Tamiya’s 1:48th
scale Spitfires are old news – highly buildable, friendly, accurate,
they vie with Hasegawa for industry standard, though (somewhat infuriatingly)
the Big Guy from Shizuoka City didn’t come back to do other marks, just the Mk.
I and Mk. V in b and c variants. This left the field open for Hasegawa (the
other Big Guy from Shizuoka), ICM from Ukraine and the reconstituted Airfix to
mop up the missing marks, a process not yet complete even now. (Off hand, I can
think of at least seven marks which achieved production status which have not
been kitted to date, though we do
have rarities like the short-production HF Mk. VI, and the Mk. XII, first of
the Griffon birds.)
I’ve had one of the Tammy Vbs on the shelf for many years, I
prepainted the interior RAF grey-green so long ago it was done with Humbrol
enamel, and I’m hard-put to remember exactly how long it is since I retired
solvent-based paints in the name of brain cell survival. I had a yen for
another Spit so pulled this one and whacked her together. The build was smooth
and uneventful as you would expect from a Tammy. I didn’t bother with harness,
I’m not sure if this means my flirtation with printed etch is at an end or if
it depends on my temperament when the time comes – I guess I’ll find out.
The new aspect of this build was the AML vinyl mask set for
the camo. I ordered them up last year as they looked pretty good and offered a
relief from the tedious business of cutting tape masks for curved, hard
demarcations. They are thin, backed with a low-tack adhesive, and free off from
their backing sheet easily. In only one place did they lift paint, and though
they took some pushing and pulling to try to line them up, they were generally
very good. Here and there, the errors in location from one part to another
compounded so that some particular part did not fit at all and was replaced
with a swathe of Gunze masking fluid, but that was perfectly okay. The pic
above shows the masks partially removed, the one below the result with the
paintwork complete.
I used the Tamiya Acrylics late-war RAF matches (XF-81, -82
and -83), sealed with Micro Satin and panel lines accented and sealed with
Florey washes. If there was a real challenge with this kit it was the decals,
and while many builders report poor experiences with Tamiya decals I would have
to say that was not the reason. Feeling somewhat mistrusting of the kit decal
sheet, I considered replacing them with Techmod stencils, Eagle Strike roundels
and Fantasy Printshop codes and serials. However…
It turned out the codes were the wrong size – I have the
sheet of 18” letters and numbers, and the aircraft I was modelling had heavier
24” lettering. This compelled me to at least try the kit sheet and it turned
out it worked perfectly, snugging into panel lines nicely. The kit decals
feature a fairly good suite of stencil data but far from complete and I was
tempted to busy-up the bird with the Techmod data, but… Photos of the original
aircraft show it to have featured comparatively little stencil data anyway,
plus the Techmod stencils are so fine I can barely see them. I concluded there was no need to go to the extent us
using them for this project. Same with the roundels – the kit items were
acceptably accurate in colour and laid down fine, though they took a lot of
solvent to conform to surface details. The hardest part of any Spit is the
underside roundels which lie over surface blisters and I have yet to have them
be anything but a compromise.
The yellow leading edges are also supplied as decals, much
less work than masking, but again the task of getting them to snug down is a
long one. I spent three days on the decals of this kit, before finally being
able to gently wash the surface to remove dried setting solutions and lay down
some Micro Flat for the final finish.
I’m happy with the finished model, though I’m the first to
admit I gaffed in a few places. I aligned the canopy incorrectly and didn’t
notice it until the first colour went on – blame my glasses. There are
stiffening ribs on the wings incorrect for the Vb and the instructions tell you
to cut them away, though with other projections nearby on the wing I was not
confident to remove them without making a mess of the job, so I accepted the
inaccuracy. I got the wing walk stripes in the wrong place by about their own
width, and the fuselage roundels should be aligned on each other – to get the
codes set up at visually acceptable spacing, that turned out to be too much to
ask. Other than that, I’m happy with this beast. She’s presented as early
service days rather than the heavy chipping and wear seen in photos, and though
the paintwork is preshaded I don’t go in for the “patchwork quilt” fading
effect so popular these days – not that I wouldn’t if I could, but my AB skills
are seriously not up to it!
One other point, I swear the canopy was crystal clear and
flawless when it went on, but it was patchy and striated on the inside when the
masking came off. I can only assume it’s the fumes from the adhesive. The
problem is, the clear parts cement sold by Testors is essentially just white
glue and I swear spit would have more grab. The amount of force exerted in
masking and unmasking the canopy would surely overcome it. My option for the
future to avoid this problem is to mask and paint the canopy off the model, and
attach with the weak-as-water-glue afterward. I certainly must do something, as
this element is an ongoing disappointment.
So there she is, a Tamiya classic, a generally fun build and
a nice addition to the display case, canopy notwithstanding.
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