Nice work so far!
1/48 Airfix Hawker Hurricane Mk.I
- Thread starter Grant Barr
- Start date
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Vic Balshaw
Major General
You are doing great Grant even though it keeps chucking a little repair work at you. 
Crimea_River
Marshal
Great stuff. Those sink marks are annoying for sure.
- Thread starter
- #45
Grant Barr
Senior Airman
Thanks for the feedback and comments gents. Geo - thanks for confirming my thoughts re: aircraft life, although I might just check to see if it was used elsewhere before assignment to 303 Sqn. I will use the linked website you shared - it has lots of useful information on Hurricanes!
I feel like I've done a tonne of work on the build, but when I look at it there seems to be hardly any progress at all. This is partly due to the seatbelt installation being twice as fiddly as needed because I missed installing it before mating wings to fuselage! Anywhooo - these first two shots show the final belt layout.
The belts themselves look just that little bit shiny and have lost their colour in a couple of small but noticeable locations. In the next couple of days I will coat the belts with some "dirty" matt clear once I've touched up the chipped areas. This is the second time I've used the paper belts and wanted to make a better fist of it than the first time. I initially painted them with oil paints, thinking this would soak nicely into the paper and give a really nice finish. Wrong!!! The oil paint would not dry - nothing I tried had any impact, which meant that every time you handled them the paint just rubbed off. I cleaned them back with white spirit and set about painting them again, this time with acrylic. Much better outcome, but it did mean the issue of brittleness when bending the belts to shape recurred like last time. The other thing I did was approached the attachment of the buckles much more carefully, being sure that they lined up (buckle front and back as well as to the belt itself). Painting the buckles was easier than I recall from last time, but I put some of that down to the better quality paint I used this time.
The other task I have been undertaking is making sure that all the parts and surfaces line up with no unsightly gaps or seams appear. The wing root fillet was one area that I was unhappy with, there was a small but very visible gap that I have now filled as seen in the first photo. The other side had a similar issue and was corrected in the same way.
Similarly with the horizontal stabilisers. Offering up the elevators revealed some huge gaps both laterally and fore/aft between the stabilisers and the elevators in the outboard section past the hinge point. If you zoom in on the pic you can see that the lateral gap was minimal, easily fixed with some 0.013 thickness styrene, but the gap fore/aft to the elevator was quite large (over 1mm or over 2" at full scale). I filled the gap with some much thicker card and smoothed and filled them into place. Hopefully you wont see the fix once some undercoat and final paint is applied.
I have done more work removing parts for undercarriage, radiator and propeller from the sprues, cleaning up all the seams and attachment gates in preparation for the next few steps in the assembly process. I will need to paint the radiator internals before its final assembly - one of the jobs I have in mind for tomorrow evening (assuming my workday goes to plan).
Not much else to note, so I will leave it there. As always, thanks to everyone for dropping by for a look.
I feel like I've done a tonne of work on the build, but when I look at it there seems to be hardly any progress at all. This is partly due to the seatbelt installation being twice as fiddly as needed because I missed installing it before mating wings to fuselage! Anywhooo - these first two shots show the final belt layout.
The belts themselves look just that little bit shiny and have lost their colour in a couple of small but noticeable locations. In the next couple of days I will coat the belts with some "dirty" matt clear once I've touched up the chipped areas. This is the second time I've used the paper belts and wanted to make a better fist of it than the first time. I initially painted them with oil paints, thinking this would soak nicely into the paper and give a really nice finish. Wrong!!! The oil paint would not dry - nothing I tried had any impact, which meant that every time you handled them the paint just rubbed off. I cleaned them back with white spirit and set about painting them again, this time with acrylic. Much better outcome, but it did mean the issue of brittleness when bending the belts to shape recurred like last time. The other thing I did was approached the attachment of the buckles much more carefully, being sure that they lined up (buckle front and back as well as to the belt itself). Painting the buckles was easier than I recall from last time, but I put some of that down to the better quality paint I used this time.
The other task I have been undertaking is making sure that all the parts and surfaces line up with no unsightly gaps or seams appear. The wing root fillet was one area that I was unhappy with, there was a small but very visible gap that I have now filled as seen in the first photo. The other side had a similar issue and was corrected in the same way.
Similarly with the horizontal stabilisers. Offering up the elevators revealed some huge gaps both laterally and fore/aft between the stabilisers and the elevators in the outboard section past the hinge point. If you zoom in on the pic you can see that the lateral gap was minimal, easily fixed with some 0.013 thickness styrene, but the gap fore/aft to the elevator was quite large (over 1mm or over 2" at full scale). I filled the gap with some much thicker card and smoothed and filled them into place. Hopefully you wont see the fix once some undercoat and final paint is applied.
I have done more work removing parts for undercarriage, radiator and propeller from the sprues, cleaning up all the seams and attachment gates in preparation for the next few steps in the assembly process. I will need to paint the radiator internals before its final assembly - one of the jobs I have in mind for tomorrow evening (assuming my workday goes to plan).
Not much else to note, so I will leave it there. As always, thanks to everyone for dropping by for a look.
Good work so far!
Vic Balshaw
Major General
Excellent bit of work Grant, love those belts.
Crimea_River
Marshal
Looks great!
- Thread starter
- #50
Grant Barr
Senior Airman
Progress has been made!
The last of the flying surfaces have now been fitted with the elevators and rudder both drooping/offset respectively. I spent a lot of time making sure that their fit was tight and everything looked just right. Once the glue had a chance to cure I filled in the cockpit, wheel wells, gun bays and landing light recesses with foam in preparation for some primer.
The other task I completed before priming was to part assemble the radiator and other sub-assemblies as appeared appropriate, and cleaned up the mold seam lines on all parts. As we all know this is the least exciting part of any build, being tedious and time consuming, but necessary, as any mold seam that is missed really stands out once the model is painted.
Now that I have a very light layer of primer on board (Vallejo Grey Primer 70.601) I can see that I will need to touch up some fuselage joint (on the engine cowl and just in front of the rudder) but the remaining joints on the wings and tail surfaces all look pretty good - happy days!
Next up will be some fixes to the fuselage joints and another light primer coat to be laid down. Overall I am pretty happy with how this one is turning out. By being just a little more patient and paying more attention to the little things I feel I am getting better results.
Thanks again to everyone dropping by. Hoping to post more progress later in the week.
The last of the flying surfaces have now been fitted with the elevators and rudder both drooping/offset respectively. I spent a lot of time making sure that their fit was tight and everything looked just right. Once the glue had a chance to cure I filled in the cockpit, wheel wells, gun bays and landing light recesses with foam in preparation for some primer.
The other task I completed before priming was to part assemble the radiator and other sub-assemblies as appeared appropriate, and cleaned up the mold seam lines on all parts. As we all know this is the least exciting part of any build, being tedious and time consuming, but necessary, as any mold seam that is missed really stands out once the model is painted.
Now that I have a very light layer of primer on board (Vallejo Grey Primer 70.601) I can see that I will need to touch up some fuselage joint (on the engine cowl and just in front of the rudder) but the remaining joints on the wings and tail surfaces all look pretty good - happy days!
Next up will be some fixes to the fuselage joints and another light primer coat to be laid down. Overall I am pretty happy with how this one is turning out. By being just a little more patient and paying more attention to the little things I feel I am getting better results.
Thanks again to everyone dropping by. Hoping to post more progress later in the week.
fubar57
General
Awaiting the spritz, spritz, spritz
Good work so far!
Vic Balshaw
Major General
Looking very good Grant.
Crimea_River
Marshal
With the boys.
- Thread starter
- #56
Grant Barr
Senior Airman
Been a busy week or two since the last update. Have done a little bit of work, but I did get somewhat delayed when my compressor decided to call it quits (always happens when you are about to start lots of spraying...).
Anyhooooo - progress shots below.
The front/back radiator panels came up really nicely with the new Vallejo Aluminium paint and some highlighting via a grey wash. I do like the Vallejo Metal Colour range - its a vast improvement on the Model Colour and Model Air Colour metallic colours.
Once the radiator was dry I assembled it and got it fitted to the underside, then laid down some Beige Green (Sky) underneath aaanndddd promptly forgot to take any photos... d'oh
Not to worry - shots of the underside once masked were taken as well as some for some light pre-shading with a darkened brown and some metal patches where I might show a few paint chips and scratches (not many - this aircraft was not old when it was shot down). I did get a bit carried away with the aluminium and put it in places where it is actually fabric, so I wont be showing any chips in those locations!
A couple of coats of dark earth followed. Not sure if the pre-shading shows through very much in the photos, but it is apparent in real life. Not glaringly obvious mind you - just enough to provide some slight variation in tone.
Finally, once dried I started spending time with applying masks for the dark green - the right wing has been done as shown.
I did start out using blu-tack worms but it was just too tacky and was leaving some residue behind. I think that I will achieve a reasonable soft edge by keeping the spraying slightly away from the masking. It will be good practice for my airbrush control and now I have a new compressor with a much larger tank I am hoping that I have a more consistent airflow as I work through each section. I'll worry more about that once I get to the painting stage - lots more masking to be done before then. Not my favourite job but one I have learned the hard way to pay attention to if you want good results...
I think that brings this thread up to date. I may have done a few other minor bits and pieces but nothing I have any photos of. As always, thanks to those who drop by for a look or to leave some feedback. Cheers!
Anyhooooo - progress shots below.
The front/back radiator panels came up really nicely with the new Vallejo Aluminium paint and some highlighting via a grey wash. I do like the Vallejo Metal Colour range - its a vast improvement on the Model Colour and Model Air Colour metallic colours.
Once the radiator was dry I assembled it and got it fitted to the underside, then laid down some Beige Green (Sky) underneath aaanndddd promptly forgot to take any photos... d'oh
Not to worry - shots of the underside once masked were taken as well as some for some light pre-shading with a darkened brown and some metal patches where I might show a few paint chips and scratches (not many - this aircraft was not old when it was shot down). I did get a bit carried away with the aluminium and put it in places where it is actually fabric, so I wont be showing any chips in those locations!
A couple of coats of dark earth followed. Not sure if the pre-shading shows through very much in the photos, but it is apparent in real life. Not glaringly obvious mind you - just enough to provide some slight variation in tone.
Finally, once dried I started spending time with applying masks for the dark green - the right wing has been done as shown.
I did start out using blu-tack worms but it was just too tacky and was leaving some residue behind. I think that I will achieve a reasonable soft edge by keeping the spraying slightly away from the masking. It will be good practice for my airbrush control and now I have a new compressor with a much larger tank I am hoping that I have a more consistent airflow as I work through each section. I'll worry more about that once I get to the painting stage - lots more masking to be done before then. Not my favourite job but one I have learned the hard way to pay attention to if you want good results...
I think that brings this thread up to date. I may have done a few other minor bits and pieces but nothing I have any photos of. As always, thanks to those who drop by for a look or to leave some feedback. Cheers!
Vic Balshaw
Major General
Some very nice progress there Grant.
Crimea_River
Marshal
You've achieved a lot of good work since last time. Well done
Nicely done so far!
