1/48 Tamiya Spitfire VB

by Jason Cooper

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This is my recently completed Tamiya Spitfire VB built mostly out of the box. I added some scratch built cockpit items using colour photos as reference, Eduard seat harness, drilled out the cannon barrels and added fine brass tubing inside the wing for the MG barrels. I found the kit supplied detail in the cockpit to be excellent and it came up very well after careful detail painting, washing and highlighting with Humbrol enamels and artist oils.

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There is no doubt about the quality of the Tamiya range, the kit practically fell together and I used absolutely no filler at all and the surface detail is superb.

Painting was undertaken with a matt black pre-shade followed by R.A.F. camouflage colours from the Testors Model Master enamel range. I love these paints they spray tremendously well. The model was then given a coat of Tamiya gloss acrylic as a smooth base for the decals. These went on perfectly using Gunze Mr mark softer - it actually seems to melt the decal into the underlying gloss coat which results in no silvering whatsoever. The model was then ready for weathering.

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My weathering technique starts with a pin point wash of the panel lines with lamp black artist oil thinned heavily with turpentine, this is very carefully flowed into all of the panel lines. This is followed by streaking using tiny dabs of raw umber and lamp black from the end of a tooth pick and then streaked in the direction of airflow with a clean brush moistened with turpentine. Paint chipping is added with a silver and pewter pencils and a 6b lead pencil around all access covers and walkway areas. I then seal this all in with a coat of Testors Dullcote. The exhaust stains are then air brushed on using thin mixes of light grey and black. Finally some pastel chalks are added to the gun ports.

If you haven't built a Tamiya Spitfire get out there and build one, you will not regret it!

Jason

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Photos and text © by Jason Cooper