Thunnus Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 (edited) I bought this kit immediately after release, paying some extra dime to get it shipped from Italy. I've always loved this airframe and jumped at the chance to get a new release Folgore. It's been out long enough for some aftermarket improvements to be made available and I have a bunch of those to possibly utilize on this build. The following sprue tour is based on the one I did when I first received the kit last August, plus a few more recent observations... The kit comes in a big, deep box but there is a lot of empty space due to the relatively few sprues that are provided. Kinda disappointing to open box that's only 1/3 full. There are five sprues of grey plastic parts divided into two plastic baggies. That means you have lots of sprues rubbing and shaking up against each other. For international shipments like mine (Italy to the US), expect some parts broken off sprues. I had about 5-6 small pieces floating around the bags and some parts partially detached from sprues but I haven't damage... yet. Here is Sprue A, which holds the fuselage halves. Finally... a 1/32 scale Folgore from a major manufacturer... a long time coming! There's a lot to like in these moldings. Normally, lightening holes on bulkheads are simply depressions but rarely molded as actual holes as Italeri has done here. It will be difficult to be impressed when I'm jumping from the Tamiya Spitfire to this but mold definition on most of the parts looks good. But lots of flash. Other parts have rather heavy detailing. The most egregious of the heavy hand that Italeri chose to exert on the details is exhibited on the panel lines on the fuselage. Super deep and wide. Almost appears to be u-shaped channel. Sprue B is the other big sprue and it holds the wings. The rear wall of the wheel wells is supplied as a separate bulkhead/spar. The landing gear attachment points are on the ends of the spars. The attachment point is squared, which is a good indication for a positive, non-ambiguous fit. Here is the optional cover for the wheel wells. Vague detailing and large ejection marks... no thanks! No details molded onto the inner surface of the upper wings so those wanting to leave the wheel well cover off may want to spruce up this area? Sprue C is loaded with all of the small parts. Another example of parts partially broken off their sprues. Hopefully, nothing is broken but Part 37 looks like it is on the verge of snapping. The engine area includes the fuselage-mounted 12.7mm Breda-Safat machine guns. Again, a mix of the good and bad. Keyed holes in the wheels means that the weighted flat spot will be properly aligned but the weighted effect looks more like the tire melted. Sprue D has a lot of the external components including the rear stabilizers (early version), intakes, fairings, landing gear covers, etc. The exhaust outlets are represented as individual pieces and they have hollowed ends. Nicely molded wiring detail on the engine parts. If you look closely at the lower nose fairing, you can see that every small scoop has a hollowed out opening... very nice! Italeri offers some options when it comes to either early or late versions of the Folgore. The small balance horns on the ends of stabilizers indicate late version. To be continued... Edited July 5 by Thunnus Modelboy, Isar 30/07, Paul in Napier and 13 others 16 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scvrobeson Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 Certainly not waiting at all before starting on your next build. I'll really enjoy how you turn your magic on this one. It looks like the basis for a really nice build is there Matt Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biggles87 Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 Waiting impatiently for the magic to begin. John scvrobeson and Thunnus 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted July 5 Author Share Posted July 5 Just to wrap up the contents of the Italeri boxing of the Folgore. We have an extensive photoetch fret. It was enclosed in a plastic sleeve that was open on one end, so it got loose and a few parts got bent out of shape. Most of the tiny pieces are meant to detail the joints of the control surfaces. The clear sprue is very small due to the small size of the canopy and windscreen on the Folgore. And finally... here is a close-up look at the 3D instrument panel. I'm not sure I like this option and have an alternative (Yahu) to consider. Jumping into the present... one of the things that I want to address on this build is the size of the panel lines on this kit. Thankfully, there aren't that many of them so it shouldn't be too hard to fill them. Re-scribing them might be tricky as they are long and straight. I'm going to add rivets as well. To get a better feel of what I'm dealing with, I thought I'd try to tape together the major components. Fit looks decent. Not Tamiya good but just the fact I was able to do this is an indication of good fit. I have zero intention of posing the engine or gun cowling open so I wanted to see what the panels look like in the closed position. Pretty good from this preliminary dry fit. One issue is the wing root. There might be fit issues here and the molding of the fasteners on the fuselage side of the joint is atrocious. Again, just the fact that I'm able to hold the model with just tape holding it together is a good sign. Checking to see how the clear parts fit. Again, fit looks rather good. To my eyes, the panel lines on the wings don't look as bad as the fuselage. So the initial plan is to fill and re-scribe the fuselage. Depending on how that goes, I'll decide whether or not I want to do the wings. I'm going to fill the fuselage panel lines with black CA glue. I was initially going to use debonder to reduce sanding effort but since I want a flush finish, debonder doesn't really help. The panel lines have been filled. Next is re-scribing. I'm leery of trying to scribe directly on top of the black CA so I'm planning to scribe just above or below. Stefano, Lemonstein, Uncarina and 17 others 20 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis7423 Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 And he's off, folks. Buckle in, we're about to experience another masterpiece. Show us the way John! - Dennis S. Mount Juliet, TN USA Biggles87, Thunnus and Uncarina 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biggles87 Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 Oh dear, I know the cowling fit was not the best on some WW II fighters ( 109Gs come to mind ) but you’ve really got you’re work cut out there. I’m with you on the Yahu IPs and use them when I can, but for my ( probably foolish ) attempt at the 21 Century ‘202 I’m going to use the LooK+ set as this includes the wheels and canopy masks. Must get some of that black CA soon. John Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROM Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 Hello! Oh yeah! Very happy to see you are starting this build! Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scvrobeson Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 Looks like a smart idea already to fill those panel lines. Not quite old Matchbox bad, but they're definitely heavy. I'll of course be following along on this one Are you going to be utilizing any of the Aircraft in Pixels detail sets for this? Matt Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 Nice work, John. I think I would have filled those panel lines with styrene strip, or perhaps even sprue goo. Kev Breaker and Thunnus 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted July 6 Author Share Posted July 6 15 hours ago, Dennis7423 said: And he's off, folks. Buckle in, we're about to experience another masterpiece. Show us the way John! - Dennis S. Mount Juliet, TN USA Thanks Dennis! I'll probably have to pull off on this at some point to work on some non-scale models for my daughters. But I wanted to get started on the tedious surface work because I was curious to see how difficult it would be and how it would look. 14 hours ago, Biggles87 said: Oh dear, I know the cowling fit was not the best on some WW II fighters ( 109Gs come to mind ) but you’ve really got you’re work cut out there. I’m with you on the Yahu IPs and use them when I can, but for my ( probably foolish ) attempt at the 21 Century ‘202 I’m going to use the LooK+ set as this includes the wheels and canopy masks. Must get some of that black CA soon. John Not sure at this point but I think the cowling fit is very good actually. Enough where I'm contemplating leaving it unglued. The gaps you see will, hopefully, be much reduced when the tape attachments get replaced with glue. 12 hours ago, ROM said: Hello! Oh yeah! Very happy to see you are starting this build! Thank you! 12 hours ago, scvrobeson said: Looks like a smart idea already to fill those panel lines. Not quite old Matchbox bad, but they're definitely heavy. I'll of course be following along on this one Are you going to be utilizing any of the Aircraft in Pixels detail sets for this? Matt Thanks Matt! Yes, I have a full raft of aftermarket junk for this including lots of Aircraft in Pixels goodies. 7 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said: Nice work, John. I think I would have filled those panel lines with styrene strip, or perhaps even sprue goo. Kev I was thinking about stretched sprue but decided to go with black CA because it is a known quantity with me. A big plus is no waiting. The fuselage panel lines have been filled. Not all of them but the major lateral ones that I'll be re-scribing. We'll see how the new scribing looks compared to the hatches and other recessed lines that I left alone. Dymo label tape is a scriber's best friend. It's thick, stiff and adhesive... perfect for establishing guide lines for panel scribing. To avoid unnecessary waste, I like to cut the Dymo tape in half, longitudinally. I purposefully cut it messy so I can easily distinguish the straight side. Because the strip is now narrower, it's also easier to slightly curve the tape if necessary. To avoid running into the black CA as much as possible, I've elected to scribe the new panel lines just above or below the existing one. My scriber of choice is the SCR-01 by UMM. It's actually only one I have experience with so I'm not sure how it compares to others. It works for me. I use the "hook" with a pulling motion for straight lines. With the black CA lines still visible, it's hard to make out the scribed lines but they're there. While checking out the reference drawing to lay out the rivet lines, I noticed that the there is no panel line around the base of the horizontal stabilizer... it just magically protrudes from the fuselage. The drawing shows a line around it so I searched the internet and found this photo of the NASM Mc.202 tail. The more I look at this kit, the more surprised I am at the sloppiness/laziness of the Italeri kit designers. Especially since this is such an iconic home-grown subject for them. They could've done better research. Anywho, I made up some templates using the Dymo tape and scribed some lines myself. Using the reference drawing, I added the rivet lines using a soft-leaded pencil. I am using the Kagero book but I'm not following the rivet lines exactly. There are too many for my limited patience and the camo is going to camoflage most of it, visually. The rivets will serve to give some visual detail to the model surfaces but won't be 100% accurate. I used the 1.0mm dot pitch rivet wheel from Galaxy Tools. After the rivets are applied, I sand down the raised plastic around each rivet hole. Looks much better when you do this. It's impossible to tell what the new panel lines and rivets look like so I give the fuselage halves a coat of Mr Primer Surfacer 1000 and a temporary brown wash. I think this selective replacement of the panel lines is a good compromise in improving the overall scale look of the model and not spending crazy hours on filling and scribing. Hans, Biggles87, MikeMaben and 20 others 23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaro Posted July 6 Share Posted July 6 Brilliant! The re-done panel lines and added rivets are a game-changer. Comparing the last photos and the out-of-the box ones it seems to be a completly different model! Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted July 6 Share Posted July 6 Well, that certainly looks quite magical, John! Almost like a CAD rendering. Kev TAG and Thunnus 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drizzt73 Posted July 6 Share Posted July 6 Looking good John. I've been going through your 109 builds for inspiration on mine. Love your work mate! Anthony Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alaninaustria Posted July 6 Share Posted July 6 Amazing start mate! Will follow this build for sure! Cheers Alan Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scvrobeson Posted July 6 Share Posted July 6 Awesome start. It already looks massively improved from where you started Matt Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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