1/35 Spad XIII C Scratchbuilt

by Ricardo Santos

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The SPAD S.XIII was a French biplane fighter aircraft from World War I, developed by Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés (SPAD) from the earlier highly successful SPAD S.VII.  It was one of the most capable fighters of the war, and one of the most-produced, with 8,472 built and orders for around 10,000 more cancelled at the Armistice.  

The project is the Spad XIII C flown by Lt Reed Chambers and is 100% scratchbuilt for a group build in a Portuguese fórum called “Modelismo na net”, and I have to thank all the guys in there who helped me.  

What started has a 1/48 scale plane quickly turned out in a 1/35 plane.

I worked my way through some 3D plans I had for the plane structure, so I built it and covered it with slim plastic then applied some putty and melted sprue so I could get the shape of the Spad.

After that I levelled it with some putty and sanded it till it got a smooth surface so I could apply some cable wires to look like the structure after the fabric applied.

Then I glued everything I had made and added all the bits you can see in the photos below.

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It's a multimedia kit because I used everything I could get my hands on, plastic, wires, wood, beer cans, plastic cups and dishes, speaker meshes, everything I had in my house that I thought would look ok, even the vickers are made from barbecue sticks and needles. The rigging was done with nylon monofilament. 

All the markings are painted through masks drawn by hand, it was not an easy job but in the end looked more real then aftermarket decals and I wanted to do it all in scratch.  

The weathering was accomplished with oil paint over future and then wiped away.

The all project took 3 months to finish, because it was a learning process, after all it was my first scratchbuilt work. 

The photos speak for themselves.  

Ricardo

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Photos and text © by Ricardo Horta Santos