The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

As I am free of GBs for a while it is time to start on the personal builds I have had waiting in the wings, this is the first of the new workbench builds, the Longest Flight Spitfire G-IRTY using the AZ kit of that same aircraft.


The polished finish was a stumbling block until I found this paint, it sprays well onto the bare plastic, it is durable and can be overpainted easily- the grey panel is Revell Aqua and the blue nose is Tamiya paint.

That looks good Ian.

Andrew, I'm David not Ian.

A great looking coat of metallic, David and that is a good looking civilian scheme for this Mk. IX build.

That is a first class metallic finish. I have noted that for possible future reference.

This is a very simple kit which needed little work to assemble.


A little filler was needed at the wing roots and the elevators were removed from the tailplanes before assembly


Four coats of paint from the aerosol can were applied, no primer was used. I'll now leave the model alone for a few days to ensure the paint has hardened before continuing.

Wow. That's a nice smooth silver coat.

Nigel

Great tip David. Looks terrific.

That is a beautifully smooth looking finish, David.

That is an amazing finish,David, wow.

Work has kept me rather busy of late and progress has been slow. As I waited for the chrome paint to harden I dug out the Spitfire PR.19 from the new Airfix BBMF set and made a start on that.




As I worked on the BBMF aircraft I masked off the Silver Spitfire anti-glare panel and painted it in, when I removed the masking tape I found that the adhesive on the tape had attacked the chrome finish beneath. I decided to start again using spare AZ airframe parts along with the cockpit and tailplanes from the first kit, the canopy was also removed to act as a mask for the cockpit opening. The anti-glare panel was then painted on and masked up ready for the chrome spray- this time it worked perfectly.

Lovely job Sir! Looks like i'll be after some Plasticote Chrome at some point!

I'm confused, what do you think caused the tape to attack the 'chrome' and what did you do differently to prevent it ?

The adhesive on the tape must have been to blame for the spoiled finish to the chrome paint on the first attempt, the anti-glare panel on the second model was first applied using Revell Aqua Matt Black which was then masked off before spraying the airframe in Chrome Spray.

I've had that happen with silver paint and masking tape on more than one occasion in the past, David. What I tend to do now with metallic finishes is to apply a gloss clear coat over the paint and let that harden off before using masking tape. In my experience metallic paints aren't terribly durable left on their own.