Ready for the next project - a 1/48 scale Tamiya Spitfire Mk I. One of the prettiest airplanes ever built. Hope to get started next weekend after keeping the airline going for another few days.

I have already noticed a problem. There are only two sprues of plastic in this kit. I'm a little worried...

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Dont forget the poly caps! Its a lovely kit to build Jaime, my wife is building the same kit for the G.B but there is no problems there mate.

Simon.

Only two sprues and I have to trim off gun barrels? I don't know if I can handle the pressure! 🙂

Had a few minutes last night after work to get started on the Spit. Got all the cockpit bits that are supposed to be interior green painted, and drilled out the lightening holes in the seat bulkhead. The offending protruding gun barrels have been removed.

That wore me out so much, I went to bed...

As far as the color of the seat cushion is concerned, black is accurate but so is a reddish brown. As with my Spitfire Mk.II, I painted my seat with Floquil "Panzer Brown" which matched the color of bakelite. When this dried, I applied a red brown oil paint on the cushion and wiped off the excess. The oil paint dried to a semi gloss finish giving a nice subtle contrast to the dead flat finish of the Floquil enamel. If you do not have oil paint, you can just use a brown leather color then go over it with a semi gloss clear. You can also use the semi gloss clear over black if that is the color you want to go with. Either way, it should come out looking fine.

Also, some Spitfires had their seats painted in interior green. I do not know if these were metal seats or over painted bakelite. They were a sort of rarity though. Still, I went with the green seat with a red brown cushion on my Tamiya Mk.I and no one ever cried foul.

Seamus, your advice worked like a charm. I painted the cushion a dark brown (same as the headrest), then went over it with a light coat of Future when it dried. Then a dark wash to bring out the detail and damned if it doesn't look like beat up leather! Rich Corinthian leather, of course... 🙂

Got in a little more build time on the Spit today after the grandkids left. All the remaining bits were painted and added to the sidewalls. After installing the oxygen bottles on the left side, I took a break and wound up reading an article stating that Spitfire I's only had one O2 bottle and it was half the size of the ones in the kit. The kit part represents the compressed air cylinders for charging the guns on cannon armed airplanes. I didn't feel like cutting them out and hacking them up, and they do look pretty good, so there they will stay.

I experimented with the seatbelts, using masking tape as a medium. I was originally going to go whole hog and do the belts and the restraint cable, but I am really enjoying this build and saw no reason to complicate things. The grommets of the Sutton harness are represented with small dots of brass paint filled in with a dark center. The photos look horrible in retrospect, but from outside the completed cockpit they don't look too bad. If I leave the canopy closed, they'll look even better! I'm going to have to work on that.

Fuselage was then assembled and cockpit dropped in. No fuss at all, unlike the last Spitfire kit I did. I added a photo of that one at the same build stage just for comparison.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

A little more work on the Spitfire today. It now looks like an airplane with wings and stabilizers attached. A little scraping and filing and she'll be ready for paint. This kit has gone together very well so far. I'll try to post a few pics later.

Seamus, the missing O2 bottle was gnawing at me a little, so I ended up scratch building one from a piece of sprue in the kit. One end was already rounded with a little nubbly on it that looked just like a shutoff valve, so I rounded the other end, painted it and glued it in. Looks pretty good, I think, though it will be a little hard to see.