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Matchbox Spitfire 22/24


LSP_Kevin

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SAC do a set of metal gear for the PCM Mk 9/16...having a look at pictures and the gear, they look pretty much the same and you'd get away with it in scale. I always apply the rule; will anyone walk up to me and say, ha - they are not MkXXX items, they are MkXXX ones. If no, then I go for it.

 

http://www.justplane...sions/32038.jpg

 

Master Models do some nice turned 20mm cannons for this kit too.

 

Yep, got the cannons already (shown in the opening post). SAC gear? Dunno - the alloy they use is quite soft and just as likely to bend under load as the kit gear. I think drilling and pinning would be at least as effective (and substantially cheaper). I'd consider a G-Factor set if one was available, but they're even more expensive again. For the markings I'm just going with the set that Xtradecal have available, when I can get hold of it.

 

Kev

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Oh, I must confess that the SAC landing gear does actually look quite nice, and would make for a substantial improvement over the ones in this kit in terms of detail and accuracy. Has anybody used this particular set? I'd love to know whether it's worth the risk.

 

Kev

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OK, so a little bit of work has been carried out on this build. I filled the gaps around the wing gun bay covers with Mr Surfacer, and used the 'no sand' technique to remove the excess:

mK0QrD.jpg

You can also see in that photo that I've removed the moulded-in solid plastic wing-tip landing lights, to be replaced with my usual toothbrush handle segment later on.

The main area of work at the moment is boxing in the awful main wheel bays. The kit bay side walls are token at best:

4qQiOx.jpg

Even with the extra styrene I added in an attempt to bridge the gap, they're a long way from closed in. So I took the hard road:

la2WOd.jpg

de6OxD.jpg

Very rough at this stage, but nothing some filler and sanding won't take care of. Note that the gap at the bottom is from the loose test fit of the upper wing, and should disappear when everything's glued in place. It'll take me quite some time to complete this process, but I couldn't think of a simpler way to do it (running the styrene around the inside of the cut-out, while much simpler, would have narrowed the opening unacceptably).

Hopefully more soon!

Kev

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Well, I finally managed to dig up some decent interior shots of both the cockpit and wheel wells for the 24, and whaddaya know, the wheel wells are not boxed-in in the fashion I'm attempting at all! So, I'll be ripping out my mods and starting again. The photos I have are close and tight however, so I'm still struggling to get an overall picture of how the wheel wells were constructed. Anybody got anything?

 

Kev

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, not a lot of modelling time of late, but I did manage to press on a little bit with the wheel bays. Following Derek's confirmation of my intended approach, I boxed in the main bays with styrene sheet to an arbitrary height:

ZgTAH3.jpg

Once this has set hard, I'll sand down the height until the lower wings fit snugly over them. Once that's sorted, I'll build up the inboard sections that hold the gear legs themselves. Doing it now would provide too difficult an alignment challenge, as I can't get the lower wing into place to accurately position the sidewalls yet. I suppose I could attach them directly to the lower wings, but that would make mating them accurately with the main bay box quite difficult.

In case you're wondering, I chose to create the boxes on the upper wing, as that's what you look up into when viewing the bays. If it was a case of having a separate bay roof that wasn't part of the upper wing, I'd take a different approach. In any case, if anyone has any suggestion about how to do it better, or where to go from here, I'm all ears!

Oh, the circular cut-out on each inboard face is to give me a starting point for carving out the curved frame that separates the two portions of the gear bays (leg and wheel).

Kev

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Kevin,

May I suggest?

I clamshelled the wings and built the walls from the outside in on the Hartmann and K-4 builds.

 

First, clamshell the wings.

 

Then, tac a short in height strip on the wing top in the position you want. Cut a short in height strip for the wing bottom. Each strip must be greater than 50% of the wall height. You don't have to glue it in place. Saliva will do, it is sticky and when dry the parts will hold together. Locate the lower strip onto the top strip and close the wing. The outer edge of the lower strip will conform to the lower wing. Let dry. Open wing and glue the two pieces together. You've got a wall without the guess-work of sanding to shape.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

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DSCN5011.jpg

This may not be pertinant to you, but here I'm finding the contour of the outside wall using kraft packaging tape, both bottom wing and top wing contour. Paper tape doesn't stretch, and you can use it for both sets of walls.

 

DSCN5032.jpgClamshelled open. Here I built the wall out to match the contour of the outer face. First I made a wall by placing the paper tape on strip and cutting out the shape. Then I fine-tuned the shape by filling in the top and bottom contours with cut paper index card (it's cheaper than strip), gluing it with white glue. I had clamshelled (taped) the wing top to bottom so I could close it in alignment without having to resort to fitting them together each time I wanted to check the fit. Clamshelling the parts made for a fast and easy evaluation.

 

DSCN5029.jpg

Another view. Clamshelled closed. More fine-tuning. To build the back wall I attached strip (greater than 50% of the height) to the top and bottom of the spar then glued them together. This gave me the back wall height.

 

DSCN5073.jpg

I took the parts out, traced them on .010 strip, trimmed them, and detailed them.

 

DSCN5076.jpg

Then located them in place.

 

DSCN5077.jpg

Completing the 3 walls.

 

The same principle applies to what you're doing. You've already found the contour of the top wall, you've glued strip directly to the wall. And as such have the contour. Now you need to find the contour of the lower wall. Cut strips of index card, because it's cheaper than strip, and glue them to the top wall and close the wing. If you use strip then I suggest you adhere the strip with saliva. It's non-porous. Index card will warp. You will be able to move the strip into position easily. Since saliva is sticky it will stay in place. Once dry, open the wing and glue the strips together. You've made your lower wing contour.

 

Using a pointed implement, such as the point of a #11 blade, you can move the strip into place in the tiny space before the glue/saliva dries against the bottom wall. After the glue/saliva dries, open the wing, glue the parts together and you've got the bottom contour attached to the top strip. Let them dry, then remove them to trace and shape.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

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OK fellas, I've been struggling on and off for a few days trying to scratch-build a particular bit of detail, but just can't manage it. Before giving up, I thought I'd seek advice from our scratch-building gurus. Basically, I want to represent the curved outer frame under the wing bulge in the photo below:

 

18.jpg

 

I've tried bending thin strips of plastic, bending heavy self-adhesive aluminium tape, cutting the entire shape out of both materials...nothing has come off so far. I tried using a cardstock template, binding 2 #11 blades together...but I can't get two evenly-spaced, curved cuts into the thin material. This is the ideal problem for PE to solve, and perhaps there's an opportunity here for me to give it a whirl (chemical etching without the 'photo' part), but that's a project in itself!

 

Does anybody else have any other suggestions? Derek - how would you do it?

 

Kev

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Oh, by the way, thanks for all the help Mark. I used a dumbed-down version of your technique for the outer walls. Once I can solve the above problem, the rest of the wheel bay details should come together pretty quickly, and I can move on!

 

Kev

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What does the area look like in the kit?

Mark, it's just a featureless indent:

 

MzDMMg.jpg

 

You can see that I've started adding some structural detail, but I need that curved frame in place before I can go much further.

 

Kev

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Well, this problem seems to have stumped everybody (either that, or no one's actually looking...), so I decided to push on and give it one last crack:

Ued44E.jpg

The frame is simply thin styrene strip, curved and glued a section at at time. The one on the right turned out OK, but the one on the left is more of a triangle than a curve on its right side. I only had one shot at this, so I have to live with it now, but that's OK. I'd rather give it a shot and live with a problem like this than let it hang up the build forever while I wait for the ideal technique to come along. Here's some more photos:

NG1ZZV.jpg

zdtItm.jpg

NLpOYO.jpg

It looks pretty rough (and in fact is pretty rough), but I'm just going for a bit of representative detail here, rather than an exact replica of the real thing. There's quite a bit more detail to add yet, and then I'll give it a heavy coat of Mr. Surfacer to smooth things out a bit. It shouldn't look too bad by the end!

Kev

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