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My Daughter's Second Build - 1/76 Spitfire Diorama


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With the serial on, and over an hour passed, it was time for a couple of quick photos before we had to clear away. The wind even gave us a gust for the prop!

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Other than perhaps the canopy, that's the Spit done for now. We'll leave the landing gear and other fragile parts off until ready to do the final assembly of the diorama. With the school summer holidays only a week and a half away, we should get it finished during that time. In October, the local aircraft museum is having a model show, so we hope to take it along, together with some of my stuff to display.

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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Bravo!

At 5, she's already better that I was when I started back into the hobby at age 30. Excellent work and good for both of you.

Well done, Miss.

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  • 3 months later...

It was July since we last touched this kit, but as wifey was away for the weekend, it was just me and little legs for two days. So after some episodes of Danger Mouse this morning, we got all the stuff out on the dining room table and carried on from where we left off. We'd painted the wheels, legs and exhausts on the sprue, so these were ready to be cut sanded and attached.

She's now generally safe to be let loose with a scalpel, 'though she knows she's only allowed to touch one when I'm there to supervise. So the wheels were cut, and the cuts sanded smooth, followed by the legs and exhausts. I did a little scraping of paint where the gluing contact area was to be.

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The wheels were glued to the legs and left to dry a little while. In the mean time, we attached the exhausts.

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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The glue joint on the wheels was still hardening, so we moved on to the small Bedford fuel bowser kit. There were two bowsers in the kit, the Bedford and AEC Matador. We separated the small bowser parts from that of the Matador, and left those in a plastic bag to use in a future diorama. So we started off painting the tyres.

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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Painting the inside of the cab.

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We'd done about an hour and a bit, and I could see that was about enough concentration in one go, so left the painted parts to dry, and before we stopped, got the Spitfire landing gear attached. The legs were left to dry with the model inverted for a while, before being turned over and supported on some small blocks of balsa for a quick picture, before being turned back over for the glue to completely evaporate and the joints to harden.

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Edited by Army_Air_Force
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Nice PRU Spit :). Daughter have a talent - this is very good. Female modellers are often most precise as their male colleagues. BTW: In UK is schooling from 5 years ?

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  • 6 months later...

It's been a while since this was updated, but the project isn't dead, it's just that the social life of a six year old is very busy! My workshop has also been monopolised for some time with a large customer project, but that is now gone, so I can probably set up a space where the Spit diorama can be left out to work on. Same goes for my B-26 hangar queen project!

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I gave the aircraft a sprayed matt coat over the decals the other day, and we got the canopy on and the frames partially painted, masking a few at a time. There's still a few touch ups to do like the wheels where they were cut from the sprue. No further progress on the tanker at present.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's half term holiday this week and we found an hour yesterday to do a little more to the diorama. We started by painting the concrete dispersal. The grey was a little thin, so it took a couple of coats. It still could do with some weathering, so we might have a go next time with some speckling from the airbrush and general dirtying up of the concrete.

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While that was drying, we turned our attention back to the tanker, starting with the chassis. I placed the pieces in position while my daughter did the gluing. I'm sure many adults have found that grown up fingers are the correct size to work in 1/76 scale, so perhaps she should have done the positioning and I should have applied the glue!

 

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The tank went together next after some internal filling, to allow the top detail to be sanded off. This is because the kit is a copy of a post war tanker with booms for the refuelling hoses. The wartime tanker wasn't like this, so we're going to do a little modifying.

pink_spit_034.jpg

Edited by Army_Air_Force
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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

A few days ago, we got back to the diorama, having being distracted by the now almost complete "My Little Pony" railroad model. Most of the construction work on the tanker was done, just leaving the painting before final assembly. While my daughter was working on the tanker, I was painting one of the converted ponies for the railroad. First coat of green applied.
 

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My daughter quite liked the idea of the "Mickey Mouse" style WW2 camouflage, so we applied that to the tanker. Some bits were a bit too tricky for her, but for others, I painted the outline and she filled in the rest. The tanker body is still unattached at this point. I gave the concrete a dust over in a few dark greys and blacks to mottle the surface and then drew the tar joint lines with a fine line pen while squinting through a magnifying glass so I could get them as fine as possible. This is where we are up to now. I've glossed the areas on the tanker where the decals go, and that will be the next job. 

 

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We're both very pleased with the way it is looking.

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  • 2 months later...

We finished off the figures a few days ago, and began to work out where everything should go. I didn't want it to go overboard, so eight figures seemed about the right amount to fill the space.

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Here's seven of the figures almost complete.

 

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