SPA Modeler

Bravo, Tom! A wonderful project! I love how an old kit brings out ingenuity- you have certainly shown a great deal of creative thinking here!

Man I miss the days when Microscale made decal sheets of code letters for the different air forces in various colors... then get some national insignia and you're all set.

I decided to test the 60 year old decals using the Bristol Beaufighter TFX label on the bottom of the sheet.

This confirms my findings... they are brittle and tore easily from backing paper.

The red letteringfor BRISTOL tore in 2 places; BEAUFIGHTER was a mess - BEAU managed to stay together, the rest not so good.

Do you have any Microscale Decal Film? For old decals, that is a must have.

Actually, Lyle did send me some decals paper last year. I went ahead and made a copy of the old decal sheet, sprayed a sealer on it.

I'll see how it works tomorrow.

Torpedo released rigging...



I did test before gluing the point attachments to see the look I was looking for under the aircraft. Yup... exactly what I was looking for. I went ahead and glued the clear attachment points to the center brace. Letting it dry overnight before proceeding any further for more testing.

Interesting, I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes together!

Stuart wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 3:49 am Interesting, I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes together!

Tested the decals I scanned. Worked great. Now to gloss coat the areas the decals go.

Hmmm... not what I was expecting. The yellow border on fuselage roundel came out as a clear yellow, not a solid yellow.
The blue is fine, the red dots is almost like a clear red.










I'm going to blame it on the original decal sheet considering it is 60 years old when I scanned it. Oh well.. it is what it is. I'm not going to sweat over it.

Could it have been better? Yes, if I had spare decals. Will I build another Beaufighter? Absolutely... in 1/48 scale.

I'm going to try and wrap this one up by the end of the weekend.