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Finished ! Spitfire Mk II P7531 / L.Z I / 421 Flight


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Spitfire Mk II P7531 coded L.Z I

Flown with 421 Flight.

Tamiya 1/48th Mk I with Eduard Colour Zoom set, Ultracast Prop, seat and exhausts, Aeromaster decals.

This is going to be a quick and fun build.

Typical Tamiya and recent generation Eduard, everything goes together pretty quickly.

Interior parts. Although the Eduard etch is coloured, I chose to repaint them as Interior Green colour was off and looked grainy.

CockpitBits.jpg

Fuselage Interiors.

Rather than mess around with washes, I did some post shading with highly thinned acrylics in shades of browns and blacks. Unfortunately the flash has washed it out in the picture.

FuseInt.jpg

Cheers,

Matt

Edited by Matt
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Thanks Guys.

Small update. Seat is done and cockpit is together.

A few small touchups and it will be ready to go.

The Eduard rudder pedals didn't go together well, and to be honest, you can't see them when everything is together and canopy is on, so skipping those.

Cockpit1.jpg

Cheers

Matt

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Moving rapidly along, as these Tamiya Spits have a tendency to do, pretty much ready for paint, just needs a final sanding and clean up.

Fuseb4paint-1.jpg

I had some grief with the rear canopy, as the kit item split right in half removing it from the sprue.

Fortunately, I had some left over Vac canopies that I didn't use this part from, so I was able to cut a replacement from those.

I like to give my Spitfires a little personality, and part of that is cutting the tail wheel and fitting it back at an angle as if the aircraft was swung to rest.

I drill through the kit part from below, cut the wheel off, CA in a pin, then cut that off and sand it flush. Its easier to do than it is to type up.

tailwheel.jpg

Radiator flap is down on the ground to improve cooling. The Eduard Zoom set didn't provide the usual PE replacement, so I had to cut out the kit part carefully to re-use it.

Radiator.jpg

Spitfire elevators droop down at rest unless the control column has a locking device attached.

Kit parts are cut apart and re-attached. I'm going to leave the tail planes off the kit until the camo is masked and painted, just makes the masking of the camo a little easier.

tailplane.jpg

Finally, the Ultracast blunt spinner prop set comes with the Coffman starter bulge for the MkII

The white part is some scrap styrene. In order the minimize the gaps at the base of the chin part, I pushed it as far back as it would go. When the spinner is attached there was a small but noticeable gap between it and the front of the chin part, so some scrap styrene filled that.

noseb4paint-1.jpg

Hopefully I'll get a primer coat on this week and then then start the painting proper next week.

Cheers,

Matt

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I was able to grab a couple hours to start on the paint job.

For this build I'm trying something a little different, using different shades from dark through light in more of an overall disruptive 'patchy' look than the more usually panel lines and highlights.

The base coat was about 90% Tamiya Sky and 10% Tamiya Nato Black.

The shading was 3-4 shades of Tamiya Sky and Sky/White mixes followed by a very very thin filter of straight Sky to blend it in a bit.

Its probably a little more overdone that I was looking for, but this should tone down more with the gloss and flat coats.

DSC_6771.jpg

I also tried using post-it notes as a mask against some major panel lines (leading edge, wing tips, ailerons and flaps) just to add some definition and to see how it would look. I had to soften the edges freehand after the fact.

DSC_6773.jpg

Cheers,

Matt

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After letting the underside dry nicely we can move on to the upper colours.

The AeroMaster paint diagram for this subject indicates that the demarcation on the nose should be lower down on the chin rather than the panel line.

The only photo I can find of this subject is a little grainy and from a distance but it looks like it was painted on the panel line to me, so thats what I went with.

Again, I was just noodling around trying for a patchy weathered look. AS with the undersides, about 4 shades of the base colour followed by a very thin filter to tie it all together.

DSC_6777.jpg

DSC_6778.jpg

Tamiya don't do a match for British Dark Earth. I did a custom mix against a set of colour chips from Iliad Design.

It is mostly XF52 Flat Earth and XF79 Linoleum Deck Brown (about a 70/30 mix) and then some XF62 Olive Drab to make it a little less brown and more 'earthy' (<5% then keep adding bit by bit until it looks right) These are all guestimates , I just add a bit here and bit there until it 'looks about right'

DSC_6779.jpg

(I think the white card threw of the white balance a bit, the match is closer to the eye under natural)

Cheers,

Matt

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Superb paint work there Matt!... I think you color match looks perfect and the weathering looks equally perfect... :thumbsup:

I also like your tail wheel trick, simple but effective.

Cheers,

Mark

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  • 2 weeks later...

For some reason, Decals are the bane of my modeling existence. No matter what I do they always fight me something cruel.

For this build I'm using a set from Aeromaster, and even these fought me.

They went on fine. Nice and flat, no tears, no wrinkles, but even after 2 shots of Micro Sol they still sat there like vinyl stickers, no attempt to nestle down into the details. By contrast, I had cut the gun port patches from the kit decals (from the tail fin stripes) and these were settling down fine.

After 4 separate coats of Solvaset you could just start to make out the panel lines. As I didn't have anything stronger, I resorted to carefully slicing the decals along the panel lines followed up by two more coats of Solvaset. That was about as close as I could get.

By time I was done, the constant coating of decal solvents had left a lot of ugly white stains. Fortunately a light over coat of Future/Windex mix got rid of those.

DSC_6800.jpg

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DSC_6802.jpg

The astute amongst you will notice no stencil decals.

That is another of my personal aesthetic choices. They nearly always look rubbish and silver on me, so I just skip them. From a distance you really don't notice they aren't there.

Started on the weathering with a chalk wash. The undersides was a medium grey / medium brown mix, the upper sides a darker grey/brown mix.

Its quite subtle but its there.

DSC_6804.jpg

DSC_6806.jpg

Next up, oil staining on the underside, exhaust stains and chipping.

Cheers,

Matt

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Thanks Guys.

Quick update.

Wear and chipping. Citadel Boltgun Metal stippled on with a old brush cut down to about 1/8"

DSC_6808.jpg

Oil stains. Black and Brown oil paint, thinned down. Applied as dots and then streaks with an old fan brush.

DSC_6811.jpg

Getting closer to the end.

Cheers,

Matt

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Finished. About how I was hoping it would come out.

I was concerned the paint work was still not subtle enough, but after the gloss and flat coats, if anything its too subtle and it all got lost a bit.

Anyway, Thanks for the kind words and for looking.

DSC_6812.jpg

DSC_6815.jpg

DSC_6816.jpg

DSC_6819.jpg

DSC_6821.jpg

DSC_6824.jpg

DSC_6828.jpg

Cheers,

Matt

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That's a beautiful build & excellent finish. I think you got the faded colours spot on & the oil streaks are really well done. I will have to try the paint chipping technique myself, it sounds so simple.

Once again, top build & something for us less accomplished modellers to aspire to. :taunt:

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  • 1 month later...

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