Tamiya Spitfire Mk I, this has had a primer coat, using Halfords auto grey plastic primer, then pre-shaded with matt black. The camouflage coats are Lifecolor acrylics, masked with Tamiya masking tape and White tack. 2 Hand brushed coats of Klear have been applied followed by the decals. When the decals were dry and the setting solution residue had been removed 2 more hand brushed coats of future were applied. This model is now waiting for the washes to be applied.
Hasegawa Spitfire Mk Vb, This Spit is waiting it's primer coat. It will be cleaned using Isopropyl Alcohol, the primer will be white plastic primer, again from Halfords. The canopy is masked using Parafilm-M, which is my usual method. The wheel bays are masked using Tamiya tape and kitchen towel, dampend and stuffed into the opening.
Tamiya Spitfire Mk Vb Trop, I am adding the Cooper resin cockpit to this one. AS per the Cooper instructions the detail on the cockpit walls has been removed, using a ball grinder, a No 10 (curved) scalpel blade and emery paper. The the cockpit floor, sidewalls, rear frame and instrument panel are joined, temporarily, with white glue and test fitted until the proper location is achieved. I'm at the next stage, which is adding the upper sidewall ribs. This model is going to be finished in the markings of "Screwball" Beurling, the wonderful Canadian ace, during the siege of Malta.
Airfix Seafire FR 47. I've just started this, for the WOW campaign. So far I've removed the panel and window opening, for the recce cameras. The locations are well shown on the inside of the fuselage halves. I used the point of an old pair of compasses to continually score the plastic until the required bits were removed. The resultant holes were cleaned up with a file. I have also assembled the wing outer panels, which will be in the folded position.
Eduard Hawker Tempest. The wings have been joined but they took a lot of scraping and sanding to get an exceptably thin trailing edge. The cockpit parts were painted black, then cockpit green, in an experiment in pre-shading cockpits. It worked quite well but I think it makes the cockpit to dark. Some of the PE has been added to the cockpit. I'm still trying to work out how the resin cockpit parts fit together, as it's not very clear in the instructions. I had a few problems fitting the radiator parts, in the nose, I resorted to grinding out the plastic to make room
Airfix/Arii/Otaki P-51 Mustang. This is one of the kits re-issued by Airfix that was originally issued by, I think, Otaki then later by Arii ( see a thread elsewhere about Arii). This model is being built without any refinement ( the seat belts are simply strips of painted wine bottle foil) to tst out Kitchen foil as a bare metal finish. I love bare metal finishes and I've tried SNJ and Allclad II, but I'm still after a more realistic appearance. Bare Metal Foil is very good, but very expensive, Kitchen foil is very cheap so it seems to me that kitchen foil is a good direction. I have done some preliminary tests and the results were encouraging. I think I've learnt what not to do, it only remains for me to complete this model so I can see if I can get the results I hope for.
This image is included to show some of the excellant serface detail on these old kits.
Thanks for listening :-)
Mal (:-)
