I'm in the process of building a Spitfire Mk.IXc from Hasegawa. Most of my fitting, sanding and glueing is done but I have one major problem. There is a gap on either side of the plane where the fuselage meets the wing assembly. There were a number of gaps on this model, some I filled with white putty and some with CA glue and then sanded smooth. I can't really do that with the gaps where the fuselage meets the wing assembly though because there is basically no way to sand the glue or putty down after application without screwing up the fuselage or wings. I'm sure most of you guys have run into this problem at some time so I'd like to know what you did to overcome this.
Any ideas?
Thanks, VonCuda

Vancuda,hope this helps,what I do is shim the area where the gap is with some plastic stock like Plastruct
or Evergreen,if you don't have those try any old plastic like some signs are made of the type of plastic that will work,any type of plastic crad like credit or library
card will also workyou just have to look around to find some.Then you just find the width you need or combine several pieces to get the needed width and slide into the space apply some liquid glue and let it dry,then you trim the piece down with you hoby knife and finish it by sanding.Place some masking tape on either side of the area you filled to keep the detail from being sanded off.Hope this helps.

Thanks for the idea Romeo12. I had some left over pieces of balsa that I trimmed and they worked out pretty good. I don't know why I didn't think about masking the fuselage and wings with tape..........maybe the glue vapors are starting to take their toll. Anyways, the masking saved me alot of work. Am going to wait till tomorrow night to do another light sanding and see how it looks. So far so good.

Bob was correct with his suggestion using palstic to fill this gap. The tape in the area of the repair will save u from losing detail in the sanding process.....BUT now YOU have an EVEN greater PROBLEM. Your choice of balsa will not accept paint like the surrounding plastic. JUST TO GIVE U A HEADS UP before u put paint to plastic. Because of these 2 different materials u are going to see the difference under the paint finish. If I were u I would seal the balsa with sanding sealer or super glue to get the same finish as plastic. GOOD LUCK

What a coincidence, I'm building the same (revell's boxing) kit right now! Well, not actually building anymore, the primer is on and I'm ready paint it now. I had a trouble with the seams too. Here's a couple of pics.

The fit on this side wasn't the greatest, I used thin styrerene sheet, putty and mr. surfacer on it. Fit was much better at the right side, requiring only a little putty at the forward wing root.

The air intake/lower front fuselage assembly was the trickiest part in my opinion. Why on earth the part isn't made of the fuselage bulge and intake (like tamiay's mk.I)? Why have a vertically split part?
Anyway, it was tricky glue together. It had only to aligning pins which didn't help much. I glued pieces of styrene to help fitting the parts. I fixed the parts on a flat surface and used putty and mr. surfacer to get rid of the seam between the parts. Then I fitted them to the rest of the aircraft. The fit still wasn't perfect, the slots in the fuselage had to be carved a little. After this the assembly's fit to the fuselage was very good.

One more thing to remember. Check the fit of the forward canopy before glueing. Mine was a little bit too wide and I noticed it after glueing it on...

Maybe a trick that I used in a similar case might help.

I glued both halves of the fuselage together and presented the wing to find a wide gap between wing and fuselage.

The wing was made out of 3 pieces. A single piece for the undersided and 2 winghalves for the above.

The fuselage itself has een opening on the underside in which the wing fits. Now, plastic is a bit flexible. I forced the fuselage halves open with pieces of sprue, cut to the length needed and used the assembled wing to check if the gap was completely closed.

It takes a bit experimenting to cut the bits of sprue to the correct length and to put these in a place that doesn't hinder putting the wing in place but it works. And it avoids a lot of filling and sanding

Don't forget to glue the sprue once it is perfect.

Good luck

I'll share a tip with you that I use all the time when faced with this situation.

Filling Without Sanding

It works every time.

I find that even expertly filled joints are obvious after paint, especially when using NMF products such as Alclad. I try to avoid putty altogether, by using the Matt Swann method of joining the upper wing panels to the fuselage FIRST using Tenax or Proweld.

Gaps along leading and trailing edges are much easier to deal with than fuse to wing gaps. Give it a try, it really is a good method.

Steve

RotorHead67,
I glued a piece of balsa to a scrap piece of plastic and painted both.....you were right about the difference. Since I didn't glue the balsa in place on my plane it was pretty easy to get back off. Thanks.
Emeritus,
I had the same problem with the lower intake assembly. I cut the alignment tabs off and glued the halves together. I made up the difference with putty and sanding. It turned out really well. As for the rear canopy, Mine is about 1/32 of an inch too long. I'm thinking about shaving the difference off of the fuselage instead of the canopy.
Smithery,
That was an excellent link. Thanks. I wish I'd have known that a few years ago. Would have saved lots of time and crappy looking models on my shelf.
Crockett,
I've never heard of this method before now but I went through some of the models in my stash and it looks like it would work extremely well. I found only one model out of 8 that this method wouldn't work well on. It was an old P-51 kit. Putting the upper wing directly to the fuselage makes quite an offset for the wing flaps. After dry fitting wings and fuselages to several of the models in my stash I've come to the conclusion that this is probably the best method for me. It does'nt work great in ALL applications but the majority of the time it's a real time saver and has the least chance of messing up the model.
Thanks everyone for the help. I must say I've learned more in the past couple of weeks on this site than I have in 20 years on my own. I hope in the future I can help other people the way you folks have helped me.

VonCuda, don't trim the rear canopy. I think it's supposed to be that way. The sliding part fits nicely over the extension in the rear part.

Voncuda,
Now that you're back to square 1 , use Bob idea of plastic shims and keep the putty to a minimum.
Hint to you. Zap along the gap, shot with accelerator, when dry and sanded paints like plastic, which helps to hide the seem. Good Luck Mate

RotorHead67,
That's pretty much what I had in mind since the top and bottom sections of the wing are already glued. I'm going to have to make a trip to the model store tomorrow night and pick up some plastic for shims.
One quick question......I know this is going to sound stupid but what is accelerator? Is it the same stuff you mix with resin......makes the Zap harden faster or what?

No, it's not the same stuff that's used with resins. It's product designed to be used with super glues. You apply the glue and stick the parts together, then apply some accelerator (or "kicker) which instantly hardens the CA.

Hermon,
Just like Eetu said NO its not the same stuff.
Its exact name is Zip Kicker and its made by Pacer manf. the same people who make the Zap A Gap.
Its comes in a pump bottle w/ the nozzle all ready to go for you. It doesn't take much. You can even transfer from the bottle w/ and eye dropper or paint brush and just touch the plastic and let capilary action draw the kicker onto the area. The Zap will harden almost instantly.

Thanks Todd, I guess i'll have to pick some up on the next trip to the hobby shop.
BTW, I finished the camo paint on this Spitfire last night and I'm getting ready to slap on the decals. So far this is looking like the best plane I've ever done even though it's the first airbrush job for me. It still looks like crap compaired to everyone elses stuff on here but then again I'll probably stick it in my sons room when it's completed. :-)
Think I'll post a couple of pics of it sometime and let everyone pick it apart for errors and mistakes.

My method is using epoxy. Epoxy wipes clean away with baby wipes or alcohol. I've successfully used both.

Drawback: epoxy requires mixing and can be sticky.

Forte: epoxy will not attack the styrene as can the solvents in the putty (at least it has never hurt mine.

Epoxy does not shrink.

Epoxy, to fill gaps, does double duty gluing the pieces together.

Now, epoxy has health warnings as does the puttys, but I do not know if epoxy is as bad, or even that big a health threat.

I've stumbled on a way to virutally eliminate having to sand at the wing root. I assemble the main fuselage, and then glue the top half of the wings in place at the wing root. I let this set up for a couple of day. I then add the single piece lower wings. Any gaps will now be on the leading and trailing edges of the wings. These can be filled and sanded much easier than the wing roots can. You also get a better wing dihedral from this approach.

Mike

What a fabouous idea of Smithery!!

Maybe we should also have a Tip Of The month (TOM) contest next to the MOM. ;-)

drabslab, smithery - Our own Holdfast (Mal Mayfield) offered this very technique as a tip in the Tips & Techniques forum over a year ago, I've used it ever since. It isa great method.

Hi Hermon:

I just finished the same kit last week and I didn´t have problems with gaps in where the fuselage meets the wing assembly. What I did ( and always do with Hasegawa and Tamiya Spits ) is the following:
after the wings are assembled then I dry fit them severall times to be sure of the right placement with the fuselage. Then I glue them in place and then I run a big piece of scotch tape from the underside of one wing tip to the other one (passing over the fusselage in front of the cockpit). Doing this I ensure that the wing roots make a perfect joint with the fuselage and they get the correct dihedral. If still you see a little gap, take away the scotch tape, place a small quantity of liquid cement (I like Humbrol) with a No. 0 brush in the gap and then put the scotch tape again in place, when you put it, try to strecht it untill you see there are no gaps in the wing roots (hope you understand my english).
Leave the tape until the cement is dry. When you pull out the tape it´s supossed that the problem is solved.
This works for me very well. I´ll take some pics of my Hasegawa Mk IXc to show the result.

I wish Id read that article before I spent 3 hours sanding the wing roots on my Spitfire and 4 hours on my 109!!