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Seafire 1b Kit Advice


fishplanebeer

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Dear All,

 

I'm thinking of buying the CMR 72nd scale kit of the Seafire 1b but have no previous experience of this makers products so wondered if anyone has already been down this route and could comment on how good the kit is as it is not cheap at £24+.

 

I've also never built a resin kit before so are there any things to bear in mind, such as the correct adhesives to use, when building and painting the model I wonder?

 

Any/all advice very welcome before I take the plunge as I'm also interested in the CMR Spitfire XII, when it eventually arrives at the Big H, but not sure how accurate their kits are generally and how complex they are to build for someone with modest skills.

 

Regards

Colin.

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I don't like resin kits but CMR stuff is generally okay. 

Stick it together with 5-min epoxy, which gives you a bit of adjustment time, or cyano for small parts. Avoid sanding dust - wear a mask and preferably wet-sand only.

Personally I'd go the route of the Freightdog kit, which is the KP injection-moulded Vb repackaged with Freightdog's own conversion bits and decals.

https://www.freightdogmodels.co.uk/freightdog-1-72-supmarine-seafire-mk-ib-injection-moulded-kit.html

 

This thread will give you an impression of what the KP Vb is like:

 

Edited by Work In Progress
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1 hour ago, fishplanebeer said:

Dear All,

 

I'm thinking of buying the CMR 72nd scale kit of the Seafire 1b but have no previous experience of this makers products so wondered if anyone has already been down this route and could comment on how good the kit is as it is not cheap at £24+.

 

I've also never built a resin kit before so are there any things to bear in mind, such as the correct adhesives to use, when building and painting the model I wonder?

 

Any/all advice very welcome before I take the plunge as I'm also interested in the CMR Spitfire XII, when it eventually arrives at the Big H, but not sure how accurate their kits are generally and how complex they are to build for someone with modest skills.

 

Regards

Colin.

 

Stay away from the Spit XII, it does not look like a proper Spit. Fuselage far too fat and short. Nose too narrow, so much that the spinner is too large.

 

I haven't see the Seafire 1b, but have a CMR Spiteful F Mk XIV, which is the worst kit I have ever attempted. The worst fault was two fuselage halves of unequal length. The undercarriage legs snapped and the canopy bears no resemblance to the real thing.

 

Save your money and buy Eduard Spitfires, they are a joy to build and accurate too

 

/Finn

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26 minutes ago, Work In Progress said:

Where are these 1/48 Eduard Spitfire XII and Seafire Ib kits, then?

Was talking about 1/72, of course, and trying promote the idea of building kits that actually fits, are accurate and available.

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Thank you all for the advice which has just saved me a few pounds as I've gone for the Freightdog one instead, £8 cheaper!

 

I do have a KP 'Aces' Mk Vb in my Spitfire/Seafire stash and was very impressed with it when first viewed so now looking forward to getting to grips with the Seafire adaptation, plus adding all the extras it will come with to my expanding Spitfire spares box.

 

Shame about the Mk XII though as there is no other sensible alternative in this scale that my modelling skills could handle, even the Brigade one which I attempted several years ago without success. Just a pity Airfix have never seen fit to down size their 48th scale XII as I think it is one of the best looking and certainly most over-looked versions.

 

Thanks again.

Colin.

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Didn't Freightdog end up with the molds for the Paragon resin  sets? If so, they might want to consider reworking the molds/masters for the Paragon Spitfire Mk XII conversion set for either the Eduard Mk IX or Mk VIII kit, depending on which production batch a modeler wanted to build  their Mk XII from. I have one, and it is outstanding, but was made for the Hasegawa Mk VIII/IX, which has fuselage length/profile  issues, but is not too difficult to correct. As the Mk XII is so popular with modelers, I would think it would be a big seller for Colin. I also have the CMR Mk XII, and it is very accurate, although one of their earlier efforts; I have yet to work up the nerve to do an all resin kit, so will most likely use my Paragon conversion on an injected kit. I've pretty  much given up hope that Airfix or Eduard will do one, but it might make a good candidate for Arma Hobby, as they could do a Mk XII and a Seafire XV or Seafire 17 boxing. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)

Mike

 

I apologize for the thread drift, but I didn't bring up the subject, and it's such a darned handsome Spitfire, in my opinion!

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39 minutes ago, 72modeler said:

Didn't Freightdog end up with the molds for the Paragon resin  sets?

AFAIK, @Neil who was/is Paragon, still has all the moulds.    He got a new job a few years ago and no longer had time to do Paragon.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Troy Smith said:

AFAIK, @Neil who was/is Paragon, still has all the moulds.

Thanks for the correct information; sure do wish the Paragon sets could be made available again,  as every one of them were of the highest quality and very accurate. I'm glad I was able to get most of them before they went OOP. I'm grateful that Neil provided them to us.

Mike

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8 hours ago, fishplanebeer said:

Shame about the Mk XII though as there is no other sensible alternative in this scale that my modelling skills could handle [...]

 

It's not too hard to convert a Sword Seafire XV into a Spitfire XII, I'm doing one at the moment and my modelling skills are very basic.

 

I'm using the wings from a scrapped AZ MkIX, which fit with almost no fettling, all the other bits are from the spares box. This explains in more detail, and has another method of getting the wings:

 

Edited by Beard
to correct spelling.
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18 hours ago, fishplanebeer said:

Dear All,

 

I'm thinking of buying the CMR 72nd scale kit of the Seafire 1b but have no previous experience of this makers products so wondered if anyone has already been down this route and could comment on how good the kit is as it is not cheap at £24+.

 

I've also never built a resin kit before so are there any things to bear in mind, such as the correct adhesives to use, when building and painting the model I wonder?

 

Any/all advice very welcome before I take the plunge as I'm also interested in the CMR Spitfire XII, when it eventually arrives at the Big H, but not sure how accurate their kits are generally and how complex they are to build for someone with modest skills.

 

Regards

Colin.


I’ve built a number of CMR resin Spitfire kits. I found them quite easy to build and a great entry into resin kits. The detail is quite good but the the smaller bits are very fragile. 
 

Filling may be necessary on the fuselage seams. I learned on my first one that using a CA+baby powder mix (my preference) was too hard and the resin gave before the filler. Since then I use car body fillers (bondo) and lacquer thinners to smooth and wipe away excess. 
 

Highly recommended (but I’ve not built the XII yet). 
 

Tim

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My understanding is that the Mk XII was essentially a Vc airframe with stronger engine bearers to take the increased weight of the Griffon III engine and all had clipped wings along with the later pointed (enlarged) rudder plus smaller cannon bulges covering the cannon magazines (not sure if that is just upper or lower blisters or both). Originally they had a fixed tail wheel but later ones had the Mk VIII tail unit where it was retractable. All had a 4 blade prop of reduced diameter. 

 

I think the Seafire XV had the Griffon VI engine fitted but retained the same 4 blade prop of 10' 5" diameter so the engine/nose/spinner dimensions would be exactly as per the Spitfire XII presumably.

 

On that basis I'm assuming that mating a new engine/nose etc. from a Seafire XV kit to a donor Spitfire Vc kit would produce the required result, just a question of which kits are available at present and then adding the pointed rudder from the spares box. However the only Seafire XV I'm aware of is the Sword version which is only available as part of their 4 kit boxing at present. A bit pricey just for a nose unless I can find a second had example, so I'm off to search tinternet to see what I can find.

 

Thanks again for all the replies and links.

 

Regards

Colin.

 

 

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Sorry to pester but have just found a Seafire XV for sale made by Jays Model Kits from New Zealand but have never heard of them previously so has anyone been tempted by any of their offerings and able to say what they are like please?

 

Regards

Colin.

 

 

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18 minutes ago, fishplanebeer said:

On that basis I'm assuming that mating a new engine/nose etc. from a Seafire XV kit to a donor Spitfire Vc kit would produce the required result,

More work  than you need, just remove the Seafire parts from the Seafire fuselage, which are the external plates and hook provision.  

 

A sefire XV is eay to make into a XII, remove naval bits,  add pointed rudder and magneto bulge to upper cowling is about it.

 

7 minutes ago, fishplanebeer said:

a Seafire XV for sale made by Jays Model Kits from New Zealand

It's the Ventura kit.

Ventura did a wide range of Spitfire and Seafire kits about 20 years ago, they are limited run kit, externally good, but require a lot of clean up of the bits.

Have a search about for info them.

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Just now, fishplanebeer said:

Sorry to pester but have just found a Seafire XV for sale made by Jays Model Kits from New Zealand but have never heard of them previously so has anyone been tempted by any of their offerings and able to say what they are like please?

 

Regards

Colin.

 

 

 

Jays kits are the old Ventura kits so if you search for this company you'll find several opinions, including plenty in this same forum.

I have their Seafire XV in an original Ventura box (and other Ventura Spitfires) and they are "old school" short run kits. They need a lot of preparation work, expecially to remove the large sprue gates but if this is done correctly the parts fit better than one may expect. The hard plastic used means that a good set of tools is very useful, some areas need the removal of a lot of plastic !

These kits have quite a good surface detail but they lack many smaller details, like antennas and even the gun barrel fairings. Not a problem if you have spares, otherwise can be annoying. Canopy is in vacuform by Falcon, a beautifully clear part but still a vacuform canopy, something not everybody is happy with.

Personally today I'd favour the Sword kit but if you can get the Jay/Ventura kit for cheap and only mean to use the nose you can go for it... keeping in mind that you will have to remove the larger air intake under the cowling for a Mk.XII. This may leave quite a gap that you'll have to fill somehow.

In general today all Ventura kits have been overcome by better moulds. They can still be built into very nice models, but the work needed to get there is not of the kind I'd recommend to a beginner. Yes, Sword kits are also short-run but the technology used in these is much more advanced than the one that gave us the Ventura range and it shows.

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13 minutes ago, Troy Smith said:

It's the Ventura kit.

Ventura did a wide range of Spitfire and Seafire kits about 20 years ago, they are limited run kit, externally good, but require a lot of clean up of the bits.

Have a search about for info them.

 

But are they really externally good ????

I long held the common view that Ventura kits were the most accurate kits around but in the last few years I've changed my mind quite a bit about this. It all started when I compared all Mk.IX kits in my stash at the time of the issue of the newest Airfix kit and found that the Ventura kit shared the same fuselage length issues of the Hasegawa IX.

Later I compared the Ventura FR.47 with the Spitfire Mk.22 and the differences were not small.

With these doubts in mind I just compared their Seafire XV fuselage with the Eduard Mk.IX... (the pros of working from home....)

Of course they are different variant so I focused on the rear fuselage and found that the Ventura kit is shorter by quite a bit. At the same time it compared well with.. the notoriously short Hasegawa kit.

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5 hours ago, fishplanebeer said:

My understanding is that the Mk XII was essentially a Vc airframe with stronger engine bearers to take the increased weight of the Griffon III engine and all had clipped wings along with the later pointed (enlarged) rudder plus smaller cannon bulges covering the cannon magazines (not sure if that is just upper or lower blisters or both). Originally they had a fixed tail wheel but later ones had the Mk VIII tail unit where it was retractable. All had a 4 blade prop of reduced diameter. 

 

I think the Seafire XV had the Griffon VI engine fitted but retained the same 4 blade prop of 10' 5" diameter so the engine/nose/spinner dimensions would be exactly as per the Spitfire XII presumably.

 

On that basis I'm assuming that mating a new engine/nose etc. from a Seafire XV kit to a donor Spitfire Vc kit would produce the required result, just a question of which kits are available at present and then adding the pointed rudder from the spares box. However the only Seafire XV I'm aware of is the Sword version which is only available as part of their 4 kit boxing at present. A bit pricey just for a nose unless I can find a second had example, so I'm off to search tinternet to see what I can find.

 

Thanks again for all the replies and links.

 

Regards

Colin.

 

 

 

The rhinoplasty method means you're using two kits to make one, the conversion method uses one. You also don't have to worry about too much cutting and there's no potential problem with the nose not fitting the fuselage.

 

The Sword 5-in-1 boxing can be found for just over £40 (including postage), that's £8 a  kit. Less, as the box includes an almost complete Spitfire VC.

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On 11/4/2020 at 8:32 PM, FinnAndersen said:

Was talking about 1/72, of course, and trying promote the idea of building kits that actually fits, are accurate and available.

Okay, where are the 1/72 ones then?

The question  was not "from whom can i buy a kit of an aircraft different from the ones I want to build"

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6 hours ago, Work In Progress said:

Okay, where are the 1/72 ones then?

The question  was not "from whom can i buy a kit of an aircraft different from the ones I want to build"

True.

 

Fact is, that there are no good Spitfire XII at the moment, so if you want to build such one you will have to compromise.

 

I'll try a last time: My idea is that you will get more modelling joy out of doing a stock kit. It's  much less work, the painting and finishing is the same and voila, you will have a finished model in no time.

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1 hour ago, Welkin said:

We seem to have come a long way from the Seafire Ib, which was the original question.

did we?

On 11/4/2020 at 7:23 PM, fishplanebeer said:

I'm also interested in the CMR Spitfire XII,

 

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On 11/5/2020 at 12:01 AM, 72modeler said:

Didn't Freightdog end up with the molds for the Paragon resin  sets? 

 

Nope, afraid not, I sold none of the Paragon Designs range to anybody. I still have, and own, all of the patterns/masters, photo-etch artwork, moulds for the resin components, vac-form moulds etc etc. I retained all of those elements, and they are still in storage. Admittedly, some of the sets have now been superseded by injection kits, or other aftermarket sources.

 

Although, it must be said, I have mentioned more than once, that it has crossed my mind, several times, to 'get back into it' in some form or other!  :D

 

 

B)

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1 hour ago, Neil said:

Although, it must be said, I have mentioned more than once, that it has crossed my mind, several times, to 'get back into it' in some form or other!  :D

Do so, you are sorely missed.

 

If you want proof, make a search here on BM, a comment of "Didn't Paragon do this?" or something to that effect is seen very often.

 

/Finn

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