Tamiya Spitfire Mk VIII + Laminar Flow Mk XII conversion

[RadBaron]

 

 

 

I started this one a little while back and feel like i'm on a roll with it, so hopefully posting this doesn't jinx the project!

 

Anyway, Tamiya's MkVIII, plus the 3D printed MkXII conversion will hopefully end up with my FAVORITE mark of Spit, the Hot-Rod MkXII!

 

For those who haven't had a gander, the Laminar Flow Design parts are TRULY sublime. 

 

 

 

 

 

YES, there are print artifacts. No, they're not insurmountable. We will cross that bridge in a short while.

 

 

The Tamiya kit built up as expected. Everything fits great, and has plenty of detail. I kept things relatively OOTB for this build. Even using the kit supplied photo etched seatbelt!

 

Prime:

 

 

Paint

 

Detail

 

 

 

Dirty

 

 

As always, a few @airscale placards are applied around the place to busy everything up. 

 

 

More to follow

 

Denzil

Edited April 15 by RadBaron

[Kagemusha]

Great start, always nice to see a Spitfire, especially one a little bit different.

[RadBaron]

2 hours ago, Kagemusha said:

Great start, always nice to see a Spitfire, especially one a little bit different.

Thanks mate!

[RadBaron]

First thing's first. When I think conversion kit, my mind goes to all manner of rough and ready, home made resin or vacuform concoctions that are only barely less work than scratch building. So how does this one fair?

 

 The nose almost clicked into place like a kit part. Colour me relieved!

And the lower wing insert?

Other than ham-fisted attempt at removing the piece of wing, the insert went in perfectly.

 

 

 

 

 

Next, the elephant In the room whenever the topic turns to 3d printing:

 

Striations.

 

 

Yes, even the finest prints will have them. And these pieces are no exception. 

 

 

If it's not clear in the pics here, click on the pics to go to the fullsize images. 

Striations are there, and as fine as they are, they need cleaning up.

Which really wasn't a big deal. 

 

A couple of coats of Tamiya fine white primer straight from the rattle can, and a sand with 1000grit got things smoothed out, without sacrifice any of the scribed detail.

 

 

With the components resting together, she's starting to look like a proper monster!

 

 

 

Next up is playing with some fiddly bits!

 

Denzil.

Edited April 15 by RadBaron

[MikeMaben]

[RadBaron]

Other than thinking it looks cool, I know nothing about the nuances of the MkXII Spitfire, let alone the little differences that needed changing between Mk VIII and MkXII. The comversion's instructions werent entirely clear about what changes were to be made to the base kit. Luckily, Mathieu from LFD was very helpful in pointing out some of those differences. 

 

First port of call was a rabbit hole that I had nonidea existed:

Filling in the rivets on the wing leading edge.

Apparently that's not just a P51 thing!

 

So out with the filler. I mixed Tamiya filler with some extra thin, and slathered it over the wings multiple times until I had a smooth leading edge. 

 

 

 

 

 

In the process, I destroyed the plinths for the shooty things, so a set of turned barrels will fix that issue. 

 

 

 

The kit gives options for short or long ailerons.

I followed the kit instructions and chopped the ailerons down to replicate the shorter ones. 

Turns out this is wrong. 

 

 

The kit also gives the option for the small or big mass-balance elevators. Again, following the kit instructions, I dutifully chopped up the horizontal stabilizers to suit the larger mass-balance. 

 

Aaaaaand this too was wrong. I should have used the smaller mass-balance elevators.

 

 

Also, gosh that seam is in a really PITA spot!

 

A quick look on Google would have told me what I needed to know about which flight controls to use. 

 

 

I hadn't yet thrown out the chopped off parts and could have cobbled them all back together, but luckily, an even easier fix was simply spending money.

 

All the parts I needed were contained on one sprue, and luckily one of the kit pickers on Internet-Auction-Site had that sprue for sale. A couple of days later, we were back in business. 

 

 

Take two!

 

Denzil

 

 

 

[Shoggz]

Another LFD conversion - bring it on Denzil - will be following avidly!

[RadBaron]

10 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

 

1 hour ago, Shoggz said:

Another LFD conversion - bring it on Denzil - will be following avidly!

 

Thanks guys! Chomping at the bit to get this one to the paint booth!

[RadBaron]

Another difference between MkVIII and XII that I've only just realized is wheels. Tamiya supplies silly rubber tyres. Instant no go, so off to the interwebs and I had some lovely resin 4 spokes in my hands. 

 

 

 

Except the XII's all seemed to have hubcaps. NEW new wheels are on the way. 

 

The canopy had a lovely seam down the middle. Nothing a quick polish couldn't fix. 

 

 

 

 

Once I was happy with the finish of the wing leading edge, it was clicked into place and secured with glue. The forward wing root fairings, supplied as separate parts in the Tamiya kit, needed a little bit of finessing to fit into the new nose section, but it was an essentially painless affair. 

 

Back to regular construction and Tidying up!

 

Denzil

 

Edited April 16 by RadBaron

[PHBIO]

very intersting....you should see Tolga ULGUR wip about mk XII upper fuel tank access panel. ...

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:33 PM by PHBIO

[RadBaron]

38 minutes ago, PHBIO said:

very intersting....you should see Tolga ULGUR wip about mk XII upper fuel tank access panel. ...

 

I have read through his 2 builds on here and they've proved EXTREMELY helpful!

I don't think I'll tackle moving the fuel filler backwards. I'll wait until I've shot a coat of primer to see how much more cleaning up that seam needs 

 

Wish I'd read them BEFORE I'd started mine, but I was enthusiastic, and i never try to hold back the MOJO when it's flowing 

[RadBaron]

Some little stuff.

Elevator trim tabs got some pushrods. 

 

 

Since I wasn't using the kit supplied photo-etched hinges, I made some new ones from plasticard

 

 

 

The main canopy covers the rear section of glass when installed, so the rear section need painting before I could fix the sliding portion in place.

 

 

 

And with that, some of the loose parts were gathered to make it look all spitfirey and noises were made!

 

 

 

D