The End: Spitfire PR.IG

"This is the End, beautiful friend."

The Spitfire PR.IG story has reached the end.
Over the many months and through trials and tribulations.
Many disappointments, and small victories.
This Spitfire remains where it is and where it always will be.

The tone of the opening verse was a little more serious than I was going for, but I'll just leave it there and segue without a real segue into what this post is about. Weathering and final assembly. Can a segue be a segue in itself?

The underside all nice and clean.

Look I haven't broken the pitot tube yet!

I added a little UMP Dark Dirt wash here as a test.

With a damp paper towel it just wipes off.

This could go great or very, very badly.

Before I took the plunge on the topside. I had some rougher areas I was concerned about, but I just went with it to see how it turned out. The rougher areas were near the wing root and on the elevators. You can't think and ponder forever.

After a lot of rubbing and wiping with damp paper towels and Q-tips. The areas that were a little rough were a bit difficult to clean up. I had some discolored areas that I can't explain. If the gloss coat was flawless, this method probably would have worked out better. I'm on the fence about it at the moment. Maybe I should have just used it as a pin wash and not put it all over? Maybe I should have gone with an enamel wash? Maybe I need a different gloss coat? Maybe the paint job was too rough?

Attached landing gear.

At last, in the final stages and now on its own three feet! The canopy didn't turn out as nice as I had hoped. I don't know what happened to the front windscreen, there is some paint damage or something I can't get rid of.

Almost there....

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for, the final pictures of the PR.IG.


"This is the End... of our elaborate plans."

The finish coat was done with Winsor Newton Satin acrylic varnish. It came out a little more matte than I was hoping. Maybe I put it down to heavy? Maybe that's what it should look like?

Let's see if I can remember some things I learned.

• I'm done with AK primer. I think this may be part of my paint roughage problem.
• I'm suspicious of Model Master Acryl paint for covering large areas. The coagulation I experienced with the custom mix shouldn't have happened.
• I'm dubious about the value of pre-shading. I may explore other techniques.
• Perhaps the entire model should have been coated with pink and a camo-tint pink applied on top. Coverage with a white based paint is quite challenging. If I had to do over, I would use Tamiya white and red or something else.
• I'm not sure how necessary the bottom resin piece was. Next time I try this again, I will drill holes for the lower cameras and build something behind it.
• Along with the above bullet, I'll use a clay or Milliput to craft the extra gas tank and cameras. They are mostly internal and what you see is very limited.....how hard can it be?
• Milliput is actually really great for gap filling, not so much for scribing, but a layer of CA can assist with that.
• I think I will buy resin seats for almost every kit I do.
• Humbrol Maskol does get weird and leave marks on clear parts if you leave it there for months.
• I think I dropped the elevators too much. Next time I'll do a little more research and reduce the hang.
• All the little PE I added to the interior of the cockpit, tough to see....but I know it's there.
• I don't know why it's so hard to find bigger pin vise bits.
• I need another Spitfire.

That's it, this project is wrapped up as far as I'm concerned as it's been dragging on since July 2015. It's nice to have this off the shelf so I can focus on other things. I've already got my eye on getting another Tamiya kit so I can build another PR.IG, but this time it will be a bare metal finish.

"This is the Ennnnnnnnnnd."

Spitfire PR.IG: Some Details and Decals

How am I going to open this blog post? With words and stuff. Progress is being made, here's some pictures.

What's with the tools? I need to measure a couple real thin strips of tape for masking, and the calipers are a great tool. I placed the Tamiya tape on top of some Scotch tape to keep it clean and maintain its stickiness.

I masked the areas of where the gun ports used to be to paint the red patches. The extremely thin strip of tape from the previous picture is in the middle.

Bottom masked.

All masked up and ready to go. Well.........

You know what? Let's not take any chances. Red would be hard to cover up with the light pink of the Spitfire.

Sprayed, the fastest part of this whole process. Now just need to undress.

Oooooo, the anticipation....

Tada! OK, not great, I ended up getting some bleed through. One thing I will take note of next time is to mix the paint a bit thicker when spraying on masked areas.

You may say some are uneven, but in real life they may have cut these patches by hand, so there.....justified.

Now that the major painting is done, it's decal time! I've always had trouble getting a nice smooth surface after applying the gloss coat. I thought the surface was a bit rough after painting, so I took a chance and took some sandpaper to it. I used Tamiya P2000 grit sandpaper and ever so lightly went over the surface. What do you know? It knocked the roughness down and gave me a much smoother surface. It also removed a few hairs that were embedded in the paint!

Like anything there were a couple of downsides. A couple higher protrusions lost some paint and will need to be touched up. A couple small areas were left with some streaking, which is the best I can describe it.

It was then given a couple coats of Alclad's Aqua Gloss all over.

Let's get to the decals.

Toothpicks worked pretty well for holding the Spitfire. Got my references and ready to go with Micro Set and Micro Sol.

The decal set I ordered from the UK.

So many options! You know what this means? I need to build more Spitfires!

I finally understand what a thin decal is like. I've only recently had experience with Tamiya decals that are nearly so thick, you could almost use a broomstick handle to push them around. These decals were much more difficult to move once they got on the surface. I had a little tearing on the blue roundel areas once they settled around a protrusion that I'll have to touch up.

I did the decalling over a couple of nights. It prevents you from putting your finger on a soft decal. I also don't like to rush the under decals before doing the red dots, since they are still soft and settling. I have some significant silvering on the "ZW" and the serial number, really disappointed about that. I may try carefully masking the "ZW" and spraying some thinned paint over the silvering to help blend it, a suggestion from Mr. D at the last club meeting. I'm just stuck with the serial number the way it is.

Some small details. I sprayed white on the tips and then yellow.

Painted with Model Master Aircraft Interior Black.

BAHHHHH! I also had a little bleed under here as well. It's not until after this that I read and realized that I should avoid thinning the paint as much before spraying.

That's all here for now. I'll be working on some of the smaller details, so hopefully I can wrap this up in a month or so! ...or so I say now.

Finally, Camo-tint Pink on the Spitfire PR.IG!

I finally got the guts and gumption to take on the tedious work of pre-shading and custom mixing the Camo-tint pink. For those who know me, know that I can't see color gradations too well. Fifteen years ago I failed three FAA color exams and passed on my last one and received a hard fought "defective color vision" waiver.

I originally started mixing the pink by taking a 1/2ish bottle of Model Master Acryl Flat White and began adding drops of MM Guards Red. Before I knew it, I had a hardcore pink. I should have had the wife present for this. Of course I used up all the flat white I had and had to acquire more.

The next time, the wife was present and I poured about a 1/3 -1/2 of a bottle of white into a clean jar, and slowly began to add the "hardcore pink" by the drops. Where we eventually stopped was a color that looks white to me, but I'm also told is a very faint pink, which is what we were after. I can see the pinkish hue when it is on a white object, I'll show an example below. On occasion I see the pink when the light is just right.

I took on the laborious task of spraying flat white inside the panels.

After that was done I used the hardcore pink to shade the panel lines. It went: spray a couple of lines, clean the needle tip. Spray a couple of lines, clean the needle tip, and so on.

I have a ceramic white tile for mixing paint and brush painting. You can see the difference with the camo-tint pink that we settled on against the white tile.

All the little bits get some pinkish hue.

Here it is, the pink Spitfire! I went back and touched up some areas after a few days of looking at it.

Not only was this a difficult color to mix but it was just as difficult to spray for me. I couldn't really see it going down. The best indicator I had was if it looked wet or not. I tried to keep the pre-shading work visible as well, but I really don't think it worked out that way.

Even Thing Two said, "it looks kind of pink". That's what I'm looking for. Thanks for stopping by!