spitfire seat colour

[c.smith10]

i've recently picked up a tamiya spitfire vb and the painting destructions are useless! i've worked most of the colours out but i dont know what to do with the pilots seat, looking for reference material on the interweb i've found green seats with black cushion, red/brown with black cushion, green with brown cushion and red/brown with a sandy colour cushion, so the question is, what colour should i pant my seat?

[Mike G]

i've recently picked up a tamiya spitfire vb and the painting destructions are useless! i've worked most of the colours out but i dont know what to do with the pilots seat, looking for reference material on the interweb i've found green seats with black cushion, red/brown with black cushion, green with brown cushion and red/brown with a sandy colour cushion, so the question is, what colour should i pant my seat?

The perceived opinion is that for anything past early 1940, the plastic (not 'Bakelite' but a resin bonded material) seat was more usually fitted. This is the red-brown seat you may have seen. The early metal seat was in the grey-green cockpit colour. Most cushions I've seen in photos were black but these were on restored aircraft.

Hope this helps

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Yep - Id' go for a reddish brown too, and black leather back cushion ( if only to add contrast to the brown seat).

For the seat I paint in a dark red brown, dry brush with reds, yellows and oranges, then apply a translucent coat of the brown over the top to tone it all down again. The plastic it was made from seems to have an uneven colour so this is how I replicate it.

If your seat has the flare cartridge holder fitted to the front of the bucket - this I think will be interior grey green, as will any metal fittings attached to it.

HTH

Jonners

[c.smith10]

Yep - Id' go for a reddish brown too, and black leather back cushion ( if only to add contrast to the brown seat).

For the seat I paint in a dark red brown, dry brush with reds, yellows and oranges, then apply a translucent coat of the brown over the top to tone it all down again. The plastic it was made from seems to have an uneven colour so this is how I replicate it.

If your seat has the flare cartridge holder fitted to the front of the bucket - this I think will be interior grey green, as will any metal fittings attached to it.

HTH

Jonners

if im not asking to much could you give me a paint reference number for the base colour?

cheers

Edited September 21, 2010 by c.smith10

[TonyT]

This is the one out of the MK19, though painted externally in its past, you can see the original finish internally

more views here

http://s536.photobucket.com/albums/ff321/t...MKx1x/?start=80

[3DStewart]

Elsewhere on this site (sorry I can't find the thread) Edgar posted that plastic seat deliveries didn't start until May 1940 and that initially they had the same shape as the metal ones (not really surprising if they were going to fit). The design didn't significantly change until late 1941.

DP

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

if im not asking to much could you give me a paint reference number for the base colour?

cheers

No problem - I'd go with Tamiya XF52 flat earth, with a little bit of their XF-7 red mixed in, to warm it up a tad

Jonners

[c.smith10]

No problem - I'd go with Tamiya XF52 flat earth, with a little bit of their XF-7 red mixed in, to warm it up a tad

Jonners

excellent thank you, before i build this kit are there any fatal flaws that make it unbuildable?

[Andrew Jones]

excellent thank you, before i build this kit are there any fatal flaws that make it unbuildable?

Fatal Flaws ? , of course there are , it's a Tamiya kit.

[c.smith10]

Fatal Flaws ? , of course there are , it's a Tamiya kit.

ah yes i should have gone for the hasegawa spit instead

[TonyT]

excellent thank you, before i build this kit are there any fatal flaws that make it unbuildable?

Yes, you really need to post it to me and I will put it away in a cool dark place for the future, a bit like the Arc in Raiders off the lost..............

[Edgar]

No problem - I'd go with Tamiya XF52 flat earth,

Blimey, you're a member of the Flat Earth Society.

Edgar

[Test Graham]

Well, if Tamiya says the Earth is flat, it must be.

[davidelvy]

ah yes i should have gone for the hasegawa spit instead

I thought that was fatally flawed as well. In fact I have yet to find a kit of the spitfire that someone hasn't dismissed as fatally flawed.

[gingerbob]

David, I believe the 32nd Tamiya Spit IX (or VIII) is perhaps passable.

bob

[Edgar]

Provided that you don't check the lines of the cowling.

Edgar

[Tim T]

Might be worth looking at this, which is a brilliant photo collection of a restored vb.

http://spitfiresite.com/2010/07/anatomy-of...re-cockpit.html

I have made a very limited start on this kit myself and you should also check out Anders Isaksson's build in the Work in Progress section to see a really good example.

[HBBates]

Provided that you don't check the lines of the cowling.

Edgar

Edgar....could you fill me in on cowling lines issue you see on the Tamiya 1/32 Spitfire?...Because to tell you the truth I personal thought from photo the upper nose just behind the spinner look a little bulbous...but not being a Spitfire guy I dismiss it in light of all the reviews ......but I just got a Tamiya 1/32 Spitfire Mk VIII an want to know what to look for/fix

PS Any input on the old Revell 1/32 Spitfire Mk1 cowling lines? (as a Spitfire Mk1....thinking of an "off the wall" back hack of a Tamiya 1/32 Spitfire Mk IX to a Spitfire Mk1 using parts from the old Revell kit)

[Edgar]

For some reason, the link didn't work; my remark was directed at the Hasegawa Vb/VI, not the Tamiya kit.

It's around 40 years since I built the Revell kit, so memories have faded completely, I'm sorry to say.

Edgar

[HBBates]

For some reason, the link didn't work; my remark was directed at the Hasegawa Vb/VI, not the Tamiya kit.

It's around 40 years since I built the Revell kit, so memories have faded completely, I'm sorry to say.

Edgar

OK so I misread your post and in your opinion the new Tamiya 1/32 Spit cowl is fine?

[Pat]

This is the one out of the MK19, though painted externally in its past, you can see the original finish internally

more views here

http://s536.photobucket.com/albums/ff321/t...MKx1x/?start=80

Tony - thanks for posting the photo. It is interesting to see this Mk XIX seat has the flare cartridge rack fitted - from my "Googling" search the opinion seemed to be that these were only fitted to earlier marks of Spitfires. So it looks as though Tamiya are right to include it in their 1/32 Mk IX I have started building today.

Pat

[Edgar]

The cartridge racks are an odd item, since they were, largely, set onto Seafire seats, and had a double rack. Post-war the racks went to a single "strip," and, of course, the seat comes from a BBMF airframe. There's also the possibility that, with cameras in the rear, the XIX didn't carry the Plessey upward-firing device, seen on fighter spines, so the pilot needed a separate Very pistol as insurance. Note, too, that, though the seat has the rack, it doesn't carry the Very pistol "holster," by the pilot's right elbow.

Edgar

[Seawinder]

ah yes i should have gone for the hasegawa spit instead

Both the Tamiya and Hasegawa Mk.Vs are nice kits, neither is perfect -- egad, both have flaws! -- and either can yield a nice model. Having built both, I personally prefer the Tamiya. IMHO its two most noticeable flaws -- contour of the wing trailing edge near the fuselage and contour of the engine cowling above the exhausts -- can be improved significantly with some judicious filing/sanding.

As for "fatal flaws that render it unbuildable," I've got to wonder what you'd put in that category. For me it'd have to be something pretty drastic. Do you have some sort of quality threshold that doesn't allow you to build a kit if it doesn't cross it?

Pip Moss

[hythe]

Sorry to rehijack this thread, but I mixed brown, dark red and a tiny amount of gold to get the colour for my last Spit's seat - was too reddish, but the very very slight metallic glint looked great, somehow...

[Pat]

The cartridge racks are an odd item, since they were, largely, set onto Seafire seats, and had a double rack. Post-war the racks went to a single "strip," and, of course, the seat comes from a BBMF airframe. There's also the possibility that, with cameras in the rear, the XIX didn't carry the Plessey upward-firing device, seen on fighter spines, so the pilot needed a separate Very pistol as insurance. Note, too, that, though the seat has the rack, it doesn't carry the Very pistol "holster," by the pilot's right elbow.

Edgar

As always, Edgar, many thanks for your information.

I have found an illustration of the signal discharger pre-selector and firing control (which I assume are for the Plessey device) located to the left of the pilot's seat. They look fairly small and lost amongst all the other paraphernalia in the cockpit, so I will decide later in the build whether to add this detail.

I hope you don't mind if I ask one further question? At what position did the cockpit green finish and the bare aluminium start behind the cockpit? It looks to me as though the cockpit back to frame 11 (the frame to which the pilot's seat attaches) was in grey-green (including the back face of the frame itself), but everything aft of that is in natural metal. Does that sound about right? The Tamiya instructions put the boundary further back at frame 12.

Thanks in advance,

Patrick