--> **** DONE: 1/48 Spitfire Mk 22/24 - Post-War Warbirds

Good thinking 99...

Thanks for the tips and warnings! I'm definitely not cocksure about my approach but it seemed to be the way to go based on the few online builds that I've read. Also, the Eduard website shows construction pictures with this approach as well. I am going to thin the parts a bit more but I have to be very careful on the fuselage to avoid grinding all the way through to the other side. After I get the cockpit components cut and trimmed, I will do some pre-fitting.

Airframes said:

Looks like you've got it sorted John.
Do you mean the depression shown by the yellow arrow ?
If so, this helps the carb intake to 'stand proud' of the cowling panel, and is correct. You may need a touch of thin filler at the joint when the intake is fitted, but a dry-fit on mine shows it should be fine without.

View attachment 342772

Click to expand...

Thank you for that clarification Terry! Yes, that is the depression that I was wondering about. I'm glad I left that alone.

A picture that I forgot to attach on the last update... The Aires resin exhausts have their ends hollowed out as a hollow depression. Because they are circular, it was very easy to use a small drill bit and deepen each end a little bit more.

Looking good John

Thanks guys! I've jumped over to the Spitfire occasionally while letting the putty dry on the Dora. Continuing work on the cockpit, I've sawed, clipped, cut and hacked the resin pieces off of their casting blocks. It's hard not to break stuff off while sawing and hacking so I've lost a few detailed bits and pieces. I don't know how I managed to cut that long L-shaped hose without breaking it


Following the excellent advice here, I decided to prefit the resin sidewalls and cockpit tub to make sure that the fuselage sides can close. I just used a few drops of CA glue to "temporarily" attach the sidewalls to the fuselage interior.


After taping the fuselage sides together, I've slid the rear cockpit bulkhead into place and then placed the bottom cockpit tub. Surprisingly, it seems to fit.



A view from the bottom to make sure the tub is seated onto the resin sidewalls.


As a final check, I've tried the wings on for fit to see if the resin cockpit is bulging out the fuselage in any way. Even with the masking tape in the way, the fuselage fits onto the wings with room to spare. Too much room actually. The wing root gap/dihedral will have to be looked at later on.


The view into the narrow cockpit opening will be enhanced by positioning the side door open. The vacuform canopy that I have is designed for an open canopy so I'll probably be posing this one with the canopy slid back and the side door open.


Feeling good about the fit of the resin cockpit, I can finalize the position of the sidewalls and glue them in permanently. After some putty work to blend the edges of the resin bits into the fuselage, I can paint the sidewalls in place. I'm going to have to figure out the assembly order of the rest of the cockpit. Instead of painting all of the parts separately and then gluing the painted parts together, I'd like to put together a few sub-assemblies first.... cockpit floor with the foot pedals and joy stick... rear bulkhead with the seat...etc.

I've noticed little sink marks in the fuselage so I've decided to fill those in.




The flap actuator cover is sawed off and the wing sanded smooth. The cut went too deep on this side and I've had to use a little bit of putty to get it back level.



A lot of putty work on the cannons to remove the nasty sink marks and short shots. The cannon barrels were relatively circular in cross section so I elected to drill them out instead of replacing with brass tube. I'm going to primer coat these guys to make sure the putty work is ok. It's hard to tell with parts so small. This effect is especially magnified when jumping from my big scale Dora to this kit... everything feels so TINY!

Looking good John. I believe I had an issue with the wing roots as well.


Geo

Nice work John.
I haven't built my kit yet, but when test-fitting, I found the same potential gap at the wing roots. However, i think when actually fitted and glued in place, with the wings adjusted for dihedral, the gap will be much less, and easily filled either with stretched sprue, plastic strip or thinned putty.

Good stuff John.

I don't remember a fit problem at the wing/fuselage joint with mine but it's been quite a few years since I built it

Yep, I think you're right Glenn.
I was re-reading a couple of old magazine articles covering builds of the original Airfix kit, and the later Eduard 'package', when the latter was first released. None of the builders seemed to have a wing root joint problem when the wings were actually fitted, so I went and did another dry-fit on my kit, this time taping parts together, and trying to simulate the wings as they would be when fitted and glued.
It looked like they'd butt- up nicely, probably without any gap at all, and looked to be a very nice, precision fit.
Bear in mind though, my example is from the very first batch released by Airfix , so there could possibly be some differences in later releases, particularly the Eduard issues, although I doubt it will be a serious problem, and easily remedied.

Thanks for the comments! As always, very helpful! As far as the wing root fit, that's still undetermined. The prefitting was minus the instrument panel bulkhead which might widen the fuselage a bit in place. I'll report on the real fit when I get to it.

I was determined to stay on the Spitfire until I could get the resin cockpit to in place. So the painting began. I divided the cockpit into subassemblies and painted those. The instrument panel was the typical Eduard photoetch... great detail. After the panel was assembled, the face was given a flat coat to reduce the texture/gloss of the pre-painted Eduard pieces. And then I dropped Future into each of the instrument dials to simulate glass.


The gun sight came from the resin set. I don't know if it is out-of-scale but it is a big gun sight. Almost the same size as the 1/32 Revi on my Dora. In fact, the reflector glass is bigger than the 1/32 Revi. The reflector glass was cut from clear plastic from a product package.


The cockpit floor has some great detail but it will be all but invisible once the fuselage is buttoned up I'm afraid, even with the canopy and door open. The rudder pedals were a nightmare and I'm amazed that I was able to salvage them. They are very delicate PE pieces that fold on ridiculously thin wisps of brass. I made the mistake of folding the first one the wrong way. Well, you know what happens when you fold something that thin one too many times. The single rudder fell apart into four separate pieces. The second was folded correctly but it too fell apart while trying to get it attached to the cockpit floor. I was THIS CLOSE to flicking those ridiculous pieces into oblivion. But I put them back together piece by piece... oh what a pain!


The seat minus the harnesses. I tried to use the Hataka paints again. I have the small RAF set with Interior Grey Green. But that stuff won't behave even using Hataka Thinner. Found a bottle of Gunze that came close and used that for the interior green.


The seat bulkhead. The backing of this piece is supposed to be removed resulting in a bulkhead that is not solid. But I didn't know how to go about removing it so I left it on. I suppose I could've painted the recessed areas black to simulate empty space but I got lazy with all of the other painting that I had to do on the cockpit. The seat takes up most of the space looking backward anyway so I don't think it'll be too noticeable.


The control stick from the resin set is nicely detailed with wiring molded onto the column.


The port sidewall all painted up. That detail on the lower left corner got snipped off because it was interfering with the seat. Meaning, you wouldn't have been able to see it anyway.


The starboard sidewall. It's amazing how much detail is on these resin sidewalls. The wires actually travel in all three dimensions, coming up off the wall, onto the spars.


Once I completed the sub-assemblies, I had to figure out the installation order. Since the IP wouldn't fit from the bottom when the fuselage halves were together, I had to cement it in to the one of the sides. Bloody nice detail from a 1/48 kit eh? Aires stuff can be pain in the rear to get into a model but it sure looks nice.


Here's the seat mounted on the bulkhead and with the seatbelts in place. I'm growing disenchanted with PE seatbelts... they just look so stiff. I tried to put some curves to make it look less like brass.


The bulkhead with the seat also needed to be glued into a side. I used some plastic shims to get the bulkheads to stay in place.


The fuselage can now be fused together. Don't forget to put the prop shaft in there. It's meant to be paired with the spinner backplate so that it can spin but I like to paint the spinner and backplate together. So it had to be glued into place.


The cockpit floor with the rudder pedals and control stick are attached with CA glue from the bottom. Fit is great! I have a losing record against resin kits so it feels really good to come out on top for once!


Reality check... the view into the cockpit is pretty meager. I am planning to exercise the open door/open canopy option on this on.


I'll probably jump back on to the Dora now. A bit more putty/sanding/scribing and that one will be ready for paint.

Looking great.

Nice work John. Innards look great. Sad when all the detail is hidden but that's what photos are for

Good stuff John, and yes, the GSCGS is a big unit - it's the same one that was produced under licence as the American K-14 sight.
I agree about PE belts - if i have them in a kit or set, I throw the belts into the spares box, and cut off the buckles to use with foil or thin paper.
The seat on the later models of Spitfire would normally be the 'resin' seat (although metal seats were sometimes fitted by this stage) which was normally a dull red/brown colour, but some were painted black.

Looks great John

Nicely done John. I agree about PE belts, I much prefer the fabric belts you can now get.

Sorry, didn't know there was a difference in seats else I would have sent you these pics of the metal version.



The clunky sight...