1:32 HURRICANE I (MET.WINGS)

The Hurricane with a metal wing

The first production Hurricanes had a fabric-covered wing. During 1939 and 1940 a wing with a duralumin skin replaced it, which took higher speeds in a dive and resisted hits better. It was machines like these that formed the backbone of the defense during the Battle of Britain, where there were considerably more of them in action than Spitfires. The note about the metal skin in the title therefore does not denote a different version but a particular build standard.

A cockpit on rails

The canopy of the Hurricane slides to the rear along a pair of external rails running against the sides of the fuselage. That design has two consequences for masking. First, the sliding part has a wide frame around its perimeter with a prominent guide rail, so the boundary between paint and glass is not smooth but follows the shoulder. Second, a narrow gap remains between the sliding and the fixed part into which a hand-cut strip of tape can hardly be introduced. A die-cut mask respects both the width of the frame and the shoulder and can be laid on without trimming.

The inner face and two insignia

The second mask is for the view inside. British cockpits usually had the interior in a dark shade that contrasts sharply with the light finish of the frame outside, so an unfinished inner face shows at once. The pair of national marking stencils then serves for spraying the roundels.

A check after lifting

Once you have peeled the mask off, hold the clear part up to a window. Bled paint is recognized as a thin strip along the edge of a panel and at this stage it can still be removed with a wooden stick dipped in clean water, while the finish has not yet hardened to stone.