Been working most of the day, with a couple hours away from the work bench for church and lunch. I started the day off by inspecting what I had done yesterday, and noted pretty quickly that my attempt to paint the yellow ID bands on the wing's leading outer edges was a fail, as there were some barely perceptible seams that suddenly became Grand Canyon-esque under yellow paint. I filled those canyons and opted to just do the primary camouflage colors, then come back later with masking and do the ID bands.
I did the underside painting first, with Tamiya medium sea gray. I was mostly pleased with how it turned out, except that the texture of the paint, which seems to be the case some of the time with Tamiya paints, at least for me, had a gritty appearance. Probably a case of user error. Perhaps not thinned well enough, or maybe the airbrush was not completely clean? Under a coat of Future that gritty appearance disappeared, so I'm good with it.
While the Future was curing, I spent time finishing the landing gear, starting work on prop construction, and putting together the external drop tank. There are two tanks for this kit - one to be used with the stand, and one not. I assembled both - assembly in this case is simply inserting some mounting pins into an interior clamping piece on both, and the added insertion of a nut for the stand tank. I will use the non-stand piece for final photographs, but likely will use the stand for displaying in my case as I expect that to make best use of the space available.
Landing Gear - I still need to put on a couple of decals, little red pieces of tape?, along the tire where it meets with the wheel. These tires are vinyl, I believe, and have a nifty mold release line running around the tire's circumference. I tried sanding it away, and I tried scraping it away, but none of that seemed to do the trick, and I was weary of causing irrepairable damage to the tires. Any suggestions how to get rid of this?
Completed stabilizers. I never attach the stabilizers until after I have painted them and the areas surrounding them. Makes the painting process a lot more hassle-free. (Unless of course it's one of those old Monogram, or similar, kits with a single piece stabilizer intended to be inserted when closing up the fuselage, like the old Monogram Corsair, for instance).
Completed cowling panels. I will find out if I was able to accurately match up the paint across pieces, as I did this largely by eye-balling it. If not it won't be a big deal to get all the paint matching across these pieces.
Radiator grills and fairings. I left these off to ease with painting and weathering. Once the underside was painted and ready for handling, I weathered the grills with some Flory dark dirt wash prior to installing them. I then used some Tamiya weathering pastels to get some oil stains in there prior to attaching the fairings. The first two shots here show the oil staining while the third shows the grills contained within the fairings.
These final shots show the camouflage painting. The RAF Sky-S ID band looks good.
Some of the pieces appear overly glossy, as that is the just-applied Future shining under my lights. I hope to get back out there tonight to mask the wings for the ID bands. Then will come decaling, and I just recalled that I have yet to even think about the exhaust stacks. In this kit they are individual pieces. I had left them off to aid with painting. Depending on what this week brings, I should be on track to complete this Spitfire some time this week.