Which Stringbag - 1/72 Airfix (1958) Swordfish Mk1

[kitchentable]

 

 

My recent project has been a peculiar self inflicted challenge, which very much raises questions of “why start from there”.  I would venture this whole business raises questions of “why” because her indoors says it every week.  I had two Airfix Swordfish models in the stash.  I decided my challenge was to build the original 1958 kit into the best standard I could that compared favourably with the 2012 version.  Having the later kit (still unbuilt) was invaluable on my bizarre mission.  Why?  Well, why not; but what tipped me over the edge was the ridiculously good fuselage dimensional accuracy and gross features of the old kit.   Seeing built up photos of the original model convinced me there was something very authentic emanating from the work of the 1958 die-maker.   Sure, the wing section is bonkers, the trailing edges are dire, and crude doesn’t come close to describing the interplane area.  There are only two dozen pieces in the kit, but I take my hat off to Bert (or George) who worked those dies just four years after rationing ended in the UK.

 

I had some cheats, but not many.  I bought from Airfix the arrestor hook, the landing lights and the exhaust manifold of the 2012 kit.  I also bought a beautiful Pegasus motor.  My total purchase of aftermarket is listed later.

 

So, the journey was this.

 

I went for the Airwaves photo-etch which I deduce is meant for the old kit. I know we all take a principled stand of no criticism, but hey, I’m going for it.  Hannants/Xtradecal are brilliant, Airwaves is not.  Three times I have sucked it up and bought their PE (Sea King, EE Lightning, Swordfish).  The parts are simplified (ok) but largely the wrong size and shape (not ok).  How is it “simplified” to have to modify a PE part that is badly wrong?  It’s worse than searching the floor for a tiny PE part that is accurate.  

 

The PE set gave me a couple of useful parts for the cockpit, the l.e. slats, and the oil cooler (after some modifying to make it a Mk1).  Overall the PE foray did not deliver much.  Instead I whittled away with the fuselage to create all panel lines and fasteners, and deepened the ventral fuselage for a hook housing.  I filled the waste bin with dust from filing the wings/tails to give 10% thickness, near sharp trailing edges and I recreated the ribbed effect.  All struts/cabanes were scratch made from plastic, brass or steel, as were the undercarriage struts.  Having copied the principles of the 2012 kit on these parts, it assembled into a pretty damn good look.  As I said, having a decent fuselage was the cornerstone.   

 

 

 

Fuselage still looking a bit basic, but panel lines appearing

 

I needed the rear of the Townend Ring (having bought the manifold from Airfix).  I drilled out the original single piece engine/ring with a 19mm drill (okay, I know no one else is ever going to do that between now and the asteroid impact, but the tip is there if you want it).   I achieved a really nice ring that exceeded my imagination and it fitted the manifold very well.   I fashioned the rather complex torpedo crutch from brass.  I made compass mounts and a single compass from brass.  I built a gun mounting from spring steel and brass, but alas I could only get motion in the fore-aft swing of the ring mount.  The control lines for the empennage were made from 0.1mm brass.  Fiddly, yes, but not the nightmare that I expected.  Is there any steel micro-rod made in this size? If so that would be better.

Beautiful Radial Engines and Wheels Pegasus, plus part of Townend rear ring

 

Rear of motor.  I made the inlet manifolds from brass rod

 

My list of aftermarket is:

 

Airwaves PE set AC72-178

Radial Engines & Wheels REW72002 Pegasus (the most amazing thing; view it under x10 and see every single cooling fin.  I really do not know how they made it.  Sweet, as the younger ones say.)

Miniworld A72 29 Vickers K machine gun.  Beautiful!

Miniworld A72 31a Browning 30 cal machine gun (used only the barrel to emulate the real forward facing gun barrel)

SBS Model 72 050 Wire Bracing set, which is for the 2012 kit

Quickboost QB 72 363 Swordfish Mk1 exhaust

Eduard CX316 1/72 Windscreen Mask (however this was not used because I opted to use the screen from Airwaves which required acetate glazing)

Flightpath 1/72 RAF/RN Torpedo and Handling Trolley (18” torpedo).  This is a lovely  model in its own right, and I admit to not making it yet!

Xtradecal X72-147 stencil decals.  Lovely decals.  I do wish stencil makers would back off the darkness and crispness of stencils.  I once worked in an aircraft paint shop and even fresh stencils have a dodgy Friday afternoon look.  

I chose an iconic (or old fashioned word “common”) scheme from 820 Squadron in 1941.  The demarking decals were the Airfix originals from the 2010ish FAA set of Swordfish, Wildcat, Seafire from whence the 1958 kit came.  These were good quality and usable.   I managed to forget to varnish one side roundel and 2Q code and then I stuck masking tape on it.   Disaster!   I ripped the roundel in two and wrecked the top half of 2Q.   The 2Q code was black with a white highlight and irreplaceable.   I wasn’t going to be beaten and I rebuilt the decal out of white and black decal sheet.   I actually did far better than I feared, and I think you cannot spot the repair without magnification.  The paint was all Sovereign Hobbies.  I bought some particularly fine brown electrical cable to give me the cockpit edge soft landing for the pilots shoulder.  For a moment let’s think about three young men taking off from Ark Royal in a sickening mid Atlantic gale, at night, heading for a presumed Bismarck 100nm away, and then finding their way back to relative safety on the flat-top.  With a compass and morse comms, but no stars because the weather was invariably foul.  Oh, and a couple of thousand people were trying to kill them too.  

I read about assembling the lower surface of the upper wing (and oppo on the lower wing) to allow the box structure to gain strength.  It worked well.   The beefy faired V strut was made from scratch

 

You can say there is one less unbuilt nasty old Airfix original Swordfish in the world.  Whilst that might have been in my mind at one stage, I now think what a brilliant guy George (or Bert) was.  I write this believing that no one is ever going to do this again; job done!  My particular struggles were with the windscreen.  The original glazing piece was unusable.   The 2012 windscreen did not fit the fuselage coaming at all.  The Airwaves windscreen frame is completely the wrong aspect ratio and is not tall enough, but it did fit the fuselage (as it was intended).   Despite heroic efforts with the wing section it still looks rather blunt, but that is not easy to spot.   The top and bottom parts of each upper and lower plane do not fit together well and I wish I had done more fettling on this before the big cement-fest occurred.  I camouflaged the join with weathering effects.  It was impossible to cut out the wing tip hand-holds, so a noticeable shortcoming there.  The wire bracing stage was fun (not!) but I had pre-drilled wing surface holes and taking it carefully really paid off.  I cleverly forgot all about the lower wing landing lights (not present at all in the 1958 kit) until the build was almost finished.   I managed to cut the wing without destroying the struts and wires, but I would have had better seated lights if I had cut the wings before assembly.   I tweaked all the control surfaces a few degrees and set the ailerons 5deg down to replicate the pseudo flap setting.   I used a brass wheel from my 00 gauge loco modelling for the flap setting control.

I wasn't too fancy on the cockpit detailing, and it really was a waste of time to work on the front cockpit.  The weathering on the fuselage sides was mainly finger prints!  The top of the 2Q just shows the repair.

 

 

For reference material I purchased the: Aeroguide Classic 4, but this is not worth having because it is simply poor b&w photos of preserved aircraft that have unoriginal features; Swordfish MkII and MkIII in Detail, Wings and Wheels Publications R068, which is also photos of museum aircraft but presented extremely well.  The best book by far, and up there with any aircraft reference book I have ever bought is Swordfish From the Cockpit No10 Payne & Donald.  It has 200 high quality pages of mainly photos (guessing 300+) with captions and really well edited personal recollections.  It does not try to be a technical description, but the sheer quantity of photos and informed captions gives the most impressive insight into the beloved beast.  This all came at the give away price of £7.45 and free p&p from WorldofBooks.  It was worth multiples of that. Even if you are not intending to build a model, this book would add well to any aircraft library.

Overall this has been one of the most satisfying kits I have made, simply because of the amount of challenge I took on.  I hope my random scheme of picking stash kits does not deliver the 2012 Swordfish any time soon though.

 

Kitchentable 

PS we are having a new kitchen in February and I will have an almighty battle retaining evening rights to the new kinked peninsular arrangement.  Wish me luck.

 

Edited February 11, 2022 by kitchentable

[dnl42]

Excellent result on a kit nearly as old as me! 

 

And good luck on the access battle, but I will fear you're on shaky grounds...

[Bertie McBoatface]

Well done! What a project.

[Blue Monday]

Great piece of modelling.

 

BM.

[Head in the clouds.]

You have made an old girl look young again, excellent work and research.

[Mig88]

Superb work indeed!!

 

Miguel

[pheonix]

What a labour of love - with a brilliant result.

 

P

[Wulfman]

Really great work on the old Airfix, first class modelling !

 

Wulfman

[ColinChipmunkfan]

Amazing work and skills on a very basic kit.  Well done sir!!

Colin

[AdrianMF]

Lovely work on that old kit! It does scrub up well with a lot of effort and you have done George (or Bert) proud.
 

I have built it and the (much better) FROG example, despite having two unbuilt New Airfix ones in the stash, so I appreciate the effort that you have put in!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[bigbadbadge]

Oh wow, what a stunning model, especially considering what you started with. That iscamazing work and very satisfying for you to have created such a masterpiece. 

I wish you luck with the Domestic Authorities and your access battle.  If you want to launch a Britmodeller petition to help with your struggle  I will happily sign.

Thanks for the heads up re the nook, I have managed yo snag one, as I have three Swordfish to do in the stash. 

Great, nay amazing work. 

Chris

[Brandy]

I always enjoy seeing these old kits brought up to date. (I'm currently trying to drag the Fairey Battle over the finish line!) You've done a fantastic job, she really does look great.

 

Ian

[kitchentable]

Thank you for all your encouraging words.   It took me about seven months, which is a fair proportion of the time left before I lose all my marbles.   I really do need to speed up to neatly glide to an empty stash one day.   I doubt that has ever been done though!  I am building the Airfix 1/48 Bf-109E now.   My recent models before the Swordfish were: 1/72 P-38M Lightning (I wrote about that on this site); 00 Gauge Evening Star (the 1960s Airfix kit); Airfix 1/48 EE Lightning F2A; Revell Sea King HAR3 (kit was the German Sea King version).   Thinking about it, the Swordfish was the first biplane I have made since about 1971!   I had not computed how much extra strife there is in a biplane build.   I'm actually quite proud of the Evening Star.  I stripped away all moulded pipework and replaced it with various gauge copper wire.  Boy does it gleam, without having the agony of spraying Alclad!   Is there a category on this web-site that would be a home for a description of it?

Phil

[Ray S]

19 minutes ago, kitchentable said:

Is there a category on this web-site that would be a home for a description of it?

 

Here you go!

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/forum/57-other-modelling-genres/

 

What a great Stringbag you have produced. I must admit I have a place in me heart for the Airfix Swordfish (original) - I have built so many of them in the past, but yours it the best old mould I have seen.

 

Cheers,

 

Ray