Spitfire Engine

The final hurdle! I have assembled all details possible at this point on my spitfire prior to getting out the airbrush.

I did not want to distract from the outline of the spitfire and have an entirely exposed engine so decided on just having this one side panel off the plane. I didn't do much on the engine except some fine details and wiring.

Some modelers who leave the top panel off may want to add the "ROLLS ROYCE" cast into the rocker covers, some small ABER photo-etch letters would probably work fine.

Spitfire Wing Blisters

The wing blisters in Tamiya's Spitfire is a detail that has caused a lot of debate over the new kit. Included with the kit is a uncommon although in some rare cases accurate squared off set of blisters. The version most common is as portrayed in this photo:

Already, some resin manufacturers have provided new blisters, however, these new blisters I do not feel accurately portray the photo, and also require removing the kit blister entirely from the gun cover, and glueing down the new ones - I don't know why anyone hasn't just made strait replacement pieces yet? I decided to stick to my goal of doing all the details from scratch for my build and set out to copy the photo I had, below is my end result and I feel it is accurate enough for me:

Just a couple wires left on the engine and I will need to build a pilot for my Spit and actually start painting this thing.

Panther Airbrushing

I've been slowly painting my Panther. At this point the airbrush work aside from clear coats is complete, and after a gloss coat I will begin the washes. I have been using Humbrol paints for the camouflage colors, and some Tamiya lacquers for the dust and dirt.

I used the color plates and pictures from Duel in the Mist by AFV Modeller publications as my main reference for painting the dot pattern. The markings are from Archer dry transfers, pieced together from one of their Panther mix sets.

1/32 Spitfire Details

I've been working away for the last couple weeks at Tamiya's excellent 1/32 Spitfire. The kit is great strait out of the box, however I decided to make a few minor corrections and add some of the finer details that are not present in the kit.

For the seat I added the padded back-rest, missing rivets, and made corrections to the harness using fine wire (.006" & .012")

The sidewalls of the cockpit have been riveted using a fine pounce wheel, I feel it is better to at least represent some sort of riveting than nothing at all in this case. For the more prominent rivets I used sliced .010" plastruct rod, a very time consuming and frustrating process.

The throttle and main landing gear mechanisms have been detailed by removing the thick molded controls and replacing them with thin plastic scratch-built ones, and I used a fine saw to add the recessed paths that they sit in.

The control spade has missing tape added, a detail that is in every spitfire but Tamiya decided not to portray in the kit, possibly because it would not look right molded in plastic. I wrapped thinly sliced decal around the control spade and sealed it with a coat of Tamiya grey putty mixed with Tamiya extra thin cement. More sliced .010" rod rivets are visible in this picture as well.

The cockpit side walls detailed.

The pilots access door has been detailed and I have scratch-built an oxygen hose, another detail missing in the kit if you choose not to model the plane with the pilot in the cockpit. The hose was made by using aluminum rod bent to shape, wrapped with fine wire, the brass piece on the end was made on my small home-made lathe, and the clasp is an old piece of photo-etch.

Some of the kit decals inaccurately portrayed such as the blue artificial horizon have been replaced with more period instruments from a Mike Grant decal set I was given.

I have added new brake lines and a few missing rivets to the landing gear.

A few more details need to be added to the engine, and I want to do some sort of pilot figure to go with the plane, and then it will be time to paint!

Anatomy Correction

It was pointed out to me by several modeling friends that I made an error in the anatomy of the commander of my Panther. I went back to the figure after taking several pictures of myself in the same pose and corrected the shoulder and position of the arm.

A few cuts and some magic sculpt was all it took to make the correction and I must admit the figure looks much more realistic.