Supermarine Spitfire prototype

Alley cat models, a one-man show from Alec Smith, according to their website, alleycatmodels.co.uk. This is a full resin kit, made by request (as I assume all Alley Cat models are). It feels like a custom kit made just for you, and I love that.

Yo, Alec Smith, if you are reading this, cheers mate! 

This is the content of the box: Resin pieces, decals, a small bag with canopy masks (inside and outside) and resin canopy, instructions with a small photo etch set. All of it fits in a 23x17cm box. 

Cover page for the kit. Note the photo etch set on the upper right corner. I haven't seen any pictures of the Spitfire prototype with the proto-etch pieces, so I will skip them. I am really curious to know why it was included in the kit. 

First, prepare all the resin pieces. That implies a lot of sawing and filing. I am using a mask and water to make sure the amount of resin dust is kept at a minimum. I believe this is not dangerous epoxy-based resins, but nevertheless, let's be cautious. 

The first prototype version has a rudder with a diagonal edge. Later versions corrected it, but for now, let's file the fuselage piece to fit the rudder from the maiden flight's Spitfire version 

"Panel lines" in the propeller need to be corrected, according to this prototype picture. 

The cockpit arch struct is too thick and the holes need to be improved. The right thing would be to replace with a scratch built piece from a styrene sheet, to match the thickness, but I will just do the holes 

Landing gears have gaps to let the wheel covers fit. Since this version doesn't have wheel covers, these gaps need to be filled. Note the metal wire inside the piece.  

The wing panel lines are very basic. We don't have machine guns in this prototype, of course, but it's hard to believe that they were like this. There are no pictures unfortunately, so my best shot is to copy the panel lines from the prototype replica, although it's from a later version. 

The cockpit door would be nice opened, so let's cut it out.  

Resin is a good material to cut pieces like that, although the door is unbelievable thick.  

I cut the wing tips to add some wing lights 

Wing lights are made from transparent sprues from another kit. Filing it to shape, I will paint the light color, then glue the lights to the wing, do the final cut and filing, then brush it with gloss coat  

Drilling holes in the cockpit seat structs 

cockpit struct with improved holes 

cockpit structs with improved holes 

Propeller needs a shaft. I use a template to help me find the prop center.  

I cut a small piece of metal from a clip, and put it on the propeller so I can mark the spot on the engine cowl piece. 

The metal wire, cut with a plier, sharp enough to mark a hole. 

Drilling a hole in the engine cowl.  

Exhausts look much better with deeper holes. 

The little air intake needs a hole too. I like drilling. 

The canopy is quite foggy, but I just bought the right thing for this... 

...much better! Looks great. 

I used this Ammo canopy dip product. Really nice, just dip, remove the excess, store on a dust-free box, wait some time, and that's it. 

Assembling the cockpit, ready for the base green cockpit spray. 

There is no seams, but underneath the fuselage there are some mould imperfections that need to be filed. 

The Tamiya paint sticks nicely to the resin, even though I forgot to clean the surface. 

Since this kit doesn't come with instrument panel (IP) decals, I have to do my own. Problem is, there is no good picture for the prototype IP. Closest is the Mk 1 IP. 

Trying to guess where each gauge goes into the prototype, based on the IP gauges from the resin part. This is guesswork, so do not take this as the real deal. 

Brush painting the seatbelts turned out to be not hard, and panel liners help make a believable shadow. I am pleased with the result, although far from detailed.  

Covering the wing guns, the prototype had them painted over 

Using conductive aluminium tape to make little shock absorbers. Not a big improvement.  

Painted wheel structs with Mr Hobby Metallic Aluminium, adding this black wire for brake cable 

Needs now zip ties made with decals 

Circular cutter for wheel masks 

masks too short, have to repeat. The trick is to cut a lot of masks with different adjustments on the circular cutter 

too much panel liner messes up with the Mr Color metallic paint, which is a lacquer. I should have coated it. Anyway, I just have to respray with rubber black again.  

Structs painted with mr hobby metallic paint, cable from black metal wire, zip ties from leftover decals 

instrument panel ready, I don't want to push my luck 

Masking the inside of the canopy, painting with interior green.  

The masks provided by the kit may leave some adhesive, promptly removed with a q-tip.  

The cockpit wouldn't fit, you need to remove a lot of material from the wing piece. You only realize that when you are dry fitting the cockpit. Not a big fan of thinning out resin pieces with a dremel. 

Fitting of the wings and fuselage was not going to be easy. With plastic is way easier, as you can go section by section. Here, with super-glue, I tried the all-in approach, which with the hardness of the resin, lead to the engine piece to fall out and break the starboard wing root.  

Pick your fights, so I am more concerned about fitting the wing roots and underneath the fuselage, so I will leave this gap, as it can be covered up.  

This is a big gap, but since the wing root is broken, there is nothing much to do here than expecting everything to be glued strongly enough to withstand filing and rescribing.  

It is taking the so familiar shape, I hope I am done soon because it is not that fun to work with resin. 

This is the priority. I new the fitting would be hard by dry-fitting, but it was worse by not being able to do adjustments, because of super glue, and resin being not that flexible.  

Trying this Perfect Plastic Putty, and so far I am liking what I see. It can be wiped with water, even after a day, and it feathers nicely. So, let's see if I can fix the wing gap with it. 

That corner where I broke the piece is going to be very tricky, but without primer, I don't see what I can do. Anyway, a good technique for putty feathering is to wet slightly with a wet brush, then with your fingertips, drag the putty to the outside.  

Wheels are ready, but since they are not entirely "round" by trimming from the resin sprue, I have a flat spot that needs to be oriented down. Therefore I will glue the wheels when the structs are glued to the wing. 

I sort of messed up by believing the canopy would fit in the open position. I should have dry-fit it first, but even if I did, the solution would be trimming the pieces. Not nice, the back window is already glued 

To make things worse, the canopy is just too thick to fit in the open position. So, I was doomed from the beginning, but this is a poor consolation. No way in hell it would conform to reach the rails, so I flirted with the idea of making it closed, since it was impossible to look good opened. 

Well, trimming with two glued pieces would just go as well as you expect. If you want a closed canopy, you have to prepare in advance and glue the pieces one by one, and trim them beforehand. No way this one will work now. I was pissed. 

So, plan A was to dip this resin canopy in hot water, and see if I can reshape it, while I was thinking of a plan B... 

...which is to take advantage of the fact that this canopy only has one curvature, and with the precious help of the outside mask, I just cut one from a package of taco pockets. I guess a soda bottle would work as well, as long as it already has a nice curvature.  

Nice, I went, in a timespan of 15 minutes, from a state of anger from having a useless canopy, from happiness on managing to hack a nice canopy that is better than the original piece. 

Ready to be primed with Tamiya surface primer, so I can see all the blemishes I need to fix. 

Primed and ready to be inspected 

This corner will never look good as new, and I am still aware that I may break it again because super-glued resin pieces still break. I will try to fix it, but not taking big changes, as this is not plastic melted with Tamiya cement. 

I like very much this Tamiya primer, it still reveals the rivet lines I left to experiment. Also, all the plastic putty inserted to hide bad rescribing lines is properly hidden, so yes, plastic putty works very well on hiding rescribing mistakes.  

Riveting looks good, but I believe it is primer-deep only, as the rare places where I did riveting on top of resin, wasn't easy to mark. Also, resin pieces are still badly glued, so riveting broke stabilisers and rudders, and punctured wing roots.  

No rivet lines for the prototype, the closest I have is a Mk I, so let's use it as inspiration and come up with new lines 

Ready to have a coat of gloss black, after my best efforts to sand, putty and rivet all. 

I used Mr Hobby Gloss Black from a airspray can, for the first time, and it sprays much more paint than with the primer, so I accidentally flooded the wing roots. I wanted to wipe, but I decided to wait a day and sand it later. 

No need to sand, the panel lines are visible (I made them unnecessarily big), but the rivet details are now very flimsy.  

Wing root didn't need sanding of buffing, but those rivets are gone.  

 

 

A coat of Mr Hobby Metal Colour Aluminium 218. That paint looks very good, and expectedly, it is showing off all the blemished in the kit. This is not the final coat, hence the patched work.
 

The wing roots are acceptable. Considering the damage done there, it looks OK. This hood will get some buff, to shine a little more 

A metal Spitfire wit perfect elliptical wings. 

Masking the spinner  

Coating the primer, which is a mix of Tamiya XF-4 yellow green with Mr Color Metal Color, so an acrylic with a lacquer, using Mr Color Levelling Thinner. It works, but this mix erased rivets 

Also, this acrylic / lacquer mix had different densities, so the first spray is more yellowish, and getting shinier with time. Not the best way to coat a plane 

I decided to paint a red oxide on the oil tank, a mix of tamiya metallic grey and red. I like this mix, works great for rust too. 

This metallic paint is too sensitive to scratches, it doesn't stick very well 

Making gun hole decals with a circular cutter and leftover decals. Around 1.5 mm, works fine 

Masking rudders (they are aluminium dope) and some other panels to give tone variation 

Done with coating, not really in the mood to do better shades because the paint easily scratches and peels off 

Decals are not great, they are thick and hard to conform. Since I don't want to use varnishes to not mess up with metal shine, and and no panel lines because it reacts with lacquer paint, I will just add micro-sol and get done with it. If I cared at this point, I would spray a satin coat to dull the decal shine.  

Numbers are better put first on wedges, then middle, to get the spacing right. 

Making a bench 1: Use some scratch-build plastic rods 

...cut in pieces... 

..glue them... 

...into a bench... 

...draw some wood grain... 

...and paint it brown