Thanks a lot fellas and I aprpeciate your patience as I continue to scrub away.
I've been following, without comment until now. Andy you have had major efforts in wrasteling this kit into shape. Doing a great job I will add. Following to get the feel for ICM kits. Not to positive on getting any yet!
Given the choice of same model (spitfire-Bf ?- Yak, whatever), same size, same theme but with a selection of manufacturers, would you pick an ICM again?
Thanks Ralph. The early ICM Spitfire kits are a bit of a challenge but build up nice with lots of elbow grease as you can see. When these kits came out, they were touted as the being the most accurate 1/48 Spitfire IX/XVI's available and so that was the reason I bought three of them years ago. I didn't have as much trouble with their 109s if I recall and their detail and value is excellent. Would I buy another ICM kit? A new tool, yes for sure as they have upped their game significantly. The older Spitfire, 109 and Mustang kits have long been surpassed by much better (but pricier) kits so this will probably be my last.
Anyway, let's have a look at the state of play right now. Here are a few shots of the filling and trial painting that has been going on.
The spine of this model has an odd little shelf on it that I could not trace on the real aircarft. The only thing near there is the radio antenna but it doesn't have this odd protrusion so off it comes.
A close up of the wing tips shows how they have been filed down significantly to create a more squared off look. The nav light lenses will be painted on.
The prop blades are pretty bad. They have sink marks, flash, and are much too thick. On past builds I replaced these with resin blades but on this one I will thin these kit blades and use them rather than buy new stuff.
The gun sight has disappeared with the clear parts sprue and, in any case, would have been the wrong type anyway, so I set about scratch building a Mk II Gyro Sight. For this, I used a chunk of sprue from my Airfix P-51 as it's nice and soft. Below you can see the shape started with a file and the detail on the cockpit sill that will need to be modified.
The mount has been modified and the rough box for the sight CA glued in place.
And here we have the finished sight with the scale dial scratched in, the projector lenses drilled and painted, and the reflector glass added.
I know some of these came with a shade over the top but it seems that some don't have it so I stopped there rather than make more work for myself. Maybe this shade was retractable anyway - not sure. In any event, I need to make sure the windscreen doesn't foul this thing but it's been dipped in Future and is curing so I'll give that a go tomorrow.
Thanks again for following along. I really hope to get some paint splashed on this thing soon.