--Originally posted 5/24/09--
9:45 AM (Sunday, 5/24): I happen to have available a perfect candidate kit for this quick, "Garry Beebe Build":
Click to Enlarge The Revell 1/48 Spitfire, Mk2 - which appears to have only about 15 parts - plus, I've never built it, even as a kid. I picked it up cheap (of course
); figuring it must not look much if any different from the first Seafires - or, failing that, at least the deckload Spits delivered by carriers to Malta or Operation Torch...
11:45 AM (Sunday, 5/24): Two hours into it, and work has begun on practically all the kit's parts:
Click to Enlarge Flash, though substantial, is certainly not the worst you've seen. The interior sub-assemblies have already been given a first color (black) and masked before spraying with the green. Trying not to scrimp on
techinque, I am using latex for the above masking, and a thinned gloss-black wash to accentuate steel-finish rudder pedals, stick/yoke and landing gear struts. Nor am I scrimping on
materials; using Tamiya spray cans, which happen to dry (without exaggeration) probably 10x faster than comparable Testors' anyway. I did cut one corner; using Tamiya
Racing Green (TS-43) for the interior color, rather than the "blue-green" instructed by the kit - even though the former is rather dark, and clearly not all that bluish, either.
Making good progress so far, I pushed "The Beebe Envelope", enhancing the exhaust stacks:
Click to Enlarge Though their appearances really benefitted, it would all prove wasted time; they should be 6-port (12-cylinder) manifolds, and accordingly were later replaced.
14:30 PM (Sunday, 5/24):Basically another 2 hours in, progress is frustrating; slowed by several things, starting with the fit:
Click to Enlarge Though minor in impact, pretty unforgivable in clumsiness is this complete miss - not even close - between the radio deck and fuselage locator tabs, which appear designed for a significantly different original part, now completely updated - but not fitted properly.
Meanwhile, ironically the
high quality of these presumed upgrades began to call the siren song for yet a bit more extra detailing:
Click to Enlarge For example, who'd'a thunk this humble kit contains a
gorgeous instrument panel, complete with gunsight! Dials on the former just
had to be dry-brushed and sealed under clear glue, and the latter drilled out to accept white glue for the sight glass. The gunsight required repainting with flat black, as did several other parts encountered at this point; as Testors is the only flat black in my box today, this increased drying times for all.
Though not regretting the above extras, I am definitely impatient to move 'er along, here...
17:10 PM (Sunday, 5/24): Another roughly 2 hours, beginning with sealing up the fuselage - to reveal another fit error:
Click to Enlarge Again, very minor - but none of the (new) cockpit parts fits into this little notch! No problem just to fill it, but again wasting minutes - not least to carefully check that no parts actually insert there. And also a
distraction, so that I forgot to put in both the seatbelt decals and yoke/stick! The latter was easily mitigated by simply dropping it in, with glue, after the fact. The former I may improve upon.
I did indulge myself with the following pic, showing where this plastic
actually comes from:
Click to Enlarge Molded exposed on the underside, it was scraped off. (Note also, on the box above, Revell's trademark red/white stripes are now replaced with blue only...) The wings then assembled pretty easily - particularly the left one, which virtually snapped together.
Under the right wing, I was bedeviled by the oil cooler (radiator) insert; finally realizing how it should look - both front and back - which required two repaintings, including the (slowest-drying) Testors
Glos Black wash.
The session did see wings and fuselage attached:
Click to Enlarge All remaining parts (minus 4 clear parts) are shown here. But the already-assembled wing roots presented whopping gaps:
Click to Enlarge Perhaps I could ignore the underside seams, but never the
topside, which could easily make the difference between a fairly
believable finished appearance, versus an obviously assembled and painted (even if well-painted) plastic model...
20:15 PM (Sunday, 5/24): Another approximately 2 hours devoted, starting of course with filling the wing-root seams, using a substance I've pretty much adopted as my absolute favorite:
Click to Enlarge A putty you (have to) mix yourself: slow-set cyano-acrylate (superglue) and talcom (baby) powder; it makes for a very fast-hardening, strong, yet sculptable filler.
You do, of course, still have to protect surrounding surface detail - for which also I recently discovered a near-perfect solution: heavy-guage aluminum tape:
Click to Enlarge Applying the tape -
tightly - is tedious around complex contours, but well worth it. The tail stabilizers also did not fit well, and - having zero panel detail on them - could accordingly be glued straight in, using simply the putty itself, which is plenty strong enough.
While the putty hardened, I could only do some prep on the few remaining bits:
Click to Enlarge The landing gear and some other parts (not shown) progressed a bit, and after only about a half-hour I returned to extensive smoothing of the filled wing roots.
The aft canopy extension went on without problem, but the windshield proved another matter - in fact, a disaster:
Click to Enlarge The windshield's left side fits, but the right is
bona-fide deformed - well-nigh impossible to fix; sanding around clear parts being extremely risky, and the CA putty can't even be used because it will fog the "glass". This demanded
replacement - from the parts box, if possible - and took a big bite out of the "quick-build" plan.
At least, from these pics you can see how well the wing-root gaps have been dealt with (even if they are out of focus...
!)
This looks like it for today...
