John B

Thanks for all the comments and I hope I answered your questions. Got the Spitfire into the Paint Shop. Here are some pictures, Paasche H, Model Master Paints all the way, thinned 50/50. Pre-shaded underneath with Flat Black. Sky Type S I put another dusting of Sky type S over this, I thought the pre-shade needed more toning down. After a day of drying, I then masked the underside and pre-prepared the top coats. That's all for now, all the little bits and pieces are next. Thanks for looking. John B

Wow, Great work going on here. I have a friend that is doing this conversion, you are way ahead in the skills department. Super!!!! JB

This is going to be fun to watch. Thanks for posting. Keep'em coming. JB

Super work going on here, keep it coming. JB

Super work going on here, keep it coming. JB

Nice build going on, thanks for all the reference pictures. Very informative. JB

You need to publish a book, you have some great talent. JB

Awesome Work going on here. Love it. JB

Cool, keep the Great work. JB

They are extremely easy to work with, I got a catalog with my first order, I was surprised on how many variations Archer has now. I highly recommend them. These rivets are just a tad larger, but I can live with it. The sheets are a little pricey, $17.95 $2.00 S&H. When I ordered them, next time I will order more sheets, the S&H is still $2.00. I kinda made my best guess on what size to get. When I got the catalog, I saw they had .008 rivets as the smallest size, so these are more like .010 - .011. Check'em out JB

Got some more work done, tried out a product from Archer, raised rivets details to restore rivets removed from the spine of the AC. They very easy to apply, about 10 seconds in the water, used tweezers to apply. Directions say to give them about 24 hours to dry, I hit them with micro-sol to get them to snuggle down. The wing roots and the bumps on the cowling came out acceptable. Thanks for looking. JB

Here is some of my latest work on the Spitfire Mk.I I added some bumps on the upper cowl panel. I squished some softened sprue through some holes in a scribing template that looked close to the airfoil shape. I made them over sized so they could be sanded down closer to the correct size. I glued them and put Surfacer on them, I started on the port-side already. Hopefully these will come out. So far so good. I had some problems with the wing root, the plastic is very brittle and thin. I should of planned ahead and laminated some styrene underneath to support the sanding that was going to commence. It cracked under the strain this is after putting down the base coat and initial camo. Tried Milliput, but it wasn't strong enough. Ended up using several layers of CA, CA gets harder the longer you let it cure before sanding so I gave it a couple of days between application and sanding till I was happy with it. It was a PITA, it fought me all the way and it is not 100%. I replaced the lost engraved detail with a scriber and beading tool. I put some Mr. Surfacer along the join to smooth things out. We'll see how the seams look after the a re-paint. I am using the landing gear and tires from the PCM kit, I modified the covers by making them a little longer and with a more correct profile with styrene. I decided to slow up my build some more by stepping on my propeller, it looked like a bag of smashed crabs, had to use a little milliput and super-glue to get it back in order. Oh well. Thanks for looking. JB

Shoulder Re-Hab has been a lot of work, Whew! Got some work on the wings, added wheel wells from PCM kit, made a big difference. Put some screen material for the coolers and used plastic card to box them in and create a bottom floor for the cockpit. On to the wings and ailerons next. Thanks for looking and for all the comments. JB

Looking real good, I really appreciate what PCM is doing, Affordable kits not too complicated, superb resin details, nice art work using Cartogragh decals. Aftermarket resin tidbits and decals not required, a true one stop shop. This is one my next to purchase list. JB

Those wheel wells are going to look great after some paint and weathering done on them. Good work here. JB