**** DONE: 1/48 Spitfire MkVIII - Home Country Modern Aircraft/Spitfire Marks GB

[brucejscott]

Great work Andy. Do those things look like they would fit over glasses?

 

[Crimea_River]

They do indeed Bruce, and come with two sets of lenses, a 1.75 and a 2.75 power.

 

[meatloaf109]

I have a magnifiying glass on a stand with some roach clip "hands" attached... Never really used the clips but the glass has come in handy!

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Andy, as always sir, she's looking real sharp!

 

[woody]

Great work Andy.

 

[Crimea_River]

Cheers guys. Following are pics of the nearly completed filling and sanding efforts. Recall I had put on an initial shot of primer after the first round of filling and this had revealed some areas that needed to be fixed. Now I've done some more and I have also rescribed panel lines and added rivets. Another shot of primer will reveal more areas to be fixed but hopefully these will now be small and local.

The bump near the filler cap that we talked about earlier was bothering me as it was too pronounced so I set about putting this and smoothing the line. The tricky part was redrilling the filler cap hole and rescribing the cowl line. Both of these were carefully done in the putty with very sharp tools to avoid chipping the putty.

The wing root before and after. Note that one of the panel lines was incorrectly placed and that I had to rescribe it further forward. The old one was filled in with primer and sanded over. Oddly, the port side was OK and the kit was molded asymmetrically. Looking at this pic, it looks like I'll need to attend to the trailing edge of the fillet again. There is a panel line that follows very close to the edge but it looks pretty ragged here.

Here's the wing fillet details underneath. This area had almost completely lost its detail from the heavy sanding so this is all rescribed.

And here's the carb intake with rescribed details and rivets.

Before shooting more primer on, I'll get the canopy on and check the seams as well. Thanks again for all your comments, See you soon.

 

[A4K]

Great work Andy!

 

[Wayne Little]

nicely done Andy!

 

[ccheese]

nicely done Andy!

Amen to that !

Charles

 

[Airframes]

Yep, good stuff Andy.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks guys. Held my breath seeing the number of responses on the thought that maybe someone was going to point out something I f***ed up but have since exhaled. Trying to find a way, or rather the right material, to enable me to replicate the lost fasteners on top of the cowl. Need to locate some small brass tube and sharpen it to make the little hollow circles.

In the meantime, I have attached, and then reattached, the glazing and worked on the radiators. Pics later.

 

[Crimea_River]

The radiators are currently masked and partly prime painted so not much to show yet. However, I've attached pics of the fasteners that I scribed in tonight. I finally located my brass tubing and luckily it was the perfect size. I rounded out the hole with a sewing pin and filed the outer circumference to make a sharp chisel edge on the tube and clamped it into my pin vice.

Then it was a simple matter of engraving the fasteners by rotating the tool at the right locations. Here's the upper cowl. Since this picture was taken, I scraped off the lines of horizontal fasteners behind the exhausts and re-engraved them closer to the cowl panel line.

The frontal underside before detailing....

....and after:

Lots of work going on getting the finishing just right before I launch into the painting so thanks for your patience.

 

[hub]

Neat trick 8)
Have to have a go myself

Mike

 

[A4K]

Yep, good idea Andy!

 

[Wayne Little]

Doin great there Andy the brass tube trick is a good one, done that before too....works a treat!

 

[meatloaf109]

Good trick! I bet a hypo needle cut square would work for rivets.

 

[Airframes]

Nicely done Andy. I've on ly ever tried that on 1/32nd scale, where it's possible to do two rings simulating the 'button', but not really physically possible in 1/48th.

 

[Gnomey]

Coming along nicely Andy!

 

[rochie]

nice work Andy

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks gentlemen. Here's the finished starboard radiator area prior to adding the covers. 3 horizontal vanes were added to the kit part per references using stretched sprue slivers and the de-icing tube was added using solder. Radiators were painted a lightened black and drybrushed with silver to highlight the grilles. After masking the grilles, the area has been painted in Medium Sea Grey as paint access in here would be tight after the covers are added.