Polishing a Turd, or Setting the Bar Low

Somehow, I had this Monogram snap-together Spitfire kit lying around (I never belonged to their Young Model Builders' Club) and decided the best way to get rid of it was to build it. It's not much of a kit, with stickers instead of decals. I guessed at first it was 1/72 scale, but I measured the wingspan and found it about 10% oversize for 1/72, which makes it approximately 1/64, which is the scale that Scalemates . Anyhow, I'd already decided to use some Scale-Master decals I had saved from an old Encore kit that I let my daughter complete the way she wanted when she was about 3 years old. (She painted it red and pink.)

This wasn't going to be a serious build, just something to hang up in my workshop. The markings I chose were for P7666, call letters EB-Z, a presentation aircraft from the Observer Corps, the personal aircraft of Sqn. Ldr. Donald Osborne Finlay of No. 41 Squadron in late 1940.

I printed out the camo pattern sized to the model and cut a template. I traced this and brush-painted it over black primer using some Humbrol acrylics that came with an Airfix kit. These tiny plastic vials of paint are tricky to stir without spilling and the weight of the lid makes them want to tip over, but they go on nicely with a brush and as far as I can tell accurately represent RAF colors. A little internet research gave me to understand that in the early years of WWII, the underside color of RAF day fighters was usually Sky Blue, aka Duck Egg Blue. Less commonly used was Sky, aka Sky Type S or Duck Egg Green (or a similar but lighter and greener color Eau-de-Nil). Least common was Sky Grey, normally used by the Fleet Air Arm and Coastal Command, but apparently this color was used by No. 41 Squadron. This color was more of neutral grey than the others, lacking their bluish or greenish hue, so I used some Testors Flat Camouflage Grey acrylic I had since it seemed a fair match.

As I recall, the Encore kit (from a Heller mold) is a little overscale, say 1/69, so the decals I used should be sized accordingly. At any rate, while the markings are still undersized for the Monogram kit, the only place it really shows is the tail flash, which is clearly too short.

I wanted to use this kit to try out washi tape for the first time. I masked the canopy with it and found the results satisfactory. I also masked off the red rectangles on the leading edge of the wing where tape was applied over the gunports, but I'd have gotten better results here just freehanding it. The washi tape also lifted a decal. Ouch! I touched it up with a Gundam marker.

The kit's representation of the main gear and their bays is laughable, and I wanted it to show it in-flight anyway, so I cut out the shallow bays to modify it so the gear are retracted. This left peg holes that I filled, and would have required even more work to show the gap where the top of the door doesn't quite cover the bay, but it wasn't worth the effort.

I also tried ways to avoid decal silvering. Decal silvering is the bane of my existence, though I must admit it's not too horrible a bane, as banes go. I gave the plane a coat of Future and used Micro Sol to wet the areas where I applied the decals, then more Micro Sol, and rolled a Qtip over the decal to press out the excess. Mostly it worked, but I also carefully chipped away clear carrier film with the tip of a #11 blade, used a pointy brush to get more Micro Sol or Micro Crystal Clear under the decal, and touched up with paint. And I still see a few little flecks of silvering. Aaarghhh!

So now I have a Spitfire hanging in my workshop. If it were some kind of masterpiece, I might find a safer place for it, but this way it livens up my workshop. Besides, if I decide I don't like it anymore, I can always stuff it full of firecrackers, like back in the good ol' days.

Hasegawa 1/72 Isuzu TX-40 Fuel Truck and Toyota GB Starter Truck

Speaking of gems, these must be the crown jewels of Hasegawa's 1970s braille scale vehicles. National pride really encourages model companies to do their best tooling!

Both first came out in 1974, according to Scalemates. The molding is so good, I decided to do some detailing on each in an effort to get the whole model up to the quality of the basic kit. The starter truck has rigging added to the boom that supports the drive shaft that spins the aircraft prop, and a bit of chain to hold up the drive shaft, like on the real thing. I also added canvas doors to the sides of the cab, made from paper and cellophane, glued with Micro Crystal Clear and painted with Humbrol. I wanted the starter truck to appear older, so it's much more heavily weathered than the fuel truck, and painted in a different tan color.

The fuel truck has a refueling hose made of solder, with a nozzle I fabricated from various bits, made to scale from drawings I found online. Both vehicles have windshield wipers I made from tiny slivers of styrene. I dirtied up the windshields with extremely thinned enamel and used a toothpick to clean the dirt away as the windshield wipers would do.

Hasegawa bills the fuel truck as Japanese Army/Navy, but of course it's got the Army star, not the Navy anchor. I've got another of these in my stash that's going to get the star shaved off and replaced with an anchor, then be painted blue to represent a naval fuel truck. The starter truck is simply billed as army, and I don't know offhand whether the Japanese Navy used them. None of the images of Toyota starter trucks in my references shows one in naval service.

Oh, by the way, the starter truck this kit represents may not be a GB. According to the Wikipedia article, it is instead a KC, a version simplified for wartime production. However, the article also states that the KC had a plywood cab (the kit clearly represents a steel cab) and that the KC wasn't produced before November 1943. Japanese Army Air Force Aces 1937-1945 by Henry Sakaida shows a good photo of a Toyota starter truck starting a Ki-27, and it looks exactly like this kit. The caption makes the credible claim that it's 1939. At any rate, the photo cannot have been taken as late as November 1943!

So these models are another example of the unplanned impulse modeling than can result from raiding kits for parts: I needed a figure for my Fine Molds midget sub, and converted one to represent the sub's captain, but also built these kits I was raiding. The included figures are obviously in army uniforms. And nicely sculpted figures they are! More national pride at work, no doubt.

...and Braille Scale Kettenkrad

And here's the 1/72 Kettenkrad that comes with the Schwimmwagen in the Hasegawa kit (31113, originally MB-103). Not much to say about this, other than I'm still using up stocks of Polly Scale paints (Panzer Yellow and Grimy Black, to mention two). The seated figures that come with it are pretty awful, but there's a standing figure who might be usable. I won't embarrass Hasegawa by showing you what the figures look like. Instead, here's another of their early vehicle models, from 1973! Sure, it's simplified (the front wheel and fork are one piece, as are each of the two track and wheel assemblies), but actually it's quite a little gem, with nice detail and just a bit of seam lines and flash.



It was a really quick build, but at least I took the time to clean up these minor defects where visible. The instruments are painted black with these nifty Gundam markers I got on sale cheap at the Dragon USA online store, which seems not to have much inventory anymore, but that's another story.

Anyhow, I like these little multi-kits. They're like little dioramas in a box, or playsets if you like to move them around the workbench while making "vrrroom" noises.

Braille scale Schwimmwagen

Raiding other model kits for figures - and in this case, just an arm - I broke into Hasegawa's 1/72 Schwimmwagen/Kettenkrad set. I was cobbling together a pilot figure for Eduard's 1/72 MiG-15 bis (more about that in a future post). Anyhow, opening a kit to steal parts from it leaves you open to the impulse to just build the damn thing, especially if it's a quick easy build. Maybe you're different, but without impulsivity I don't think I'd ever build models. We'll see if I get the impulse to build the Kettenkrad, too.
Marking options include army, SS, and Luftwaffe, so I went with Luftwaffe, since it might come in handy in some future diorama. I left out the driver figure, since it's sort of a misshapen blob with an oversized head. As you can see, the decal on the driver's side of the tub just sort of disintegrated. To help cover up this defect, I abandoned the plan to leave the whole thing in solid Panzer Yellow (one of the Polly S paints I still have) and brushpainted some camo with Model Master enamels (Panzer Red-brown and Panzer Green). The canvas top started out Humbrol Deck Teak, but it seemed too close to Panzer Yellow, so I overpainted it with Humbrol Hemp. The top lacks a rear window, which would have been clear vinyl on the real thing, so I glued on a piece of envelope window with Micro Crystal Clear. It's like Elmer's only better, and I used it to glue on the license plates from the decal sheet. (Yes, that's what instructions tell you to do, too.) Tires are Vallejo German Grey lightened in areas with Medium Sea Grey - my go-to method of painting tires.

Quick work. So there you have it. Not the best Schwimmwagen model out there (why do the blackout covers on the headlights have their slits at odd angles? And the propeller and prop guard are molded as one piece that's merely a suggestion of what should be there). The whole thing is barely two inches long, but it looks enough like a Schwimmwagen that I'm happy with it.