++ **** DONE: 1/48 Spitfire IXe - Military Conflicts of the 1950's

[Wurger]

 

[T Bolt]

Nice detail Andy

 

[Wayne Little]

Done good Andy..

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks guys. Dry fitted the wings to the fuselage yesterday and fit is superb. There will be no putty on this model, just some surfacing primer here and there. More tonight hopefully.

 

[JKim]

Great work on the innards Andy! The cockpit is beautiful!

 

[destrozas]

great!!!!!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks guys.

A few progress pics showing the sublime to the ridiculous. Let's start with the sublime fit of the wing to fuselage joint. I actually thought about not gluing this at first as the fit was so good:

The wing tips were equally impressive and the thicknesses matched exactly.

And now for the ridiculous. The fact that Eduard chose to mold the upper nose cowl in two halves has been much criticized in reviews and rightly so. All that beautiful surface detail will be lost in trying to get the seam perfect. I kind of understand why they did it though as the cowl is bulged and turns in on itself. This would have been tough to accomplish in an ejection molded kit.

Here's how it turned out after I glued the halves together and restored the panel line and rivets. Some minor filling was done with primer.

Also a little ridiculous is the build up of the otherwise lovely exhaust stack assembly. Each side consists of 4 parts which are a bit fiddley to put together. Here you see the starboard assembly in place and the port still in pieces. Oddly, the stacks for the port side in my kit had a molding deformity in that the open ends of the stacks ended up on bits of plastic that extended beyond the true ends of the stacks and these had to be cut off. I therefore ended up having to hollow out the ones on that side and this turned out well (pics in the next round).

With the exhausts, cowl, wings and stabs now in place, here's how she looks as of right now:

I will be getting close to painting now and will want to depict the bare aluminum in a dull, weathered manner rather than a bright, polished look. I do have a selection of Alclads but am not keen on their Dull Aluminum as it seems to finish with a gritty appearance. I'll be thinking about some options and would welcome suggestions on this.

 

[Wurger]

I would say you could follow Terry's way he used for his MiG-21. Terry mixed some of white with the aluminium ( silver ) colour. The matt tone you may get either using the matt silver or just by mixing of the matt clear with the silver.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Wojtek. Yes, that's one option I was thinking of. Another is to use the Alclad aluminums and squirt on a coat of Dullcoat after.

 

[Wurger]

Also sounds good. But you may find the Alclad paints of a little bit long getting dry. To be honest these never get full drying and should be overcoated with a clear varnish before any farther action.

 

[Crimea_River]

Used them on several projects and never had that problem. I have actually found them to dry quite quickly. Thin coat is key.

 

[Wurger]

It may depend od humidity or pressure. Also the thinner can be the reason. A couple of guys here had the problem. But of course it doesn't mean a rule.

 

[Crimea_River]

It's not very humid where I live so maybe. I also know that there were issues with a bad batch or batches of Alclads several years ago that led to criticism, which had continued long after it was generally acknowledged that the issues had since been rectified so hopefully what you are talking about is not a legacy issue.

 

[Wurger]

You might be right Andy.

 

[Airframes]

I've been experimenting with Testor's Aluminium Plate, for use on the Fennec, and it gives a fairly good, dullish, worn alloy look. However, having seen the range of AK Interactive metallic colours, I'll be trying those out soon, and I think one of that range might be suitable for your model Andy.
Mixing gloss white with a bright silver (enamels) gives a good 'coated' look, as used on, for example, MiGs and early RAF jets, or a tiny touch of gloss black with a bright silver might do the trick, but I think one of the above options would be better.

 

[JKim]

Solid work Andy! Pretty much exactly what I experienced on my IXc build, down to the mold issue on one of the exhaust pieces. And I think I had a wee gap under the port wing tip. But I was very impressed with the fit and finish of the kit overall.

Tamiya AS-12 silver in a spray can can provide a good representation of a painted silver finish. I decant it and spray it from my airbrush without thinner. I used it on the underside of my P-51B.

 

[Wurger]

 

[stona]

You can add small amounts of a gloss black enamel to Alclad II metal finishes to give some variations without investing in a whole range of very similar paints. I first tried this years ago on a natural metal Me 262.
It might not be appropriate for you subject which was painted in an aluminium/silver finish, but it saved me a lot of money
Cheers
Steve

 

[Wayne Little]

Going well here Andy...

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks for all the inputs folks. Steve, you say my subject "was painted in an aluminium/silver finish" when my one reference says it was natural metal. Did you really mean that the aircraft was painted silver and, if so, what is this conclusion based on?