Tamiya 1/48 Spitfire Mk.I

[JeroenS]

Still, almost done! Like you said, it's good fun to be engrossed in a model over the period of a couple of days. It looks good and will look even better when you finish it. Just a little more work and it'll be done. I say go for it!

[Olmec Head]

11 hours ago, Natter said:

 

Time sadly, there were still a couple of clocks to go.

 

 

No, I didn't know for certain.  After your post I looked through my Osprey Spitfire book again, and true enough there were no stubs on BoB aircraft.  Were these barrel extensions or blast tubes, or were different barrels used on the later Mk1s?

Natter, the blast tube protuberances were on early Spitfires prior to WW2 and were removed from later Sep 1939 onwards.  Tamiya seemed to have kept them on their original kit for some reason.  It may not be worth removing them although it might be difficult to put the patches over them.  The Spitfire looks very good by the way and better than I normally achieve after 2 weeks!

[Threadbear]

Excellent work on this Tamiya Spitfire. Makes my prolonged build of my example rather shameful!!! 

[JeroenS]

@NatterPlease update this thread as you're finishing it, I'd like to see it progressing 🙂 

[Natter]

Hey All, as I missed the deadline I didn't post anything else, but as requested here we are.

 

I, errr, misremembered - yes, that's it, misremembered, to paint the fuselage band when I did the underside and then the upper camouflage.  I masked it up and gave it a quick spray of Tamiya Sky, then did the whole model with a couple of coats of Mr Color GX100 gloss ready for decals.  That whole process only took about an hour and a half.

 

Que the disaster.  The Tamiya kit's decals are like cardboard and conform like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner.  There are white discs to go under the rondels, and after four attempts at getting them to settle under Micro Sol I took them off.  In trying to get the roundels straight on to the surface I damaged both the Type Bs and the Type As where they wouldn't settle over the bumps on the wings.  I tried to mask over the left wing underside roundel to spray repairs, and despite de-tacking the tape so it barely stuck to anything, it clamped itself firmly to the decal.  Pants:

 

 

I found a pair of roundels of the same size on the sheet for my Matchbox 1/32 Tiger Moth, though the colours and proportions were a bit off.  The speckles on the blue are on the decal, not from anything I did.  Close up its bad, from a distance it'll have to do.  Before trying to put them on I removed the shell case deflector fairings.  Maybe it's less accurate, but at least the decals went down.  The upper Type Bs were touched up with a fine brush.

 

 

Lesson learned - don't use older Tamiya decals; use aftermarket or mask and spray from the outset.

 

Decal disaster 2 - silvering to the max.  No matter what I tried, be it half a dozen applications of Micro Sol, pressing with my fingers, rubbing with cotton buds; nothing worked.  This is how it will be.  In the cabinet it will be less visible, and the model will be another finished, but that confirms the lesson about using older Tamiya decals.  Not since the Ventura decals on my 1/72 Israeli P-51 have I found decals so bad.

 

 

The letters are from a generic set I had in the spares folder.  I should have removed the film from the centre, I did on the later letters I applied and it made a big difference.  They're oodles better than the Tamia letters though.  I should have known there would be a problem, even the model depicted on the box has silvered decals!  How long did I spend on the decals?  Over eight hours!  Normally decals go on, get a gentle rub over to expel excess liquid and job done, but not this was traumatic.

 

A wash of various AK Panelliners and a spray of Xtracrylic matt varnish was applied and the panel lines where the decals just wouldn't conform were added gently with a sharp pencil.  That was about three hours work.  I am ready to assemble the final bits...

 

[JeroenS]

I had the same issue with the decals on the new tooling of this kit I built earlier this year. These decals are thick! I applied microsol (very) liberally until they wrinkled and stayed that way. I put everything away to start the removal in the morning. Then, come next morning, the decals were perfectly smooth and conformed to the surface!

[Natter]

2 hours ago, JeroenS said:

I had the same issue with the decals on the new tooling of this kit I built earlier this year. These decals are thick! I applied microsol (very) liberally until they wrinkled and stayed that way. I put everything away to start the removal in the morning. Then, come next morning, the decals were perfectly smooth and conformed to the surface!

 

These wrinkled a bit, smoothed out and stayed flat, absolutely refusing to conform to the panel lines.  It's a shame to hear the new decals aren't much better.  If the new mould is an improvement on this kit it must be a cracker because this was beautifully engineered, if a bit of a mish mash of early and later Mk.1s.  Anyway, I have done another couple of hours with the undercarriage fitted and drying, the aerial part completed, the nav lights done, a little bit of exhaust staining and the patches over the gun ports.  The patches are tissue soaked in diluted PVA (an idea from our Armour modelling fraternity) and painted with a mix of Vallejo Model Color paints.

 

 

I am on duty for making homemade soup tonight so I'll be back later...

[Olmec Head]

Despite the decals problems (i think Tamiya used 1mm polythene for their transfers for this kit), it looks good to me and I think that you removed the gun barrel stubs.

[Natter]

Soup duty.  The Christmas vegetables are now used up.  Potato, leek, shallot, carrot, parsnip and red pepper soup; so thick it is almost like a puree.  Yummy.

 

 

I used Uschi fine elastic for the IFF aerials and found it quite difficult to get into the small holes drilled in to the fuselage sides.  The holes were plenty large enough but the thread just wouldn't go in.  I got it affixed in the end with thin cyano.  The main aerial is EZ Line and the rudder post was replaced with 0.4mm brass as I broke it off early in the build.  There was a little bleed of spray in to the cockpit but I have managed to get all of it off except a small smudge on the inside of the windscreen.  As Olmec Head noted, and after his helpful posts, the flash hiders were removed from the model as these were removed by the RAF at the beginning of the War.  After about 30 hours work, not including the decalling, I'm calling this done.  Thank you to all, it has been thoroughly enjoyable and my build count for the year has gone up by one thanks to this GB.

 

 

 

I'll try and get some photos done in daylight tomorrow.

[JeroenS]

That's a lovely result with a splendid finish! Good that you kept going, a Blitz Build is a great way to get started on a kit that would normally take you weeks and weeks to finish. 

 

Soup looks quite good too. We make pea soup here that's only good if your spoon stays upright in it 🙂 

[Natter]

Hi All, my final post in this GB, I promise.  These are the final photos in daylight and I haven't made any adjustments to colour or brightness at all, simply reduced their size for posting on the forum.  Happy modeling in 2021.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ozzy]

Fantastic job Dave

[John Masters]

Superb!