**** DONE: GB-41 1/48 Hawker Hurricane Mk XII - PTO from 1937

Welcome back to plastic Andy, I know the feeling. Agree about the seam and the lack of consideration

Good to see you back at it Andy - I need a 'jump start' to get me going again !

It can be hard sometimes to get the inclination to apply the necessary zeal, but all the same I think you are still getting excellent result Andy

I have full confidence that your enthusiasm and time will return.

Looks great so far Andy!

Thanks guys. Bike ride tomorrow in the mountains may be snowed out so maybe will get a bit more done

good to see you 'trying' Andy, sometimes bigger distractions can take away that enthusiasm....

At least your back at it Andy

Thanks guys. Just to catch up, I'll post here a bit of work done 2 weeks ago. That nasty seam location mentioned earlier is taking some doing to hide and here's what it looked liked back then and as it still does, since I haven't touched it since. Some silver paint was applied to show me areas that still need work. It's getting there but not near perfect yet. I need to find or make a better tool for hollowing out the simulated ribbing which is more pronounced on the wing part than on the fuselage, adding to the challenge.



The landing light area was also painted silver as it was common of Canadian built Hurricanes to have had all of their framework painted in silver butyrate dope. The reflector for the light was coated using my .2mm Molotow chrome pen giving a nice mirror-like finish.



At about this time, I also dipped all of the clear parts in Future since I plan to attach the landing light and navigation light lenses with CA glue and then sanding and polishing them to follow the wing contours closely.

That brings us up to date. Hopefully I'll make some good progress soon.

Thanks for watching and for your patience!

Great work so far Andy!

Thanks guys.

Slid into a bit of a groove again yesterday and got a bunch of stuff done. The radiator was glued and clamped and this needed a bit of coaxing. In the end, a bit of stretched sprue was glued into an open gap to seal it up.



The resin prop hub was painted Alclad Airframe Aluminum and yellow was sprayed onto the separate resin blades.



After masking the prop tips, Tamiya Rubber Black was sprayed on and, when dry, the blades were glued into the boss. I then sprayed some Future onto the blades for some potential decals. Having looked at period references, it appears that none of the Canadian props carried the Hamilton Standard logos but there was, in many cases, a small rectangular patch near the base which may have carried some written data on it.



As always, left-over paint in the airbrush is put to use where I can and in this case I began applying some preshading. The main purpose of the below pic is to show that the clear parts for the lights have been CA-glued in place and the adjacent areas sanded and polished to make sure there is a clean fit of the glazing. The nav lights on both sides had the bulbs drilled in and painted the respective red and green before attaching. There is some debate as to whether the nav light lenses were clear or shaded but I'm of the opinion that the majority were clear based again on period pics, though a few do show shaded lenses. Our restoration is using the latter though I'd argue clear. Once all the sanding and polishing was done, the lenses all received a brushed on coat of Future to make them sparkle.



The majority of Canadian Hurricanes sported the exhaust shields and the one pic of 5389 confirms they are there, though I forgot to add them on the marking plans I drew up. The kit does provide them but they are pretty thick and sad looking so I decided to make my own out of card. The below pic shows the result with the scratch ones installed and one of the kit part loosely sitting on top as a comparison. I may have made the fins a bit too wide so I will probably narrow then down a bit, hopefully without breaking them. It's hard to see but the attachment flange has had the rivets pushed out with a needle from the back but these will show better once paint is applied.



The undercarriage is nicely detailed save for the brake lines which I added. A little more of a wash will be applied yet. The wheels have been flattened and will remain loose until I stand the model up and rotate them so they sit properly on the flats before gluing.



That's all for now. Thanks for looking in.

Looking good Andy. Do you mask your wheels?

Lovely work Andy

Nice detail work Andy, and those exhaust 'blinkers' look much better than the kit parts.

Thanks guys.

Geo, no I didn't mask the wheels this time and hand painted instead. Black airbrushed first, then silver by hand, then touched up black as needed with those little mascara brushes I bought in February. In between spokes was done by placing a drop of thinned black in the hole.

The blinkers were modified in a short session last night. It turns out that I made them incorrectly as they are actually just bent sheet riveted along the top fold rather than a sheet welded to a flange plate. I modified the parts accordingly and narrowed them down with a scalpel. Pics later.

Looks great so far Andy!

Real nice work Andy. For re-establishing the ribbing on the underside have you thought about using a needle file? I think a half round tapered one might work out

That's exactly how I tackled it Glenn. I have two; one is of round cross section and the other is oval. I used both to recreate the ribbing and have now left it alone as it's turned out adequate.

Moving along, I said I'd post a pic of the modified "blinkers" so here it is:



The above pic has a couple of things to talk about. The blinkers can now be seen in their finished state with the bottom portion of the attachment flange cut away and the width of the fins themselves narrowed down with a scalpel. The local coat of Dark Green reveals the rivets on the flange poked form behind the sheet with a needle. Rivet counters will object to the fact that there are only 5 whereas there should be 6.

The RAF Dark Green paint is Tamiya XF-81 and was sprayed locally on the bulkhead behind the armour plate. This was necessary at this point as the closed canopy will make this area inaccessible and I like to install the canopy before the top coats are applied.

Finally, note the finished gunsight. This is largely the kit part but has been modified by cutting off the moulded square reflector glass and replacing it with a new round one cut from clear plastic sheet.

Another scratch built addition was the outer gun barrels which actually protrude slightly from the wing contour. I didn't like the kit parts so used some brass rod instead as shown below.



Below you can see the actual paint chips that were prepared for our restoration and these are handy for mixing the colours to be used on my model.



With the chip for the colour Sky as a reference, I mixed a batch of paint for the underside using roughly equal portions of Tamiya XF-21 Sky and XF-2 White and added a drop of XF-8 Blue. The match is very close and is better in reality than in the below pic which suggests the model colour to be slightly darker than the chip. I will look at it again in natural light and, based on that, may decide to lighten the mix a bit and apply another coat on the bottom, perhaps creating a pit of a patchy pattern to create a weathered look.



Thanks again for looking in and for the feedback.