# Mk1a Supermarine Spitfire



## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

After watching 'The Battle of Britain' the other week on my holidays I got the urge to do me a Spitfire. As a kid I had a decent WW2 aircraft n vehical collection but gave them all away when and went into the sci-fi genre. So after 30+ years I decided that I wanted some factual builds in my fictional collection and as I have always liked the Mk1 spitfire thats the path I have chosen. I also know 1:24th is a decent size (the box is a bit of a givaway ) and it should be fairly doable for me but on seeing the parts laid out after a washing them I find myself echoing my wifes words on where I will put it. I also noticed that the instructions are just the same... So moving on...

At first glance in the box all the parts look good though there is one engine frame that has a crack/break. on closer inspection it brought back memories from my childhood airfix days. The parts though not heavy with flash seem to have a kind of flash edge/shadow to most of them. The propeller being the worst. I haven't found any major sink marks except the prop and it looks like most of the punch marks are restricted to non vital areas except the two I found on the front of the instrument panel. As for building, it will be pretty much an oob build with just some minor enhancements such as antenna wire the wires from the fuselage to the rear stabalizers wings and maybe a set of decals for the instruments. I was going to do it as an on the ground display but finding the right extras in 1:24 has proved a challenge so it will be an in flight build. This time I will be sticking to the steps in the instructions, mainly as I haven't done a model aircraft in so long and then they were only 1:72nd scale to boot. But also I really want to do my absolute best for it and with that said I won't be doing it with moving parts either.

So the power plant was the first sub assemblies that are by the instructions. I had read on the web that the engine was fairly soft in detail and whilst doing the research to try to guage the colours to paint it I guess thats a fair statement. the fit of the parts is ok but some sanding, filing and putty was still needed thats for sure. 
















The instructions only give numbers for the colours that relate to Humbrol paints, a good marketing technique  this was easy enought to get around though. The colours I used were a mix of tamiya flat and gloss black to get the satin look, gunze Steel for the rocker covers, front cranck housing and to bring out some of the cables and pipe work. The sparkplug leads were done in dark copper followed by a brown wash and the silver is gunze bright silver toned down with a wipe of black wash. I also picked out some of the small bolts and raised areas with the silver to show a little wear. As the propellors were made of wood not wetal I streaked them with some flat black to show a little weather and wearing. The coolant tank is done in tamyias royla light grey with a micro scale gloss overcoat.
























Most of the colour photos on the web seem to be the latter variants of the merlin engine and then they are done for what appears to be show purposes and not insitu and origional in situ ones are, oddly enough, in B+W. But I'm pretty happy with the finished result.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers,

Alec.


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## Jafo (Apr 22, 2005)

coming along nicely


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

Thanks Jafo.

This week so far has seen the completion of the main flight control, instrument panel and pilots seat. I'm not sure all the colours are historically acurate and virtually every picture on the web is differant in someway... So I just went with what felt right. The instrument panel is stock all I did was to gently drybrush white over the raised dials on the clear piece the paint the back black. Before I inserted it into the main part I add some colour and metalics on the edges of the holes to represent the besal mounts and after the painted dials were put in place I applied a generous dab of future over each of the dials.
















I also did say this was going to be a straight out of the box build but somethings just had to be tweeked. Such as the firing button on the joystick and I redid the optical sight as the piece out of the box was not quite right... it had a out of scale long neck on it under the main prism that I just ran a hacksaw through sanded clean and glued the two halfs back together.
















The foot pedals and rods were primed and painted in steel then drybrushed silver befor a coat of the greein was brushed on and that was then chipped off before it was fully dry. For the pilots seat all I added was some putty as a back cushion. This was sanded down and shaped when dry before priming and painting.
















The next on the list of sub assemblies will be the pilot and I can tell with the test fitting and glueing that he is gonna need some serious attention...:freak:

Cheers and thanks for looking.

Alec.


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## dklange (Apr 25, 2009)

Very nice, AJ!!!!!:thumbsup: Your details look really good, and the Merlin turned out great! - Denis


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## Parts Pit Mike (Jan 3, 2001)

Top notch and hurrah! Cheerio!


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

Thanks guys. 

Well the pilot is done I did have to reposition his right arm so it looks like he might actually want to hold the joystick and fly the plane!! I had already glued in the seat and instrument panel which I held in postion using the two halves taped together, Sorry if that seemed to be stating the obvious but it has been ohh soo many years since I have done an aicraft kit... 








The instructions called for a blue grey flight jacket but I leke the looks of the dark brown worn leather jacket.








I am pleased with how he came out after about 3 hours or so of work (the old fashioned way, with no air brush...) on him and he does look mighty fine in the seat :thumbsup: especially as I always struggle at painting people 
















And I am really glad I modified the optical sight now after seeing the pilot in place. As he sits in these shots there is no glue keeping him there. I don't reckon the pilot needs to be glued as it all fits pretty snuggly when I test fitted the two halves together and I was going to add extra detail to the cockpit halves but seeing it together it all looks good as it is.

Cheers,

Alec.


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## Cro-Magnon Man (Jun 11, 2001)

Great work. Strange, isn't it, that it usually takes longer to build the model than it did for the factory to build the real thing?!


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

Cro-Magnon Man said:


> Great work. Strange, isn't it, that it usually takes longer to build the model than it did for the factory to build the real thing?!


Thank you sir.

Yeah I reckon if I was on the production line and taking this long I'd be done as a german agent... The good thing though is that once I clean up some seam work I can start putting on the base coats from tonight.

Cheers,
Alec.


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

I finished off the right side of the fuselage and cockpit well, I didn't add any more detail because when it's all closed up and the pilot inplace it's hard to see much. I glued them together with the motor installed and some sanding and filing to get the engine cowlings to fit as well. Other things that bugged me were things like the missing fuel cap...Unless I missed something in the box there was no fuel cap so I punched out my own and after glueing it in place I'm glad I did. Also the guns and detail supplied for inside the wings was a bit soft so I just glued all the access plates in place and reworked the gun ports with plastruct tube and thin brass tube.
























Once I fitted the wheels I found that the tyres that came with the kit made fitting the wing halves together a little tricky but as I had always planned to display this as a flying piece I got round the problem with some surgey and filing to the wheels








And after fitting the wings then filling, sanding etc its hard not to sand away some detail... but nothing some thin plasticad couldn't cure.







.
I also added a little piece of brass rod to the inside of the door for the crow bar which should be there by photo's I've seen of the actual aircraft

With all that now done... I primed it up and began the pre shading debacle uhmm effort uhmm attempt...  Even with some great pointers from here in the forum I just didn't get the look I wanted so I'm going for a more traditional way... So I air brushed on several coats of the underside colour.(the pic was taken before the final coat had fully dried hence the dark and light areas.)








Which I will gloss coat followed by inks and pastels to bring out some detail with some paint chipping & drybrushing being added to boot.

Cheers,
Alec.


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

*Slow n steady gets you there... *

Over the last week I've tinkered around with the weathering ect on the underside and completed the main camo pattern on the top. My first attempt at weathering and the panel lines didn't give me the look and feel I wanted so I went back over it a few days later with much more pleasing results, for me anyway.


And after some tweeking...


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

*Slow n steady pt2*

The como pattern with and overcoat of gloss. The pattern was done with a dark earth base colour then the dark green airbrushed free hand over that. In hindsite I should have masked out the dark earth as the free hand gave me a soft demarcation line. Looked good but not truely authentic so I went back with a brush and cut in around the green with the earth. By the end I had a good look that to me represents how it may have looked with smooth areas from the factory and some areas touched up by hand during combat life.

And then some inks and washes on the panel lines which don't show out as well on the top hull...


Cheers,

Alec


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

The last bit of detail added over the weekend was the gun covers. For this I used masking tape cut to size primed in a sail colour and then final coated in red all done on a piece of glass which held the tape but still left enough glue film to hold them in place on the wings.








I then used the sharpend of a new No11 blade and 'tore' out the tape over the gun barrels which were then dybrushed and chalked to give the illusion of the canvas being torn by the bullets being fired.









After all that I started on the decals which one can't complain about being flimsy. Just the feel of the decal sheet in the box told me to use extra gloss before applying them. And yes they still tried to silver up on me!! I reckon this was due mainly to the rivet and panel detail. But with patients a needle and severral coats of micro sol they went down fairly well. As for ny silvering that dissapeared with a gloss over coat before the final clear flat was ab'd over the plane.

Cheers,

Alec.


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

And now to finish the thread off here are some shots of the finished item taken under a couple of differant light sources just for kicks...

























































Cheers,

Alec


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

And finaly some improvised action shots...









































Cheers and thanks again for those that have had a look at my second non sci-fi / fantasy model in almost 30 years. I must admit I'm now pretty much a fan of the larger scale so who knows I might even tackle the 1/24th mosquito airfix have just released... :thumbsup:

Alec. :wave:


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## Ace Airspeed (May 16, 2010)

You've done the Spitfire true justice with this model, Alec. Great job! :thumbsup:

I really like the weathering and subtle paint chipping.


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## Parts Pit Mike (Jan 3, 2001)

Nice pics against the sky... my all time favourite plane.


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## AJ-1701 (May 10, 2008)

Ace Airspeed said:


> You've done the Spitfire true justice with this model, Alec. Great job! :thumbsup:
> 
> I really like the weathering and subtle paint chipping.


Thank you for the compliments Ace Airspeed  seeing your work I take that as high praise indeed. As for the weathering I spent as much time on google pictures as on thr model to try and get a good feel for how it should look. Because I've mosty really detailed sci -fi an WH40K stuff.

Cheers,
Alec


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