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New tool Revell Spitfire. 16th Aug, 2015. All done


geedubelyer

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Hi Matt, hi Harv, glad you like the way the pilot is coming along. Thanks for taking the time to add your thoughts, much appreciated

On 1/13/2015 at 7:18 AM, Cees Broere said:

Isn't that HRH Prince Bernhard? :hmmm:

Cees

Lol! If this was a WWII bird it could be quite possible Cees. He does bare a passing resemblance to HRH does n't he? ^_^

 

On 1/13/2015 at 10:59 AM, ScanmanDan said:

Great work on the pilot.  He came out marvellous and will really set the scene once you get him into the cockpit.  Will make a nice change from all the BoB renditions.  Was it as nerve  wracking to dress him in the belts as it looks from the pictures?

 

Dan

Hi Dan, thanks for the encouraging comments, much appreciated. It was quite fiddly to do. I spent some time working out roughly which belt went where. Then it was a case of putting them in place one at a time.

 

The images below show some more work on the pilot.

 

He's strapped into his seat now.

tn-Cockpit-and-pilot-050.jpg

 

I've added his wristwatch, something I've been wanting to try for a while.

tn-Cockpit-and-pilot-042.jpg

The silver sliver at the top of his arm is a pen but I can see I've squashed it a bit so I'll need to straighten that back out.

 

His left arm will be resting in the open door with his hand on the edge (hopefully) Somehow I've got to work out how to add the arm before I paint the fuselage.

tn-Cockpit-and-pilot-051.jpg

One option might be to paint the door and fuselage around the door then mask it all off including his arm. :shrug:

 

The cockpit is nearly complete now. I hope to get the control column painted and fixed in place tomorrow which will allow me to add the right arm before closing up the fuselage.

 

Bye for now,

 

Cheers.

Edited by geedubelyer
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Hi guys, thanks for the kind words.

... a rolex for sure?

Maybe.......http://www.rolex.com/watches/sky-dweller/m326938-0002.html :lol:

 

 What's it made out of?

Hi crackerjazz, I used a filed down Airscale instrument bezel for the case, an Airscale WWII RAF clock decal for the face, a punched disc of clear acetate for the glass and scribed metal foil for the strap. HTH

 

Cheers.

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Terrific work Guy! Pilot looks really great.
 

One option might be to paint the door and fuselage around the door then mask it all off including his arm. :shrug:


I've done something like this previously, and it works quite well. I'm surprised more people don't use this approach to tackle tricky painting challenges. The only difficulty is making sure the paint blends nicely between the two different painting sessions.

Kev

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Guest Peterpools

Ernie

You have to be kidding? Fantastic gunfire and the pilot will never be late since he has a watch to tell the time.

Keep 'em coming

Perter

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Hi gang,

 

Jer, Peter, Matt, William and Dennis many thanks for adding your encouraging comments, much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed the watch. ^_^

 

On 1/16/2015 at 11:03 PM, LSP_Kevin said:

 

I've done something like this previously, and it works quite well. I'm surprised more people don't use this approach to tackle tricky painting challenges. The only difficulty is making sure the paint blends nicely between the two different painting sessions.

Kev

 

Hi Kev, that's good to hear, thanks. I'm hoping that his arm will be hung over the door so I could be lucky. That would mean I would n't have to match the cammo colours from two seperate sittings. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

The fuselage is all buttoned up now but in my eagerness to make some progress I forgot to add the tail wheel. :doh: :rolleyes:  Can it be fitted later in the build? (It will have to be some how, I just hope it's an easy "slide-in" job....)

 

Before I glued the fuselage halves together I did remember to add the completed cockpit assembly.

tn-Cockpit-and-pilot-057.jpg

As I was about to fix it in place I spotted some details in a reference photo which, on the spur of the moment, I  decided to add a suggestion of.

I went to work with some wine bottle foil. I used a punch set for the lightening holes and cut each piece roughly to shape before simply glueing the foil straight to the fuselage sides.

 

 

tn-Cockpit-and-pilot-058.jpg

These components are possibly not accurate for all Spitfires and I confess I did n't get hung up on whether the aircraft I'm depicting has them fitted or not. What it does do is add some visual interest in the gloom behind the cockpit.

 

tn-Cockpit-and-pilot-063.jpg

 

tn-Cockpit-and-pilot-062.jpg

 

In other news, I've begun glueing up the control surfaces and horizontal tailplanes. Nothing to see thus far although each will require a bit of work. More at eleven.

 

Edit: Gunsight added.

The kit gunsight is n't too bad as far as I can tell. In particular, the bottom half represents the real deal very well. The top portion however can be slightly improved if one cares to.

I lopped the plastic lens and it's mount off before drilling into the clear plastic sight. I dropped a disc of clear acetate into the hole and then used another over the top of the opening to create the lens.

I then sawed off a wedge of brass tube and mounted that around the rear of the lens as the reflector mount.

The reflector was a circle punched out of clear acetate but larger than required. This was then carefully shaped into more of an oval so that it fitted the new mount.

tn_Gunsight.jpg

 

tn_Gunsight_(1).jpg

 

Finally for this brief update I've had a go at thinning the canopy part. I found it remarkable just how thin the actual sliding canopy framework is. On the kit, the glazing is probably about 1mm thick or so. That equates (obviously) to 32mm in 1:1 :hmmm:

The real deal appears to be much thinner than that.

http://spitfiresite.com/2010/07/anatomy-of-spitfire-cockpit.html/08es09_012

 

http://spitfiresite.com/2010/07/anatomy-of-spitfire-cockpit.html/08es09_002

 

From those images, see how thin the metal is and how flush the canopy framing sits against the fuselage.

 

I've attempted to thin the kit glazing down by filing away material from the insides of the clear part. This was then buffed and polished with progressively finer grades of micromesh to regain the clarity. It's still not quite as thin as it should be but it's a bit better.

tn-Canopy-and-windscreen-003.jpg

 

An added benefit of this mod is that the sliding canopy part now sits further down on the fuselage, closer to where the runners are. I've seen one or two builds of this kit on line where the sliding portion of the canopy looks to sit very high.

For the windscreen section I used a drop of tinted floor acrylic to tint the bullet proof glass portion. I kept this subtle (can you make out the difference?).

I also added a thin strip around the edge of the windscreen where the sliding portion fits over plus some fasteners from lead wire around the inner edge (not easy to pick out in this photo, sorry). These fasteners are quite prominent on the full sized framing so I drilled shallow holes and CAed short lengths of lead wire into them.

tn-Canopy-and-windscreen-005.jpg

 

Thanks for having a look. More  soon.

 

Cheers.

Edited by geedubelyer
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