RW PR Spitfire, or nearly....Ready for take-off!

[Robomog]

The wing fuselage joint seems to be a common issue with spitfire kits, the best one so far for me is the Airfix mk1a new tool, it does not fit properly so you have to sand the wing joints back so you can get a perfect fit. They have been clever and made the joints coincide with the panel lines

Saying this I have not built Eduard or Tamiya offerings yet   

Mog
>^-.-^<

[zenrat]

How did the wings fit without the cockpit tub in place?
Could it be paint thickness on the top of the bulkheads and the inside of the fuselage?

[PR19_Kit]

It wasn't too bad without the cockpit in position, but would have needed trimming at the aft end I think.

The step in the wing root is a lot more than paint thickness though, it's about 1 mm. The depth of the cockpit itself seems to be the issue as the step got less after I'd filed off a fair amount of the cockpit floor, but if I'd done any more some of the seat assembly etc. would have fallen out.

I really don't want to add putty to the wings to minimise the step, so I think I'll get a curved file out and smooth off the fuselage-wing faring bit.

[zenrat]

...The step in the wing root is a lot more than paint thickness though, it's about 1 mm...

Yeah, but you've got those curved bulkhead tops so it doesn't take much paint to effectively make them too wide to sit right up inside the fuse...
That sort of thing has given me many issues in the past.  So much so that just the sight of a curved top on a bulkhead sets off warning bells.
 

[PR19_Kit]

Could be, yes. The panel is a similar shape and that's not quite touching the inside of the fuselage skin forward of the cockpit, so the problem is aft of there, and there's 3-4 of those bulkheads in that area. But they're all 'buried' now so there's nothing I can do about it.

[PR19_Kit]

I've done as minimum amount of PSR on the PR1C's wingroot as I can get away with, but it'll still need a bit more I'm sure. Such a pity that quite an amount of the really good fine detail will be lost, but no way can I re-scribe it all as lightly as lightly as the original stuff.

I've got the taiplanes on too, which look as if they're just butt jointed in place, but they aren't. They have a very neat curved root fitting with a slight 'plug and socket' arrangement that works surprisingly well. The two halves were in line with each other right away and parallel with the wings too. Result!

Here's it all assembled and PSR'd so far, with my rotating prop assembly in place. as well That won't be visible as soon as I glue the engine and fuel tank covers in place of course.

[PR19_Kit]

I've got all the fuselage bits in place now, apart from the cockpit side door of course. There's the panel over the main fuel tank (why did I bother to paint the tank?) and the large top cover for the engine, plus the exhausts in place now, plus the carb intake, but that's invisible in the pic. The exhausts didn't seem to fit the curved slots for them, but after fiddling about a bit I figured their flanges go INSIDE the fuselage, but the instructions don't show even a hint of that. 

The clear sprues, two of them, have no less than TWELVE canopies of various types, and SIX windscreens, but the ones for the PR1C are all on the smaller second clear sprue, so the very large main sprue is just bunce. No wonder the kit's so expensive.    But if you're doing an open cockpit version, there's only ONE of the small rear canopy mouldings. I glued that in place, or tried to, only to find that Fred's prediction came totally true and the various bulkhead bits stopped it sitting down in place! So I've added a small strip of styrene to fill the gap, arrowed below.



The wing root filing and PSR is progressing, and it's not too bad, but needs a little more, and next it'll be a coat of primer, and THAT'S going to be difficult. Wanting an open cockpit means blanking it all off while priming, and I hate that bit. I tried to tape the canopy bits in place, and masking them all up, but that's SO fiddly, so I'll have to fill the cockpit area with tissue I reckon.

[steelpillow]

You could probably bag and label up those canopy bits individually and sell them for £10 a pop on eBay. 

[PR19_Kit]

Dead right there! 

[Rick Lowe]

You could also use one of the surplus canopy bits as a mask - it won't matter that it'll get painted, as it's coming off again anyway...

[NARSES2]

You could also use one of the surplus canopy bits as a mask - it won't matter that it'll get painted, as it's coming off again anyway...

Beat me to it Rick

[PR19_Kit]

True, I hadn't thought of that. But I'll still need to block the hole where the side door goes, such a fiddle.

While PSRing the wing roots, the joint on the starboard side failed and I've had to superglue it back together again. I keep telling myself that the engraved detail on the wings is SO fine that no-one will see it anyway under a few coats of paint...........

[PR19_Kit]

I've got the first primer coat on, after packing the cockpit with scrunched up tissue, and it seems to have worked OK. As I feared, quite a bit of the detail around the places I've had to PSR has gone, and I may try and re-scribe some of it later. It'll need a bit more PSR yet, but not to much, hopefully.

[zenrat]

Gaaah.  I hate being right when it means bad news.

[Rick Lowe]

But it still looks like a Spitfire...

Probably not as helpful as I intended, was it?