A Spitfire PR.IG Quickie

Just a quick update this week on the PR.IG Spitfire.

Glued the fuselage halves with some Extra Thin.

I added some Mr. Dissolved Putty to the seams before sanding down.

Since I will be adding "patches" via paint, I filled the gun ports so it won't look weird.

Horizontal stabilizers with molded on elevators.

I want this model to have a little more static action, so after about 5-10 minutes going across the seam with an X-Acto knife, it finally separated.

In order to make sure the elevators are at the correct angle, I busted out the gifted protractor. Thanks crazy cat lady!

I wanted the elevators to be at a 30° down angle, so I created a 150° obtuse triangle. I don't think I have used the term obtuse triangle since high school!

I made three.

I cut the triangles out of sheet styrene (plastic). I heated up a few needles with a candle and it pierced right thru like butta.

This will set both elevators at 30°. I haven't quite figured out how to re-attach the elevators yet.

The PR.IG had a bubble canopy with side blisters for the pilot to have greater visibility. This is a vacu-formed canopy and I needed to cut out the middle section. I used a fine tip pen, (a black Gundam pen) to outline where I thought the seams were.

The cut wasn't exactly even in some spots.

I used a medium sanding stick to even out the ends.

That's all there is for now, I really have no more Spitfire progress at the moment, but I imagine it will get stretched out over the next few months like most of my builds. Have a Happy Friday peoples!

Spitfire PR.IG Interior Completed

Things have been busy at work, and I haven't made as much progress on the Spitfire as I was expecting. I've made the decision to not worry about the deadline for the ISM group build, which ends September 30th. My job is all about deadlines especially before a code deployment to production, which I've been dealing with this week. I don't need deadlines in my hobby. This will get done when it gets done. I also learned this week that Advil is a pretty decent muscle relaxer.

I finished the cockpit last week so here it is. Happy Friday.

Primed with AK Gray Primer. Gray or grey? GrAy if you're American, grEy if you're English.

Interior was painted with Model Master Acryl RAF Interior Green.

I decided not to use the armor plating PE on the structure behind the seat. I figured they would have removed it to make the aircraft lighter and faster as well as more fuel efficient. Although the Spitfire PR.IG was armed, the pilots were given strict orders not to engage in a fight. A lot of the photo reconnaissance aircraft were field modified, so documentation on the exact build outs are spotty at best.

I picked out some stuff with semi-gloss black and aircraft interior black and some random red and yellow on some bits.

The instrument panel didn't quit come out the way I envisioned but the splash of color really made things standout.

After the seat was primed, it was sprayed with Tamiya's Hull Red from a lacquer can.

After a couple days of curing, I started painting with the hairy stick. The back of the seat got some flat black, with a little highlight of lightened black for some wear.

I worked my way up to painting the belts. I used Tamiya's Buff color. It's really horrible brush painting Tamiya acrylic, but it wasn't too bad once I thinned it and added Flow-Aid to retard the drying.

The belts in the seat.

Next I painted the grommets and the latches with silver, a very delicate operation.

When everything was cured, I gloss coated it with Alclad's Aqua Gloss.

I tried using a wash of black and raw umber oil paint.

I assembled the wings while I waited. Or maybe I just taped them together and glued them later. I don't know. Here's a picture of the wings.

After I gave the oil a couple of days to dry, I coated it with Ultra Matte varnish.

The instrument panel after a flat coat.

I used the Aqua Gloss on a very fine applicator to dab it in the instruments to give the appearance of glass.

The kit seat had a way of mounting with a tab that inserts into the floor, but the resin seat doesn't come with that option. I used some strip styrene stacked and glued together, then sanded down to give me a mounting point.

Glued into place.

The outside got a quick bit of paint just to make sure it wasn't white. Not that you could see it, but why not give it a little attention?

Mounted the seat with some cyanoacrylate glue. "Super glue", but not super glue, another brand.

The yoke.

The instrument panel.

The finished interior. It's a bit interesting how grayish it turned. Oh well, you probably won't see most of it anyway when it's closed up.

That's it for this week. Maybe you'll get an update in about a week?

I also came across this while I was typing and well, it's just amazing. I lasted 24 minutes.  https://youtu.be/qfHMytOUq6Y

Stay classy.

Thing Two's 1/72 P-51D Mustang Part 2

The ever exciting continuation of Thing Two's snap-together Mustang build.

We're going to attack the wings this time around. Get it? Attack wings.....hahaha. At least I found it funny.

Snipping the wings off the sprues. There seems to be a lot of snipping with this build. Well, when a model consists of just  snips and snaps, that's what you get.

Putting the wings together. I also glued these as you could have guessed.

I really don't know what this part is.

Assembling the fuel tanks.

Putting the fuel tanks under the wings....with some.....you guessed it, glue. They're still a bit wobbly because there really isn't much in the way of connecting tissue to glue.

You know what's coming.

It almost looks like an official plane now! Official enough for bi-plane and jet standards. Because bi-plane cockpits were open and jets don't have propellers, but I'm sure you would have figured that out.

That's it for this time. Apu says, "Please come again."