Supermarine Spitfire F Mk.22 - Airfix 1/72 - ***Finished and in the Gallery***

[Troy Smith]

3 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

I think there is rather less than a mm difference being put into the work inside the cockpit.  After such excellent detail why spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar?  (Allowing for inflation, of course.)

Cost?  Availability?  A look at the Freightdog site does not show this being available  at the moment.

Also  @PlaStix said he had the kit and etch in the stash, and may not want to then buy anything else,  I was just trying to clarify the difference between the prop types,  and that is diameter,  as opposed to a shape issue.   An incorrectly shaped blade will show up as a glitch, 11 ft in is works out 46.6mm 72nd,  10'5" as  44mm, so unless displayed next to another kit, is not a particularly obvious.  A quick look at mine suggest it does not scream wrong at me,  but I don't have the Freightdog correction. 

Faults in kits are useful to know, along with how much of a fault, and how easy it is to fix,  but just saying something is faulty without explaining why is not particularly helpful.

 

Also, was my assessment of the wheel fault correct, a quick compare of the Eduard vs Airfix hubs show the Airfix to noticeably larger, and the Eduard to have more refined.  I don't know if Plastix has these as spares, but as they are surplus parts for most Eduard Spitfires, spares box must be awash with them.

[PlaStix]

19 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

And in my very best Eric Morecambe "you can't see the join!" Well done that man

Thank you again Dave!

 

@Troy Smith and @Graham Boak

Thank you both very much for your support and ideas for improving my project. I think I am going to manage with the kit prop. Like Troy, I checked out Freightdog Models' site and the replacement isn't currently in stock. In the current circumstances I'm not really looking to order stuff anyway. With regards the wheels; I do have one 1/72nd Eduard Mk.IX boxing - I can use parts 25, 23, 2 and 1, I think, from these:

 

 

I have been doing a little bit on this build this morning - primarily starting with attaching the wings. In the past I have had the odd issue with getting the upper wing root joint to look okay when it has had a similar assembly sequence to this Airfix kit - two upper wing parts and a single lower wing section. I've managed, in the past, to get largish gaps in places. So a while back I started to join the upper wing sections to the fuselage sides first. Port side upper section glued in place and setting:

 

You can see he how the joint looks after a while:

 

The starboard wing has now also been glued in place and I have left it setting.

 

Comments and suggestions welcome.

 

Kind regards,

 

Stix

[wimbledon99]

Hi Stix,

 

This is coming along beautifully! The etch really enhances the build and I particularly like the 'save' on the elevator; flawless!!

 

 

 

[giemme]

Nice progress Stix

 

 I forgot about your method of attavching wings to Spitfire kits - very effective

 

Ciao

[almac]

Nice work on the wings Stix. I wish I had seen your method before I did mine. I did it as per the instructions and ended up with a poor join with a noticeable step at the wing root.

 

Cheers Allan 

[PlaStix]

5 hours ago, wimbledon99 said:

Hi Stix,

This is coming along beautifully! The etch really enhances the build and I particularly like the 'save' on the elevator; flawless!!

Hi Nigel. Thank you very much - I think I got a bit lucky with the elevator thanks to Dave Swindell.

 

2 hours ago, giemme said:

Nice progress Stix

I forgot about your method of attaching wings to Spitfire kits - very effective

Ciao

Hi Giorgio and thank you. Yes I opted for this method of attaching the wings a while back thanks to the wing root joint being quite tricky some times.

 

2 hours ago, almac said:

Nice work on the wings Stix. I wish I had seen your method before I did mine. I did it as per the instructions and ended up with a poor join with a noticeable step at the wing root.

Cheers Allan 

Hi Allen and thank you. Yes it's a shame I didn't post mine a bit earlier.....sorry.

 

Both upper wings now attached. The joints are looking okay so far:

 

 

I also got the PE radiator parts painted with thinned Revell's Anthracite, dry-brushed with Revell's Aluminium and then installed:

 

 

Before attaching the lower wing part I made sure I remembered to install the clear plastic part for the lights and got it painted:

 

Well the three days of this weekend meant I got chance to do some work on this but it might be a while now before I get back to this project as work beckons again tomorrow!

 

Comments and suggestions welcome.

 

Kind regards,

 

Stix

[giemme]

I had to go back and double check the scale for this build, Stix - flawless, smooth job    

 

Ciao

[Bedders]

That is looking really rather lovely.

 

Justin

 

[Johnson]

Glad I caught up with your build Stix, lovely work and a very informative thread too.

Cheers,

[PlaStix]

On 10/05/2020 at 21:35, giemme said:

I had to go back and double check the scale for this build, Stix - flawless, smooth job    

Ciao

You are way too kind Giorgio! 

 

On 11/05/2020 at 10:32, Bedders said:

That is looking really rather lovely.

Justin

Thank you very much Justin.

 

On 11/05/2020 at 12:50, Johnson said:

Glad I caught up with your build Stix, lovely work and a very informative thread too.

Cheers,

Hi Charlie and thank you very much.

 

Right - thought I'd better update this thread a bit. Once again I have been struggling to find time to do much on this but I have found the odd bit of time here and there over past 10 days since my last update.

 

I had a look at the differences between the wheels provided in this kit by Airfix and some spare ones in the Eduard Mk.IX kit I have - as suggested by @Troy Smith and @Graham Boak:

The Eduard ones are very slightly smaller but much more finely detailed. I like the flattened tire effect on the Airfix ones though.

 

Comparison of the two sets of wheels after the Eduard ones are assembled - and a 5p to show how small the wheels actually are!:

 

Then I got the main lower wing section glued in place. The fit was okay but a little clean up and filler was required here and there:

 

 

 

Next up was fitting the PE parts to the undercarriage legs:

 

A quick photo of all the parts still to be assembled:

 

You are probably not going to be able see very well but I did paint the wells for the radiators with the underside grey colour:

 

Radiator units glued in place:

 

Then the tailplanes and rudders were glued in place and some final tidying up done:

 

 

You might also be able to see I have removed the small unit behind the headrest armour. The PE part was not sitting right in the remaining plastic part so I am going to try and use all the PE parts for this.

 

Next up will be pre-shading and then painting.

 

Comments and suggestions welcome.

 

Kind regards,

 

Stix

[giemme]

She's looking pretty smooth, Stix    

 

Ciao

[Cookenbacher]

That's looking great Stix, nice PE work especially.

 

I've been told that the Eduard wheels are too small, but I could never tell, but your comparison is convincing.

[Bedders]

On the question of wheels, it's worth noting that as far as I can ascertain those on the 22/24 were bigger than the three-spokers on the Merlin versions. I was at Hendon a few months ago and compared their XVI and their 24 for wheel sizes. Not with a tape measure of course, but the difference was clear. As far as I can see the late Merlin versions' three-spokers used a lower profile tyre than on the earlier 5- and 4-spokers, to enable the wheel assembly to fit into the original size 'ole in the wing. The 22/24 had a new wing with a bigger 'ole, so could spash out on shiny new rims and boots. All of which means it's probably best to stick with the Airfix wheels (or maybe use Freightdog ones?)

 

Justin

[Dansk]

wow your work is so amazing. Really inspirational!

[wimbledon99]

7 minutes ago, Dansk said:

wow your work is so amazing. Really inspirational!

 

Makes me wanna go out and buy a Spitfire kit but I have so many other planned builds

[Col.]

Good work  

Have you tried test fitting the undercarriage legs into their sockets yet? I'd issues with that aspect during both my projects and don't want to see you damage that lovely detail having to wrestle with the parts in order to make them fit.

[Hewy]

Hello stix, your building up a little stunner here, smashing job pal

[PlaStix]

Hi. First off I must apologise for not updating this more regularly but everything has been a bit odd recently!! I have been working on it occasionally as you will see below.

 

On 21/05/2020 at 16:08, giemme said:

She's looking pretty smooth, Stix    

Ciao

Thank you Giorgio.

 

On 21/05/2020 at 16:32, Cookenbacher said:

That's looking great Stix, nice PE work especially.

I've been told that the Eduard wheels are too small, but I could never tell, but your comparison is convincing.

Hi Cookie and thank you. Thanks for the tip about the Eduard wheels and yes, when I checked, they did look too small on the kit.

 

On 21/05/2020 at 17:34, Bedders said:

On the question of wheels, it's worth noting that as far as I can ascertain those on the 22/24 were bigger than the three-spokers on the Merlin versions. I was at Hendon a few months ago and compared their XVI and their 24 for wheel sizes. Not with a tape measure of course, but the difference was clear. As far as I can see the late Merlin versions' three-spokers used a lower profile tyre than on the earlier 5- and 4-spokers, to enable the wheel assembly to fit into the original size 'ole in the wing. The 22/24 had a new wing with a bigger 'ole, so could spash out on shiny new rims and boots. All of which means it's probably best to stick with the Airfix wheels (or maybe use Freightdog ones?)

Justin

Hi Justin and thank you - I did end up sticking with the Airfix wheels even though the Eduard wheels were very finely detailed, they looked way too small.

 

On 21/05/2020 at 22:27, Dansk said:

wow your work is so amazing. Really inspirational!

Hi Paul. Thank you but you are way too kind.

 

On 21/05/2020 at 22:36, wimbledon99 said:

Makes me wanna go out and buy a Spitfire kit but I have so many other planned builds

Hi Nigel and thank you. Well if you decide you do want a Spitfire kit I can vouch for this one as being a nice kit and it can usually be bought quite cheaply.

 

On 22/05/2020 at 21:49, Col. said:

Good work  

Have you tried test fitting the undercarriage legs into their sockets yet? I'd issues with that aspect during both my projects and don't want to see you damage that lovely detail having to wrestle with the parts in order to make them fit.

Hi Col. and thank you for the tip. After you mentioned this I spent a bit of time trimming some off the top of the legs joint away and it really helped - so thank you!

 

On 26/05/2020 at 06:41, Hewy said:

Hello stix, your building up a little stunner here, smashing job pal

Thank you very much Glynn.

 

Right - over the past couple of weeks I have been doing a bit on this whenever I got chance. After the photos from the 21st May I first got the pre-shading on - very thinned Revell's Anthracite applied with a fine pointed brush:

 

 

This is how it looked before I started getting the light grey on the undersides:

 

 

First coat of thinned Revell's Aqua Light Grey applied with a medium flat brush:

 

Second coat on but the pre-shading was still a bit too visible for my liking:

 

Third coat of Light Grey applied:

I was quite pleased with the effect at this point.

 

 

 

Then I applied the first coat of thinned Humbrol Acrylic's Ocean Grey:

It did not go on well at all! It seemed a bit oily and very patchy in it's finish. I was quite concerned.

 

Luckily the second coat went on much better and the earlier problem seemed to have been sorted:

 

 

Then I applied thinned acrylic Humbrol's US Dark Green. I first painted the outlines very faintly using very watery Dark Green which I applied with a fine pointed brush. I infilled between the lines using a medium flat brush:

 

 

This photo of the undersides is to show how the panel lines look when very thinned Revell Gunship Grey is applied into them using a fine pointed brush - the underside of the starboard wing has had it applied the port side (on the right in the photo) has not:

It's very subtle but I think it works:

 

Upper surface panel lines had very thinned Anthracite applied into them using a fine pointed brush:]

 

Here you can see I painted the Sky tail band. I masked off the area and then stippled and dry-brushed on the thinned Humbrol paint:

 

 

I dislike applying the walkway line decals so opted to paint them. The individual sections were masked and then I used thinned Revell's Anthracite which I used very thinned and stippled it on with a bit of dry-brushing at the end:

 

 

You can see how the paint is applied here:

 

 

 

And the result:

 

 

Now I was getting to a point where I was going to need to apply the decals - but before this I needed to get some Pledge on (newer version of Klear). The only problem was I wasn't going to have any way to hold the kit while I applied it. So out came the drill and a pair of cocktail sticks:

 

Pledge applied with a wide flat brush:

 

You can also probably see that I had also applied some light weathering before putting the Pledge on - including the exhaust and oil stains.

 

 

 

Comments and suggestions welcome.

 

Kind regards,

 

Stix

[Cookenbacher]

Beautiful work Stix, your painting skills never cease to amaze me.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

I agree with Cookie 110% If I could do this I wouldn't need my two airbrushes. 

Edited June 7, 2020 by Corsairfoxfouruncle

[Johnson]

That's some work with a brush Stix, Lovely!

[JosephLalor]

On 5/10/2020 at 1:00 PM, PlaStix said:

 

I have been doing a little bit on this build this morning - primarily starting with attaching the wings. In the past I have had the odd issue with getting the upper wing root joint to look okay when it has had a similar assembly sequence to this Airfix kit - two upper wing parts and a single lower wing section. I've managed, in the past, to get largish gaps in places. So a while back I started to join the upper wing sections to the fuselage sides first. Port side upper section glued in place and setting:

 

 

You can see he how the joint looks after a while:

 

 

Stix

That's been my preferred method of avoiding wing-root seam filling for some time.  I generally do a test fit first, in case I'll end up with too much dihedral.  If that looks like being the case I'll apply a shim first and file flush, then attach the wings.  Putty really is a measure of last resort for me.

Edited June 7, 2020 by JosephLalor

[giemme]

Wow, that was quite an update, Stix!

 

Your usual impeccable paint work, which you definitely brought to art level!

 

Ciao

[GREG DESTEC]

Looking great Stix 👍

 

Fantastic brush painting!

 

Cheers Greg 

[John Laidlaw]

Absolutely lovely brushwork!