1/48 Tamiya Bristol Beaufighter Mk.X

Gallery Article by Ceki Erginbas on May 19 2007

Turkish Remembrance Day of Atatürk May 19 2007

 

Greetings to all ARC readers from Ceki Erginbas.  I was saving this article for a special day.  And "May 19  Turkish Remembrance day of Atatürk and youth day" was appropriate for it.  

I will try to share  with you the building steps of my Bristol Beaufighter Mk.X which has won the first place for diorama category in the 20.th İstanbul Aviation Museum Plastic Model  Contest.  

The Kit I used is from Tamiya.  It is a wonderful kit with the usual Tamiya quality.  But I wanted to add some scratch built details to this model so I started with the cockpit.
I used this photo as a reference for some scratch built detailing.

  • I added the device that I don't know what it is from sprue and copper wire 
  • I added the arm  from stretched sprue with Super glue at the tip 
  • Added the levers with thin copper wire.
  • I also added  the photo-etch seatbelts from Eduard's RAF seatbelt set.

I wanted to add details at the back of the cockpit, inside the aircraft, but I wasn't sure of which devices was inside, and the where they were located.  So I used some referance photos, some photos of the resin detail sets, and most  of all my imagination.  Since when the model is complete, only a very little portion of those details can be seen, so I added them to give a busy, feeling inside the aircraft.

Plastic  poker cards, copper wire, sprue parts, and plastic hoses from Tamiya Motorcycle kits were used for the details.

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I also cut the rear cupola to display it in open position.  Then masked the clear parts using Bare Metal Foil.  I wanted to display the elevators in an angular position.  So I cut the kit parts, separating the elevators.   When you cut the elevators, which consists of two separate parts, you make them unstable.  So you have to fill something between the parts to  make them stable.  I used again plastic poker cards for this purpose  filling the void.  Then used putty to smooth the surfaces.

The actuating arm detail of the kit is not very good.  So I cut them out, sanded and smoothed the surface and added  scratch built actuating arms made of  plastic cards, and stretched sprue.  After all the work tail was looking like this

Then I did something really mad, and decided to  build the flaps in opened position.  For this purpose I first cut out the flaps from the kit pieces.  Since the parts from the kit was too thick for this scale, I replaced them with  again plastic card pieces.

Wings  in the kit are given as a 3 piece assembly.  So when you cut out the flaps, large wings becomes really unstable.  So you should again fill the inside of the wings with a dense material.  Plastic card was again really helpful in this step.  With some  visual and metric measurements, I built the necessary support for the wing assembly.

Lots of test fitting in this point is a must.  Since the weight of the wings can cause some problems in the following steps.

Later the edges were covered all over with putty and sanded to obtain a smooth surface. 

Inside of the Beaufighter flaps were looking like this.

I again used plastic poker cards to  build the  little triangular elements.  First I made some measurements, then separated the plastic card into triangles in the desired shape and proportions, using  a pen.  Then with the Tamiya decal scissors, which is a very nice tool, I cut the parts, and then drilled them with a 1mm hand drill.  At last fixed them inside the wing using super glue.  I have to admit that this is not the perfect application for the impatient modellers out there.  It took about 2 days to complete these parts.  Flaps were build similarly.

At last I checked the overall cleanness of the build by spraying interior green. The result was better than I expected.

There's a piece called the aerial fairlead at the bottom of the aircraft, which was a nice detail to add.

I used  q-tips and some hose from Motorcycle kits to build it.

At last the model was ready for the paintjob.

I started the paintjob with a  pre-shade at panel lines with flat black.  Then Paint the bottom of the aircraft with Tamiya XF-21 Sky, then added  a little flat white into the sky and sprayed it between the panel lines lightly to give a  three tone color variation.

The top of the aircraft was painted the same way.  After that I started to paint the  D-day stripes.  I masked the  the aircraft step by step to form the  stripes.

It was time for the decals.  Decals from the kit is usual Tamiya "very thick".  After spending that much time for this model, those decals were just not enough for this kit. So I said let's do the markings with paint.  I started by preparing the circular forces at the wings.  Circle templates from my technical drawing class, came in handy at this part.  Here's how I prepared the masks.

First find an appropriate place to cut the masks, like a piece of glass. S tick some masking tapes, an then fix the circle template strongly on the mask.  Keeping the template fixed during the cutting process is very important.  Try to use new blades for your x-acto knife since dull blades may rip the mask. 

Place the mask, and spray the appropriate color.  You can use male or female masks that you prepared. In the upper picture I first sprayed red and placed a male mask on it then sprayed the  Dark blue.  If you want to add  different color tones on the  markings, now is the perfect time, which I forgot during my building process.

For the Letters, I copied them with the transparent paper, coming  on top of the decal sheets with the kit.

Fix the copy to a  glass, with masks on top.  Then cut with a steel ruler carefully to obtain the masks.

Making the circular markings at the sides of the aircraft was the hardest part, since there are 4 circles in 4 different colors.  My first  attempts weren't satisfactory, so I masked again and sprayed again until I get the desired results.  At last  I made some little touch-ups with a fine brush.

The next step is to build the Bristol Hercules Engines.  I decided to display the engines opened.  By the way, the aim of this project was to build a Beaufighter maintenance diorama.  The detail level of the kit parts was not enough for this purpose.  So I bought Cutting Edge's resin Bristol hercules engine set.  

After the general assembly of the engine block and cylinders, additional detail was added.  Solder wire was the perfect material both for its perfect size and workability,  to be used as exhaust pipes. Two pipes from each cylinder,  28 pipes for 14 cylinders in one engine.  I also had to drill the cylinders to fit the pipes inside.  Then 2 pipes coming from one cylinder meets, and leads into the cowling making a counter-clockwise turn.  I cut the wires from desired places, and attached with super glue.  This process took about a night to complete.

To display the engine doors opened, I cut the cowling using Tamiya's modeling saw into 3 pieces.  One should be careful during this process since the pieces become very fragile near the end of the cutting process.

After that I added 5 other cables around the motor block, indicated by the cutting edge.  Engines were painted to semi-gloss black and the exhaust pipes into rusty  brown.  A little dry brush to show the cylinder texture.

Then added the spark plug cables, coming from the center of the cylinders. 2 cables for each cylinder.  I used copper wire as cables.

At last I added the crankcase cowl-stiffeners to give a more detailed look.  I used stretched sprue for this purpose.  Drilled the cowling from desired points and fixed the stiffeners with super glue.

I added some more detail after that: 

Tail Aerials, using the spare parts from the kit.

Another little aerial at the nose.

And some other aerials, antennas, etc.  After removing the masks from the clear parts, I attached them in the opened position.  I also used the bulged wheels from a resin set which I don't remember the name now.
During the building process I also finished a diorama base to display the model better, and added some piece of equipment from  Revell's WWII ground support equipment set. I also converted the bomb carrier from this set into a torpedo carrier. It is not an accurate conversion but does the job for me visually.

Here are final pictures. After these last pictures I have painted the aerials and antennas flat black, sorry that they are not seen in the photos.  Also sorry about the general quality of the final photos.

Happy Modelling Everyone

Ceki Erginbas

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Photos and text © by Ceki Erginbas