Tamiya's New Spitfire Mk I N3200 of 19 Squadron

Time for more assembly and this time we'll start with the fuselage halves coming together. As mentioned earlier, despite the wonderful fit of this kit, I did get a visible seam on the engine cowling that I had to attend to but it was small enough to just need a bit of surface primer. After sanding that back, I attached the small closure piece at the nose, G30, seen in the instructions below:



In my opinion, this is a bit of an odd piece and I don't understand Tamiya's reasoning here. Yes, there is an actual very thin panel line on the real aircraft at the rear edge of that piece but there's already a seam going down most of the upper cowl anyway. So why not make the entire cowl a seamless piece and use the larger panel line between the cowl fasteners and the raised fuel tank armour as the closure seam? As it turned out, because I sanded down the cowl seam ever so slightly, there was now a slight step up to part G30 that I had to deal with as so I filled this with primer again:



After sanding and polishing:



And now I have to rescribe that very thin panel line. Dumb.

Anyway, next up are the exhausts which are really nicely done, though quite finicky and not for the faint of heart as you'll see. The parts are attached to the sprue in a thoughtful location in that the tiny, separate fish tail parts glue over the attachment points and hide them. That's where the ingenuity stops though as Tamiya has chosen to make some intricate attachment details for these tiny parts so that you can't mix them up. The trouble is, it's almost impossible to perserve the details when removing the attachment points. Looking closely at the below pic before the attachment points are filed away, you can see that there's actually a step on both surfaces and a knob on the other. Pretty high expectations here. Note also that the moulded-in aft exhaust stub is solid and could stand drilling out.



This is after filing away the sprue gate remnants:



And then it's a matter of snipping off the tiny fish tails and gluing them in place without losing them. For these, I decided to take it to another level and file a crescent into the exhaust end. I stuck the piece onto masking tape and used a tiny jeweller's file for this. Those are millimeters on the ruler and you can see the exhaust end of the part peeking out of the tape.



I managed to keep all 4 pieces from flitting off into the ether and got them on without too much drama but, MAN, this is fiddley sh!t.



Once the exhausts are glued in, we are directed to the rear of the model to assemble the tail feathers. The horizontal stab comes as a complete upper half comprising both stabs with separate lower halves. The advantage here is that there's no fussing with trying to make sure the stabs are in line with each other and perpendicular to the fin. The disadvantage, for folks like me who like to deflect the control surfaces, is that the elevators are moulded in solid, which I hate. I wanted to have the elevators pointing down slightly so I cut through the horn balance line and scored the hinged edge and pushed them down.

The fit of this assembly is truly remarkable with the whole assembly easily sliding into place:



The fit is so good that it's hard to find a place t get the extra thin cement in. It's also very solid and at exactly the right angle.



Next, Tamiya asks you to glue in a small piece of folded PE to close in the elevator torque tube (done) and then attach the rudder. As you can see below, the rudder has a very fine aerial wire post moulded to it which is almost guaranteed to be broken off so I am electing to attach the rudder much later.

Over on the wings, the ailerons are separate (YAY!) but they come with some pretty hefty tabs which pretty much mean that they will have to be neutral. Hell with that! I had already deflected the control column a bit so I bent the tabs on the ailerons so they would go in slightly deflected.



The assembled wings:



The wings went together well but the separate tips didn't go as well as I would have liked. The fit on the bottom was better than on the top despite my best efforts but I'm sure the paint will make it look fine.

The radiator and oil cooler come with separate PE grilles and the rad has a separate part to represent the piping to the gun heat system - nice.



I would have liked the exit flap to be separate but, once again, it's moulded shut. The little spray pipe at the front of the rad is not a part that Tamiya provided so I'll be adding that simple piece before gluing the bath to the wing.

That's all for today. Thanks again for looking in.

Good stuff, and I agree, there are some areas that seem to be overly complex in design.

Lovely work so far Andy!

Very nice

Great work Andy.

Thanks guys. I've not been ignoring this one, just haven't downloaded pics from my SLR. Question though. Tamiya have not included any torque links for the undercarriage struts. Is this an omission or did the early marks not have them?

Unfortunately, at the moment this is the best I can find, dated 1938. K9792 or as the photo shows, ᄅ6ㄥ6ʞ

Thanks buddy. Looks like they were added later then.

Yep, from the Mk.IX onwards, although I think some late Mk.V had them - would need to check.

Thanks Terry. Just checking on the gun camera opening as well. I've read that the camera was installed in the port wing root from Spitfire Mk.I K9989 onwards but that it was not always present. In lieu, the opening was covered in a fabric patch. Once again, pictures of my beached N3200 are inconclusive. The modern restoration does not have the opening nor does Tamiya provide it so, unless someone has better info, I will not drill the opening.

In my initial post, I described how the undercarriage struts were both moulded to a stout cross member to form a single piece that allows the builder to avoid fussing around with angles at a later stage. This next step and those that follow show work on the legs.

Here we have the assembly and I've done a couple of mods. I drill out the eyes on the lugs, attached 3 tiny round fittings to each leg, and then added the spiralled tube on the front of the legs using stretched sprue.



I forgot to take a picture of the next step which involved gluing the assembly into the wings, which I did after spraying everything silver. Instead of a picture, here's what that looks like as described in the instructions:



As I said, the advantage is that this provides a sturdy support for the undercarriage and guarantees symmetry. The downside is that one is forced to install the legs now as opposed to later when they could be out of the way for painting the undersides so these will have to be masked. The trench that the cross member fits into is filled with inserts and, as seen below, the fit is absolutely stunning. You'd never know there were separate parts there but for the trace of glue. The silver you see is some left over paint from another project which I decided to blow on.



Following that, the carb intake, which comes in two pieces, is assembled and glued into place. All of this is achieved with stellar fit which is putting my Airfix build to shame.



With this all done, I'm getting close to painting. It's nice to not have to unscrew the cap of my tube of putty for a change. Thanks for looking and for the support.

Interesting way of dealing with the landing gear......HEY!!!!!!.....AIRFIX........................

Yeah, it turns out it was not a good idea to build these side by side. Compare the same area on Airfix:

Neat way of doing it.
You could wrap the gear legs in 'cling film' or baking foil when spraying. It's a method I've used a few times when forced to fit the legs early in the build.

Beauty Andy

Good work so far Andy!