The antique BoB Revell Spitfire Mk.I

[Pete Roberts]

Nice work here Thierry. I'm using sprue for some areas of fuselage joining on my kit. I've recently joined Imageshack so will post soon. Have a couple of works in progress on another forum to finish first.   

 

Interested to see your radio mast platform - hadn't considered that detail before but makes sense.

Edited June 19, 2020 by Pete Roberts

[thierry laurent]

Hi guys,

 

I'm moving from one area to another one. As I promised, we will have a look at the wing components.

 

Replacing the kit wheels is absolutely mandatory as the kit ones are absolutely ugly. If you just replace one thing on that kit, this must be the wheels!

 

I've probably all of the aftermarket Spitfire wheels and if the Barracuda are very nice, I think the Brassin ones are the best ones. The typical Dunlop marking has even been beautifully reproduced on the tire sides.

 

 

However, the use of aftermarket wheels creates another issue as the kit legs have the rear section of the rim molded with the end of the leg. So, I had to sculpt new leg ends out of the parts to get something that is compatible with the Eduard Brassin wheels. This was time consuming but I finally got something that looked acceptable. Fortunately, most of it is hidden behind the wheel.

 

 

The small rods you can see added on the leg sides are the missing parts used to secure the leg on the door. They are generally missing or badly reproduced in most kits.

 

These were not the only problems of the legs as they are really basic to say the least. Fortunately, a large part is between the wheel and the well door. However, as in most Spit kits, most of the legs features are absent whereas the full scale ones had screws heads everywhere. They are tiny but visible. So, I used my grainer and punch and die tools to create very small rivets to add them on the leg. Useless to say you've to be in a good mood to do that...

 

 

I did not try to fully reproduce the fully accurate leg sections but wanted to get something that looked better. So, the legs are not 100% accurate but they look the part far better than the OOTB ones of most kits. I also used the Aires resin part to simulate the articulation arm that is moving the leg. It is included in the wells set. The large bolt head at the top is a Grandt line one. I also used Eduard leftover photoetched parts for what looks to be part of the locking system and the kind of metal tube you can see close to the top of the leg was made of very small section of Albion tubes. Again, you need to be in a good day to reproduce such tiny things. Such small details look trivial but took a lot of time to be added. You do not have the feeling you're really progressing when you're doing that.

 

 

However, I'm quite happy of the result. The last thing to add is the brake line but I could not go on anymore...!

 

Another problem solved!

 

 

 

 

[dodgem37]

Very nice.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[Greif8]

Very very nice work Thierry.  That landing gear leg looks fantastic!

 

Ernest

[Phantom2]

 

Really nice legs! 

 

...and I agree about Revell´s awful wheels, they look nothing like I have ever seen on a Spitfire! 

 

Cheers!  

 

Stefan 

[Troy Molitor]

Some really nice work going on here Thierry.   

[thierry laurent]

Hi,

 

Next step.

 

While the grainer and punch and die tools were out of their box, I decided it was relevant to work on the tail wheel. The leg itself is not that badly shaped. It has a major molding blemish and is missing most of the detail features but with a little bit of work, a quite good result can be obtained. A saw mark should be added between the leg and the castoring part to simulate different components.

 

 

Some plastic card was required as one of the halves was too thin.

 

 

The pictures clearly show that many bolt heads should be added. This is another visible feature that is alas missing on most Spitfire kits.

 

 

The wheel is the Eduard Brassin one. It is better than the plastic one.

 

Another problem is solved!

[fab]

Good job here Thierry!

 

Would you be retired to find time to plastiwork? Or are you still block by Covid? 

 

 

Amities

 

Fab

[Greif8]

Very skilled work here Thierry.  It almost got me into a bit of trouble with the spouse as I murmured out loud "Now those are some nice looking legs!" while viewing your recent work.  My spouse looked in to see what exactly I was looking at. 

 

Ernest 

[thierry laurent]

2 hours ago, fab said:

Good job here Thierry!

 

Would you be retired to find time to plastiwork? Or are you still block by Covid? 

 

 

Amities

 

Fab

Salut Fabrice ! 

 

Well, I would like to be retired but normally this is not going to occur before at least twelwe years! 

 

Actually my wife left the house for nine days (she's in France). So, my son and me are alone at home and we can allocate our time differently. 

 

More modelling, more action-packed movies and so on... 

[thierry laurent]

Hi guys,

 

Some weeks ago, when I added the fuselage internal structure, I realized that some glue marks were visible on the fuselage (where I glued the plastic strips simulating the fuselage stringers). I initially considered using one of my fine glass fiber sanding pens to correct that but it cannot goes into tight corners. However, I found this Chinese tool as I was looking for something else. I ordered it, got it this week and tested it:

 

 

It really looks like a pen but rather than lead, it is using a cylinder-shaped fine stone! So, you can use it to sand in very intricate locations. It can also scratch the surface if you are not very cautious (as the enlarged picture shows it) but this is really a nice tool for some very specific clean-up works. Highly recommended!

 

 

I also removed the wrongly located pierced strip out of the resin bulkhead as it was finally quite difficult to modify it. It will be easier and more accurate to add a new one behind the bulkhead. BTW, I've to re-glue the top of the bulkhead.

 

 

I also started solving the wheel well problem. I will post pictures showing that soon.

 

 

[thierry laurent]

And last for today, here's a comparison picture showing the Tamiya wingtip under the Revell wing. This clearly shows the chord and wingspan discrepancy. To me this is not a so terrible issue as this is not really visible when the kit is assembled and correcting it is far from easy.

 

I retrieved such useless parts from my Tamiya Mk.XVI kit as I'm still assessing if I will not use the wingtip light from these parts.

 

 

Cheers

[thierry laurent]

Hi again,

 

One of the big drawbacks of the old kit is the total lack of any of the bumps you can find on the nose and the wings. It is actually far too aerodynamically clean!

 

Unfortunately, such features are not that easy to replicate.

 

The most obvious one is the wheel one that is protruding out of each upper wing. I took a lot of time to study the shapes of such bumps and can say that NO 1/32 kit is depicting them correctly: the Hasegawa, Hobby Boss or the recent Revell releases are giving bumps that are not correctly shaped. It is nonetheless true that the shapes are quite elusive. Most plans are fully wrong regarding that and the preserved/restored planes shows a variations of bumps. So, that is not easy.

 

I was quite annoyed as I wanted to find a way to get similar bumps for both sides but as they are mirrored, you need the create two different ones. So, I raided the spare box and I knew I had seen such bean-shaped parts somewhere. Suddenly this jumped out of my mind: Hasegawa made such parts for the similar bumps on... Me 109G wings and such parts are useless in the early Gustav boxes.

 

It is quite funny observing that the German opponent contributed to the build of my Spitfire kit! The shapes of the Hasegawa parts are actually quite close and I just had to sand a little bit to get a good copy of the full scale bump. It was then only a matter of glueing and sanding each part edges to try simulating a bump rather than a fully separated part.

 

 

As you can see I also used my grainer to add the rivets corresponding to the well round perimeter and to the two main strengtheners.

 

So, we have yet another issue out of the correction list!

 

The next step will probably be the wheel wells.

[Greif8]

Simply outstanding work Thierry.  I will have to give that tool a look as it seems like a handy device.  Like you I normally use my fiber glass pen to eradicate small imperfections but sometimes it is too big, as you pointed out.  Using Messerschmidt parts to improve a Spitfire is something one does not see everyday and you did a great job melding them to your wings.

 

Ernest

[thierry laurent]

I did my best but I'm not fully satisfied. However, it was a chicken and egg problem. I had to scribe the rivets before adding the part but doing so prevented relying on Surfacer and additional sanding to meld them better.