1/48 Spitfire IX Restoration Diorama

Gallery Article by Stephen A. Carr on May 13 2011

 

I rarely build anything straight out of the box, and I'm always looking for a different way of presenting the model. I contemplated doing a two seat conversion, or an unusual colour scheme, but they just weren't different enough. So after spotting a picture of an aircraft under restoration, I decided to model this Spitfire as a present day restoration. The rebuild work is complete and it is now in the paint shop receiving its new scheme.

The build of the kit was more or less straight forward, other than a few changes to add detail or modify to suit the diorama. The elevators and rudder were cut free, hinge slots filed in, and are displayed with the fabric in primer, hanging from a painting rack that was soldered up from 1/16 brass tube. Ailerons were also cut from the wings while the top and bottom skins were still separate. They were finished in bare metal, resting on timbers on the hangar floor. The cowl has also had all the fasteners drilled out slightly, as the cowl Dzus fasteners are quite prominent.

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Before starting the painting, I had a chat with a guy involved with fullsize Spitfire restorations. He told me that roundels are generally not painted onto the camo colours, and that the primer is masked out in the roundel position prior to the camo coats. They do this for a couple of reasons. One is to avoid weight build up due to several layers of paint, while the other is that the roundel position is used as a guide to the position and shape of the camo itself. So; on my model, I wanted the roundels to be masked out. I couldn't just paint the model as the panel lines would show through the paint, so I needed a layer of something to represent the brown paper used to mask out the area. So I got an old kit out and had a practice by painting the roundel area with a thin layer of PVA glue. The brown paper and masking tape colours were then painted over the PVA glue. It looked fairly good so I went with it on the Spitfire.

The whole model was sprayed in a yellow/green etch primer first, followed by drawing on the roundel and fin flashes. They were painted in the PVA and once dry, the brown paper and masking tape colours were applied. The underside grey followed, slightly overspraying onto the masking. Some companies spray the whole airframe in one go, others paint wings first. I decided to have the wings painted and the fuselage still in primer, with the fuselage masking having just been removed and lying on the hangar floor.

The camo was marked on lightly in pencil and the grey painted freehand. The grey was then masked out with sausages of 'Blu-tack' for the edges, and wet tissue for the space in between. This is the first time I've used wet tissue to mask with and I was really impressed how quick and easy it was to apply and remove.

So, how to simulate the ripped off paper masking on the floor? I used tissue paper, crumpled up and wetted out with dilute PVA glue. Once set, it left a nice hard lump that could be painted. After the base coat of brown dried, several lines of cream were painted to represent the masking tape. A 1/48 Preiser ground crew figure was painted in white overalls surveying his handy work. The scene has been compressed a little to fit everything on the base. In real life of course, everything would be much more spread out. I could have gone further with the detailing, but the B-17 Group Build was rapidly approaching, so I decided to wrap it up and move on.

Stephen A. Carr

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Photos and text © by Stephen A. Carr