Harvey, @scalerambush
I somehow missed this build journal. I read it from the very beginning to where it is now. I really like the idea with the bearing on the propeller. By chance do you have a part number for it ? Where did you locate these ?

A while ago we had a group build to celebrate the 100 Years of the RAF. Originally I started with 4, then 7 or 8, and finally 12 Spitfires. I had a lot of help and advice offered to me, and just as it has been mentioned, here on Imodeler it seems to be very good.

I started out painting my Spitfires just as you did, with masking tape and putty worms. Then a friend sent me some paper masks and they worked out perfectly. Here's a link to the multiple Spitfire build journal should you be interested to take a look.

https://imodeler.com/groups/100-years-of-the-royal-air-force/forum/topic/a-group-of-various-1-48-spitfires-airifx-and-tamiya-mk-1-to-the-fr-46-47/

Sadly, I was able to only finish up 7 or 8 of the Spits, before I ran out of time, and I will be finishing up the Airfix FR46/47 as part of the Korean War group build. I still have several Spitfires left that need finishing.

Then Tamiya released their all new tooled Spitfire MkI, so I had to get my hands on one to see how good it is. I was so happy with what I say, I ended up purchasing two more...

Finally, after hearing everyone rave on about how good the new Eduard Spitfire kits are, I purchased some of them to see for myself. They still remain in the box, but I do have plans to build them up too.

Please keep us posted on your builds. They look magnificent !

Greetings, a bit of a slower process as things are ramping up with returning to work and such as lockdown closes in the UK. I'm sure many people are happy to go back to work and socialise, but I'd rather stay home and focus on hobbies...

Regardless, the Spitfire Mk.I (this one will be KL-N) has received the brown, which was weathered as before. Naturally due to the exact process of 'eyeballing a drops into an smallish amount of paint' the colours here won't be the same. Rather than before where it was 15% followed by 30% white, I'd say this is more 20-25% followed by 30% white. This would be concerning if I wanted them to be identical, but I don't. I want them to end up smiliar, but not identical. Sisters but not twins! I also made the dark brown darker, I feel it is slightly too light on the one I've done already but don't want to change it so I can judge it at the end.

I also got a clear coat on the first Spitfire (which will be KL-B), I did this largely to protect it from a few bumps in side the drawer and to make it easier to remove away any rogue dust that always seems to find its way onto a model. It looks pretty nice! Gloss coats will generally make the weathering more visible, but in the end this will likely receive a semi-matt coat. Clear coats are done using MRP which I have recently jumped over to and really like the results, I used their Semi-gloss as I haven't purchased a full gloss from them but it seems smooth and shiny enough for decal work anyways.

@lgardner, these are pretty easy to find bearings if you don't mind a wait and can get them readily shipped from China for cheap, for me I had to find some in the UK to avoid waiting a month so they were a little more expensive but not bad. These ones are 'Bearing 602ZZ Metal Shielded Minature Bearings' from ebay, these particular ones are 7mm x 2mm x 3.5mm, with the inner diameter (the important part) being 2mm. To go a step further you may want to add a 2mm or 1.9mm metal rod so it really spins, without a replaced rod it spins maybe one rotation if you flick it, so not exactly amazing but far better than a push fit propeller that will either fall out or not spin at all.

@gblair I find anything post-shading to be personally better for me as it removes the problem I had with pre-shading off accidently doing it to much and then losing all the previous work. I find with post-shading I can easily redo a bit if I mess up, and definitely find it easier to get consistent results like you said. My main issue with all of these methods is trying to make sure it can be seen at the end! But hopefully it works out this time.

Speaking of decals...

I should really check and see if I have enough! Eduard's kit really pushes you into making an early Pre-1940 Spitfire and then one from Dunkirk/Battle of Britain.

As it stands its a good thing I can't find KL-N pictures, this is because a lot of these early Spits had quite varied markings with the sizes of letters, roundels, etc. I'm hoping I can get away with using underside decals on the fuselage for KL-N but I need to double check if I've got enough, luckily I hoard all my unused decals and made a Spitfire and Hurricane a while back. As much as I want to get this looking good, I'm not sure I want to spend yet more money for aftermarket if I don't HAVE to.

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Amazing job, Harvey, @scalerambush!

Paint and fading look awesome, Harvey (@scalerambush). I also have been trying to cut back on some of the extra stuff we always seem to get for our kits. I have had some luck "borrowing" my wife's die cut machine she uses for card-making and using it to cut masks for insignia, markings, and so on. My wife's machine is called a Scan and Cut, and you can literally cut a mask for just about anything. I have had some luck with roundels and registration letters, and so on. This only works if you have a wife who also conveniently has a die cut machine.

Hello again, time for another update I think..

With the brown painted on previously it was only a matter of time until the green happened. The aircraft was masked the same way as the previous one was, and I used the previous Spitfire as a guide of where to put the blu-tack worms. I tried to get the blu-tack on as similar in placement as possible, but as previously stated I have no issue with it not being identical. Overall I think it came out pretty well and in the right spots.

Funnily enough that slightly unpainted area on the tail is still there on this one, oops. I also didn't put the blu-tack quite in the right position on the left wing near the flap indicator (that little hatch pops up when flaps are down) meaning I had to quickly spray a fix for some visible primer, but this took a total of 30 seconds to fix so no issue there.

Next up is to get some gloss on this Spitfire, then it's time for decals for both!

I don't know about you guys, but I try to keep my stash relatively small, no 78 model large to do list for me! That being said motivation for certain kit comes and goes and the last couple of days I'm really feeling motivation to build a Tomcat, so let's see if I still feel in the F-14 mood by the time I finish these Spitfires or if the motivation for another kit comes up. I do have another 3 Tamiya Corsairs inbound..

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Great progress, Harvey.
Better to not have them identical, for sure that in the field there were also differences betwen them.

Evening folks, after a couple of relatively slow days I've started work on decals.

Thursday was spent clearing up a little issue with the clear coat, I used MRP Semi-gloss (I'd use gloss if I had it, but the semi-gloss is smooth enough) and annoyingly some spilt from my airbrush onto the model. Interestingly, whilst sprayed it is amazing, but a large lump of the stuff actually strips the paint down to the primer. Regardless, this required a quick fixing but luckily it mostly on the underside of the 'Kiwi's black wing, so a very easy fix. I then decided to use my standard Pledge Clear Floor Polish, which I use in some stage on all of my previous models, yet for some reason it came out a bit weird so I left the airbrush in a bath of cleaner. Friday I spent some time giving this plane two clear coats again with MRP Semi-gloss which came out perfectly with no silly accidents.

This leads us to today. Stupidly I forgot to paint or decal the walkway lines before doing the roundels, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix that problem later. The main decals for both Spitfires have been put on. Preciously I mentioned about having to source a suitable decal for the fuselage for the future 'KL-N', I decided to use a decal for 'ZP-A' included in the kit as this roundel seems to be the same size as the one for 'KL-B' (which is weirdly small), but the yellow circle is outside of the blue rather than cutting the blue in half. It's kind of difficult to explain in words but simply put the red and white circles are the same size so I figured it looks reasonably similar enough to be chalked up to the ground crew deciding to paint it slightly different, rather than using a much larger decal which looked very different. To be honest though I find the KL-B decal to look very weird and am not a huge fan of it, but it's the correct one so not a lot I can do.

I've also been testing on how best to make custom masks, using a method outlined in the brilliant 'AK FAQ Aircraft Scale Modelling' (which I highly recommend) I have begun to cut out masks from adhesive film which is intended to be used for covering books. So far it's been a difficult process getting it right, but I've had some success on tests so I'll be making the KL-N soon.

One issue with the Eduard decals is that the fin flash isn't quite big enough, meaning I'll need to try and colour match the decal so I can paint the leading edge of the vertical stabiliser.

Next up is a plethora of stencils, I'll likely do the KL-N and walkway masks last after applying a clear coat over the decals. Right now I'll still be drowning these decals in Micro-Sol to set in all the raised and recessed rivets.

Speaking of rivets I decided to get a rivet tool for a future Corsair build that will have all the bells and whistles, I like to do more challenging builds after every 5 or so models. I decided to get a Rosie the Riveter as I heard so many good things about it but it seems rarer than platinum to get due and could only find it in Australia, so good job I won't be needing it for the next two months! On the topic of rarer than platinum, the 'beloved' brexit is really making it harder to buy certain products especially those from small businesses who don't wish to ship to the UK due to the new shipping VAT rules, I really wanted to buy a nice unique resin conversion from America but they won't ship here anymore and I had to buy the Riveter from Australia because a few sellers in Germany and Poland don't ship here either. A shame, but oh wells.

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