SPA Modeler

A brilliant solution to those confined area challenges!

I use liquid putty for those ejector pin marks. I use a paint brush to apply a drop to fill the circular recess. Because both of my liquid putties (Mr Dissolved Putty and Mr Surfacer) shrink as they dry, I usually load up the drop so that it forms a little bulged dome. Sometimes that isn't enough and I'll add second drop (or even third) as the first dries and shrinks back into the hole.

Similar process when filling recessed lines... use a paint brush to fill the line in with Mr Surfacer, making sure to overload the fill to account for shrinkage. Working with Mr Surfacer is frustrating because of the shrink issue. Mr Dissolved Putty is a little better but it still has some shrinkage and being white, it's harder to see.

Gregg Cooper (no relation) posted online photos of his Eagle Editions Masters. These were made before CAD using styrene strip and lead wire, etc.




Perhaps clues to fit or why the fit is elusive lie here?

Definitely some clues there. When a resin set requires removal of kit plastic, fit issues automatically arise since there is no way to replicate the removals from build to build. The Eagle Editions cockpit requires removal of all of the sidewall details, thinning of the insides of the fuselage and also trimming of the cockpit sills behind to seat to accommodate the canopy rails. You can see how far the fuselage sides have been thinned down when compared to the thickness at the hatch opening. It took a bit of work but I got the Eagle cockpit to fit on my Black 1 build. In my case, I elected to chop off the Eagle rear deck and graft the kit rear deck into position due to the slightly undersized resin components. Very cool pictures!

Thank you for a very cool explanation! That really helps to understand what challenges you were facing.

I've pretty much seen all of the resin cockpit sets for the 1/32 190D-9 and I think the Eagle Editions pit is the best one. I opted to go a simpler (and cheaper) route on this one because it will be a closed canopy build but I'll definitely use the Eagle if I build an open canopy.

Over the past few days, I've made some progress on Red 1. I've added the starter crank hole and rescribed the panel lines on the gun cowling.




Primer was used to check the sculpt. Since too much sanding plugs up the riveting work, I won't apply the rivets to the gun cowling until later.






The Revi 16 gun sight has been painted. The optical lens of the sight was added using UV-activated epoxy. This stuff is really neat and has so many uses in modeling.

The cockpit has also been painted. Here is the seat before the HGW harnesses are put into place. I played around with several brown and tan shades on the cushion but most of the seat will be covered by the harnesses.




Here is the painted cockpit tub. Nothing fancy here... just brush painted the details on the Aires resin. I added a wire for the lamp on the left console. Some individual instrument dial decals were punched out and placed into anything that looked like an instrument bezel. UV epoxy was used to simulate the glass dials.






The rear deck after some paint... variations of grey were used to give the piece some visual interest.




Not much detail on the cockpit sidewalls. The circular canopy crank on the starboard side was a PE piece from the Aires cockpit.




A quick check to see how the painted cockpit looks when placed into the fuselage. I still need to figure out a good way to position the instrument panel. For the dry-fit, I just used a blob of Blu-Tack.

That is some fantastic work in the cockpit John!