Airfix 1/48 scale
Supermarine Spitfire Mk.XII

by Tony Bell

Special Hobby's 1/48 scale Spitfire Mk.XII is available online from Squadron.com

Airfix Spitfire Mk.XII, Kit No. A05117

Having gotten myself bogged down in a couple of *ahem* ambitious projects, I decided that I needed a simple and relatively quick build, if for no other reason than to put something new into the display cabinet.

I picked up the 1/48 Airfix Spitfire Mk.XII at a local hobby show for cheap and decided that it would be the perfect antidote to my current case of AMS. Setting aside my stalled projects, I dove right in.

One somewhat justified criticism that has been levelled against this kit is the somewhat heavy panel line detail. I addressed this by spraying the main airframe components with a heavy coat of Alclad black filling primer and then sanding it back to the bare plastic. This had the double benefit of both partially filling in the heavy panel lines and smoothing the slightly pebbly surface texture.

In an effort to keep the aftermarket to a minimum, I limited the extras to the following:

• Drilled out the engine cowl Dzuz fasteners, plugged them with stretched sprue, sanded them flush and redid them with a jeweller’s beading tool

• Sanded the wing trailing edge (considerably) thinner

• Sanded the propeller blades thinner

• Fashioned the Sutton Harness from Tamiya masking tape

• Replaced the cannon barrels with turned brass by Master (love, love, love these)

• Drilled out exhaust stubs

• Scratch built the little scoop on top of the engine cowl from thin aluminum

• Replaced the pitot tube with steel hypo tubing

• Replaced the Airfix wheels with ones from the Tamiya Spitfire Mk.Vb and added the uplock cable to the landing gear legs

• Insignia and codes pained using Montex Masks

The three main camouflage colours were Gunze H330 Dark Green and Tamiya XF-82 Ocean Grey over Tamiya XF83 Medium Sea Grey, with Tamiya XF-21 Sky codes, spinner and tail band.

This turned out to be a nicely satisfying build, with enough minor challenges to keep me on my modelling toes but no real showstoppers to bog it down.

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Happily, it also had the desired effect in that I was able to get back at my previously stalled project and start making some real progress again.

Images and Text Copyright © 2013 by Tony Bell
Page Created 28 July, 2013
Last Updated 28 July, 2013

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