Spitfire Mk I Parts 1, 2 and 3!

Some of you may have already seen these pictures. (psst...there's new stuff in here too.) For the record, this is Tamiya's Supermarine Spitfire Mk I in 1/48. I'll intersperse some words somewhere in the junk of pictures, because who wants to tell a story with pictures?

I spent some time adding some extra wires in here. Keep this in mind, it's important later.

So this is the black undercoat. I'm not entirely convinced I should have gone this route this time around.

The interior green coat was put down next.

I sprayed a very, very thinned mix of black in the interior and wiped away what I could. I thought it would run more so I let the first coat dry, which ended up making it darker than I wanted. Oh well, moving on.

I added some silver accent here with dry brushing the details.

 The cockpit and instrument panel went through the same process; black, green, wash, dry brush. The seat got a coat of dull red however.

 

The silver dry brushing really make the details pop.

The completed seat assembly.

All the work that goes into the cockpit, and what can you see? Remember those wire? When I was dry fitting the assembly before gluing the fuselage halves together, I found that they interfered with the cockpit sliding in and gluing into place. It was all torn out except for the coiled bit in the middle. Another lesson to be learned.

At this point, the fuselage seams wore sanded smooth, panel lines re-scribed and the wings were assembled.

When I dry fit the wings on to the body, I realized there was an awful lot of gray plastic at the bottom of the cockpit. I just couldn't stand for any of that!

The wings were glued on and tape was applied to protect the areas around small gaps that needed to be filled with putty.

Where the Spitfire sits right now. I'll remove the tape and sand the wing seams, sand the puttied areas smooth and re-scribe where necessary.

 Here is the YouTube video that happened somewhere in there: http://youtu.be/AFSZBMX64dw