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Sword Seafire Mk.XV (late) 1/72nd - HMS Glory, 1946 ***FINISHED 07/05/2018***


DaveyGair

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Decided to join this GB with (hopefully) a simple build to start with, Sword's 1/72nd Seafire Mk.XV. Just one sprue of grey plastic parts with one small clear and PUR exhausts and cannons. Going to do the NAS 806 Aussie Tour version, everything out the box as they say.

 

 

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Edited by DaveyGair
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  • DaveyGair changed the title to Sword Seafire Mk.XV (late) 1/72nd - HMS Glory, 1946
1 hour ago, Max Headroom said:

I’ll tag along if I may? I think the XV is my favourite Seafire.

 

Trevor

Sure Trevor, welcome aboard. I've always liked the look of the Griffon engine Spitfire/Seafires and this is my first model of one (for some reason :huh:!).

 

Davey.

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welcome aboard Davey and nice to see another Seafire (got it right twice now) in the GB.

 

It's a nice looking aircraft and those "bonnet" bulges give a slight mean look.....nice!

 

well good luck for the build and I hope it's an enjoyable one.

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Right then, after a bout of 'Alcohol poisoning' last weekend ( wedding do.... :unamused: ) and being knackered after child-minding grandkids all week (nowt to do with the afore-mentioned..... ok, I just binge drink these days!), AND after a couple of hours this morning having a walk around the gardens of a local National Trust House (Wallington Hall.... you have to keep the better half happy ;) ) got on with this eventually!

 

The cockpit parts are adequate for this scale, more than enough for me. I found a set of etch belts from somewhere so added them. Care has to be taken to clean everything up and test how the bulkheads fit into the fuselage halves but this is pretty much normal for a short run kit.

Gave them a coat of grey primer then interior green. The seat has some cushion detail moulded into the back, but I thought it would have been a plain metal tub, can anyone confirm there was upholstery?

 

More over this (child free) weekend.... hopefully.

 

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Great start on the Seafire and who doesn't love a Seafire...

 

You need to check the rear fuselage colour from the seat mounting backwards.  On the Spitfire and Seafire I, II & III I believe this was painted silver not interior green, I don't know about the XV so you'll need to check it..

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A little bit done this morning before getting visitors.

 

Painted some detail on the cockpit parts then a bit of a wash and dry brush.  

4 hours ago, Grey Beema said:

You need to check the rear fuselage colour from the seat mounting backwards.  On the Spitfire and Seafire I, II & III I believe this was painted silver not interior green, I don't know about the XV so you'll need to check it..

I couldn't definitively confirm this with a search on the internet, other builds of various marks of Seafire's I looked at were just green all the way long, so I'll go with that, not much will be seen after closing up anyway, but thanks for the info.

 

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Some people would add throttle levers and such, but I'm happy with this as is.

 

The fuselage and wing components needed a fair bit of clean-up, but its only a few minutes work with the edge of a sharp blade.

Typical is the before (port) and after (starboard) wheel well openings on the lower one piece wing half.

 

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Nice panel detail though.

 

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Gun shell ejector openings need erm.... opening!

 

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Got the airframe together today.

Much carving, filing and shaving of the wings, and I've managed to get them to fit somewhat. On test fitting, the lower wing fitted quite nicely into the fuselage, but the upper wings needed a fair bit of work to fit the lower wing and fuselage squarely and neatly. Still have a bit of sanding and a little bit of filling to the port front wing root to do. 

The cockpit needed a little filing to fit neatly but the fuselage joins lined up perfectly. The two piece upper nose parts fitted much better than expected.

 

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  • 1 month later...

I thought this would be a quick build? PAH! 

Lots of different things getting in the way of getting this done,  child-minding the grandkids really takes it out of you as well as them passing on their bugs! Anyway, lack of motivation played a part as well these last 2-3 weeks, but got back into it this week. Got to try to finish it this weekend as I'm off on holiday next week for two weeks, and I want to try to start my RAF 100 year GB when I get back!

 

Got the painting done, EDSG/DSlateG over Sky. In my hurry to strip the masking off pulled off both tail-planes! Also removed the canopy masking before I've done the varnish coats 🙄.

The canopy took some fettling to get right, then when I had glued it, it still didn't look right so took it off and tried again. It is narrower than the fuselage at the rear and I didn't notice it was slightly off-set till I started painting, but have just left it.

 

Pictures showing undercoat to final paint coats.

 

Not perfect but I'm too impatient to do much filing, filling and sanding!

 

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We're often our worst critics but, for what it's worth, I think it looks pretty neat.

(Having read of your troubles, I'm glad I wasn't tempted to get one of mine out the stash though.)

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I wouldn't be complying about that paint job, she looks great!! :thumbsup: The whole model is looking awesome, you sorted out those gaps nicely by the looks of the photos.

 

Looking forward to seeing her done.

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Looks lovely - nice to see it come together and the paint job looks great. Good work on the wing roots too. I have one of these brewing, but it's been a bit of a slog. Found I had too much dihedral on the wings and almost binned the whole thing, but then found a way to reduce the angle just about enough to be acceptable. Yours looks bang on though. Still mulling over which paint scheme to do mine: really want to do SW847 but I'm unsure what colours it is (I think it's black over sky with a high speed silver spinner) and even harder, what colour the stencilling is... https://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?114422-Seafire-XV-SW847

 

While I continue my hand-wringing, I'll enjoy watching your build come to a conclusion. The Seafire XV is such a pretty shape: a more refined and symmetrical version of the Spitfkre XII, with a hook.

 

Justin

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Okay, been getting on with final bits and pieces this weekend, I'm off to the Dominican on Friday so it had to be done, also, SWMBO was out for the day this fine bank holiday Monday, so spent a few hours finishing off all those fiddly details.

 

First off, whilst this has been a bit difficult (for me anyway) I'm pretty happy with the results, although I always cringe at the off set canopy, oh, and the offset under-nose air intake (it was moulded into the bottom wing half with just the front piece to add, pretty sure I aligned the wing ok, not really sure what happened?!)

 

The surface detail is really good, the main parts all fitted together ok, including the nose top. The wings were very difficult to get set right, and I'm not sure if the dihedral is perfect, but it'll do me.

 

The decals... Aah.... the decals. These are by Techmod and I've used theirs before in my Finnish 1/48th ME-109 G-2 KUTA build just a few months ago. I had the same problems, they are very tacky, and split very easily. Took a while to do the few main marking's.  I didn't use any stencilling. I tried doing the black walkway/handling lines first but these just broke up, gave up after that!

 

I just used the kit supplied parts for the wire guard in front of the tailwheel, so looks a bit naff but my (starting to get) shakey hands wouldn't have allowed anything else!

 

Lost the canopy mirror, dreaded carpet monster, and because of the afore-mentioned didn't bother trying to scratch one.

 

I have yet to figure a way to do the fine white line around the prop hub, but it'll get done sometime. Just did some light weathering, didn't want to go overboard, pardon the pun!

 

Thanks for all the support and comments, good luck everyone with your own builds.

 

Davey.

 

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Looks good Davey; far better than the one I did which started as a French plane then, after the decals broke up became a Canadian one then, after those decals broke up, suffer Cat E damage and was reduced to spares (me being reduced to tears).

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14 minutes ago, Beard said:

Looks good Davey; far better than the one I did which started as a French plane then, after the decals broke up became a Canadian one then, after those decals broke up, suffer Cat E damage and was reduced to spares (me being reduced to tears).

Cheers Beard, I was nearly reduced to tears when doing the decals but soldiered on. Yours weren't Techmod were they?

 

Davey.

 

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well done Davey, despite a couple of dramas you had its turned out to be a very tidy looking model! :thumbsup:

 

Hopefully the build was enjoyable and not too stressful, it was great to have you along.

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Looks really nice - well done. On the decals, I recall the trouble I had with the stencils on my Mark III, which were also by Techmod. Lost quite a few in that struggle and had to turn to Xtradecal for help. Really like the finish you've achieved, with that lustrous sheen. 

 

Justin

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