Eduard Spitfire Mk.Ia, 1/48. A Pair of Kiwis.

Started by Harvey R. · 114 · 3 years ago · 1/48, Battle of France, Dual-combo, Dunkirk, Eduard, RAF, Spitfire, WWII
  • Profile Photo
    Spiros Pendedekas said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    My friend @scalerambush, have you considered using white glue as gap filler? Using little amounts, applied with a toothpick or so, faired with a damp cotton? It tends to "self level", too, resulting in somehow homogenous looks.

  • Profile Photo
    Stephen W Towle said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    At this point lowering the seat is out of the question. Considering that the pilot figure has the Sutton Harness on . . . you may have to remove the seat belt and pilot . How about lowering the pilot by shaving down the rear quarters or parachute ? Spiros has a excellent idea. Using white glue or Jewelers glue can be used to fill in the gaps. Perhaps sourcing out a Airfix canopy might help they came a lot of canopy options too.

  • Profile Photo
    John vd Biggelaar said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    That is a real pity, Harvey.
    I understand you're getting frustrated with that.
    The solution proposed by Spiros is also my first thought.

  • Profile Photo
    Harvey R. said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Greetings again, another quick update. Funnily enough as soon as I posted that I got to work with the Krystal Klear in largely the same way that Spiros posted for white glue, by adding a large amount over the seams and cleaning away with a wet cotton wool bud. The result isn't perfect, but it is better. A little bit of quick sanding will be required to fix up the edges and then it's finally time for the primer.

    I'm slightly more happy with how it looks now, enough so that I resprayed with my interior green mix and tomorrow will be a smelly Mr.Surfacer prime day, I'm thinking of using white so it makes painting the underside easier, that being said I'm not too sure how I'll weather these yet but I think it will likely be very basic weathering. Not factory used, but cleaner than I normally do.

    1 additional image. Click to enlarge.

  • Profile Photo
    George Henderson said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Great stuff Harvey. I'm building two Mk.I's myself, both Airfix offerings; the newest pain in the keester one and the slightly older newer one with less pain in the keester. One of mine is half black/half white on the bottom and guess what...yep...wrong side got the white

  • Profile Photo
    Spiros Pendedekas said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    That's a nice, solid progress, Harvey!
    Looking forward to your priming!

  • Profile Photo
    George R Blair Jr said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    I think your canopy looks fine, Harvey (@scalerambush). Many small problems disappear with the application of the dark camouflage. I also use white glue on many of my canopies.

  • Profile Photo
    John vd Biggelaar said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    You did very well on that canopy, Harvey.
    Great save.

  • Profile Photo
    Harvey R. said 3 years, 8 months ago:


    Bit of a slow few days but I'm back in the saddle and applied some primer, this is Mr.Surfacer 1500 white (obviously), typically I go for grey but with some shortages of what's available to buy I tend to go with whatever is available nowadays.

    This highlighted a few issues notably fuselage seamlines on the cowling and some on the spine, these were sanded down with a sanding sponge and then given some time with a polishing stick. It makes me want to do that squadron hack Mk.IX Spitfire with the camouflaged nose and bare metal body.

    Regardless, a second coat will be applied to cover the bare plastic and then painting in fun can beginning, likely by painting the black half of the underside.

    Decal are providing to be a pain as I will need to likely create my own masks for KL-N, at the same time I don't have the exact roundels required assuming I went for the identical ones to KL-B, which in the Eduard instructions have a strangely red dot (KL-B has weird markings for a Spitfire, but all were a bit different at this time).

  • Profile Photo
    John vd Biggelaar said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Great progress, Harvey.
    Yes, primer always reveals the slightest imperfections.
    But it gives us also the chance to correct those and create perfect models.

  • Profile Photo
    Spiros Pendedekas said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Looking great, Harvey!
    Mr Surfacer magic!

  • Profile Photo
    Erik Gjørup said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Nice save on the canopy, and as usual the point of having prepped for paint is exciting. I like your idea of the NMF and camo cowl for the next build 🙂

  • Profile Photo
    George R Blair Jr said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Look like they are ready for some interesting paint schemes, Harvey (@scalerambush). I'm looking forward to the paint and decals.

  • Profile Photo
    Harvey R. said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Paint has begun to be put on the model. Many people view that white and black are the hardest colours to weather and I absolutely agree, on one hand this is made worse as a significant portion of the plane is these colours, on the other hand its a bit easier as its not the whole plane so I'm not too fussed how good a job this is.


    Basically, if I was to do a night fighter that was all black I'd take more care here, but for me all I did was paint the access panels and gun ports a slightly different colour. The white I used the Mr Surfacer 1500 primer, and painted a mix of XF-1 white and XF-19 sky grey on some panels. Mixing this in a 1ml white to 0.1ml grey still made this paint change colour considerably, I'm not too sure how much I like it but it does give the eye something more than pure white to look at and I'll happily spray over these with white after I see how the clear coat tones it down.

    For the black, the same thing was done. After masking the halves off I painted it over in several thin coats of XF-2 black, before adding a 50/50 eyeballed mix of XF-2 and XF-69 NATO black. Once again, this gives the eye something a bit different to look at. At the moment it looks shiny but that's due to the paint not being fully try and a clear coat once again will done that down.


    I didn't feel the need to do my usual panel tonal weathering on this as I felt adding any more colour would turn the white into light grey looking, and the black into dark grey looking. It's one of those difficult areas where you want to apply something to keep it interesting to the eye but these two colours/shades are so easy to lose with conventional painting. Either way I'll be painting this to be a relatively clean aircraft so this is more than enough I think.

    Next up is to mask off and do the same on the other Spitfire, then I'll paint the brown on the upper surfaces. I'm not sure how I'll do the camouflage as I normally use the blu-tack worms for this, but I may use paper stencils to keep both aircraft looking similar.

    I also mixed up a Tamiya paint mix I found on another forum ages ago, I'll see how they look but they don't at the moment look too much different to how they did unmixed.

    3 additional images. Click to enlarge.

  • Profile Photo
    Spiros Pendedekas said 3 years, 8 months ago:

    Looking spectacular, Harvey!
    I like your tonal variations a lot: simple and effective!
    I see you are going to use masks, instead of tac spaghetti: I might do the same with my 1/72 HP Victor, where the camo looks dead hardlined (though I have seen some variations on Victors, I hope that I will come across a pic of "my" modeled bird, to see the actual camo...).
    Looking forward to your camoing!