Seafire FR.47

[Siwi]

Made the radiators, engine humps, painted the top and made the spinner and propellors. The late Spitfires and Seafires had contra-rotating props to deal with the dangerous amount of torque from the Griffon engine, especially during deck operations. The curved surfaces are the usual method of carving and sanding mount board, the propellor blades are a thinner sandwich of paper layers. The two propellor rings are free to move so the blades can be 'posed'.

[JoeMon]

Very nice job on the Seafire, especially at this scale!

[Siwi]

The landing gear was done just before and after Christmas as I was with my family and we had enough fun that I didn't miss the modelling bench. Might have inducted my 11-year old nephew into paper models as he now wants to earn pocket money to get a cutting mat, knife and some 160gsm paper!
This is about the most detail I've put on LG (although the Airbus comes close) and took something like five hours' work in total. Various reference photos of Spitfires in workshops were helpful to see the legs with the wheels off and understand how the mechanism worked. Brake lines were coloured with a perminant marker and attached once in place. The tailwheel is marginally overscale and the legs are probably more at the length with the aircraft completely dry or even airborne, but it looks about the right height. I could still go and add a suggestion of the hinge and the lever inside the wheel wells but they would almost never be seen.

[Siwi]

Finished!



Bubble canopy was a bit of a mission but got there in the end. After that, just the 'stinger' tailhook, pitot, and a section under the cockpit to include the signalling lights. Mostly very pleased with how this turned out, and good to discover that riveting can be done on paper models with a push pin. Also interesting to see how much bigger it is than the Mark IX of only a few years previously.

[rifleman]

awesome build well done and great photos