Red (XF-7 ), 25% NATO Brown (XF-68)

Blue - Mix of 95% flat Blue (XF-8), 5% flat Black (XF-1)

Yellow - Flat Yellow (XF-3) with a tiny amount of flat Red (XF-7)

and gathered my pipettes, pots, Tamiya and Badger stirrers, kitchen towel and other implements of destruction and headed off to the City dump* started 'the Mix'.

Yellow. I have lots of yellow so I'm prepared to sacrifice the pot. I added "a tiny amount of flat Red (XF-7)". It then occurred to me that I have no idea what colour it should be, exactly, and as I don't have the odd £1,000 for a copy of 'the Book' I thought "Oh well" and just dipped in the stirrer I'd used for the red. And then a bit more from the little spoon.

I then realised it was a good job I'd done this first as I need red for this and for the...

Red. I want to save some red so I got a new empty pot and stuck a pipette in the stirred red paint. I need a 75% red to 25% brown so I reckoned 3ml of red and 1ml of brown. Then I realised that the paint coats the inside of the pipette and, if you don't get the measure right first time, you can no longer use it as a measure because you can't see where the paint is. Rats. (Arlo has got to the "I wanna kill" bit - very appropriate). Once I'd realised I wasn't going to get exactly 3ml I relaxed a bit and opened the other colour and added it to the mix. It didn't look right at all. I'd used the black. I am an idiot. Washed out the pot and started again with 3ml of red and 1ml of Brown (I checked twice)

Blue. Having lost the will to live by now and realising that I wasn't a character in 'Breaking Bad' and could just kind of mix stuff I decided the 95% blue, 5% black was going to be hard to measure properly so I out 3ml of blue in the empty pot and added about a 20th of the same amount of black.

When the masks arrive from Hannants I'll try the colours out on my paint mule.

That's me for now. I need a lie down.

* Showing my age. I bet, if you're of a similar generation, that you have 'Alice's Restaurant' in your head all day. I used to be able to do the whole 18 minutes from memory when I was younger. Now my memory's not that long, sadly.

Of course I now have it playing in the background.

I know everyone will have their own way with vac form canopies. There is one more method That I've tried and it works. Well, it has twice.

On both occasions I left the lower bulk of the canopy on and filled with Blue-tak as everyone has suggested. I know some people say never go near the canopy with a scalpel, but I do.

Upside down.

I use the back 'point' of a number 11 and extremely gently almost just 'trace' around the canopy base. I do this numerous times and eventually a groove appears and the action becomes a 'scoring' process. Eventually, scoring evenly (not really pressing, just scalpel weight) the canopies 'pop' out. :)

With both a Rob Taurus BF-109 canopy and a Special Hobby Vultee canopy it worked (although the latter is too wide for the model....).

I sanded any remaining waste off the edges with 1500 grit wet and dry glued to a lollipop stick to keep it level!

I wouldn't be sure how to 'slice' a vac canopy in the way yours needs; watching with great interest :popcorn:

Thanks again for another great WIP.

Best regards

Tony

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Well 'tis here old boy!

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235003318-oh-brother-not-another/

Only just posted it if honest.

Also on another thread of yours you asked for a pic of the bear I was looking after, here he is! He has 5 more days until his family pic him up and he will be missed

27286339091_3745dfe31c_k.jpgUntitled by robert mulvey, on Flickr

27088248752_006bad6c67_k.jpgUntitled by robert mulvey, on Flickr

27260131662_942b871bb9_k.jpgUntitled by robert mulvey, on Flickr

He is a Cocker - poo

Rob

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He's cute - love that first piccie!

I completely forgot you asked for pics of the bears Ced - I didn't have a camera with me when you posted, & I've got a week off from dog sitting duties this week,so I'll have to try next week!

K

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Thanks Tony - good tip for the canopy :)

Hi Rob - lovely bear - he looks really cute! One of my guys has a couple of Cockerpoos, nice family dogs (and they don't moult apparently). :)

Thanks Keith :)

Speaking of pics, Flickr seems to be uploading OK now, although I may have lost a couple of shots. I'll have to watch that in the future; if the pic doesn't appear in my album I'll use the iPhone camera and upload later. Here are a few of progress today:

27287045141_b7fdbdca88_n.jpg 27082080480_7d2144f8c0_n.jpg

Untitled by Ced Bufton, on Flickr

Liquid Green Stuff is great for this sort of thing - if you wet sand it and it clears up well AND fills little gaps. Just watch out for a bit of shrinkage (or missed bits).

After a few touch ups I think it's ready for the next stage:

26749502574_ecfafa6856_z.jpg

Untitled by Ced Bufton, on Flickr

I've since done another little sand on those lumpy bits.

I'm not sure whether to apply more primer or just go for the top coat and accept the 'pre-shading'. Might be interesting?

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