1:32 SPITFIRE VIII

The Mk VIII for hot theaters

The Spitfire Mk VIII was designed as a fully worked-out airframe for the new Merlin 60 series engines, while the famous Mk IX arose as a quick makeshift adaptation of older fuselages. The Mk VIII received a strengthened center section, a retractable tailwheel and better balance. It served mainly over the Mediterranean, in Burma and with Australian squadrons in the Pacific, that is where flying was done in dust and damp.

The shape of the canopy decides the work

The glazing of this version is in three parts. The fixed windscreen carries a flat pane of laminated armored glass in the middle and two sloping areas at the sides. The middle sliding part is a blown shell with no internal bars, so the boundary between glass and metal forms a single long curve. It is exactly this curve that is worst for a hand-cut strip of tape: the strip breaks in the bend and lifts. A pre-formed mask runs the cut precisely along the edge of the frame and holds it along its whole length.

The inner face is not an extra

The second half of the set masks the glass from the inside. In a large scale the cockpit is usually open and a look inside reveals the frames and the color of the roof, so spraying them from the outside is not enough. The remaining two masks serve for spraying the national insignia, which thus arise directly in the paint and have no glossy decal film.

Before you reach for the airbrush

It pays to lay the mask on dry first and check that it sits on the frame around its whole perimeter. Cured model glass tends to be a little thicker than the real thing, so the boundary of the frame on the part may be shifted by a fraction of a millimeter. Only then press the mask down with a blunt toothpick from the center toward the edges, so that no air is left underneath.