Airfix Beaufort

 Airfix 1/72nd Beaufort Mk.1

Great box art invites the modeller in!

So, time to get this thing started! The one thing I had decided to do fairly early on was to give the model a full rivet job. I can generally take or leave rivets in small scales, but I wanted to busy this one up some using simple techniques. so out came the pencil, some straight edges and dymo tape and the RB Models riveter!

The basic tools of combat when riveting.

You can use straight edges for long runs of rivets, but in all honestly, as long as you have some sort of guide line like an adjacent panel, you can work slowly and carefully freehand - if your rivet wheel isn't overly sloppy it won't tend to wander. But using a straight edge gives an insurance of sorts, so your choice!

I prefer to do most riveting before assembly commences, individual parts have fewer corners and awkward spots to deal with. I stay away from thing like seam lines on fuselage halves - I'll do them after sanding the seams to make all the detail marry up.

And the results - I didn't follow any plans for this, so it's basically an "added interest" feature that is imagineered from the detail provided. I couldn't find any plans covering rivet patterns, so as long as it busies up the surface, I'm happy. A light oil paint wash highlights the panel detail and rivets for the camera.


24th July 2021

The wings were then assembled including the trailing edges which have separate inserts behind the nacelles for different versions and ailerons. Fit of all these parts was exceptional, with care the trailing edge inserts genuinely will be indistinguishable from the main wing on the topsides, and need minor cleaning up on the undersides. The trailing edges had rivets added after drying. The ailerons were tacked in place with Tamiya white label cement, and then a bead of Tamiya extra thin quick drying was run along the join. Perfect!

Another view shows how good the wing fuselage will be. Absolutely wonderful stuff! 

For the navigation lights I made bulbs from stretched sprue - if you hold the end of the sprue near to a flame the end will mushroom to form a bulb, which can then be painted the relevant colour.

These can then be let into drilled holes in the wingtips

And then the clear cover built up with CA or clear resin prior to sanding and polishing the clear cover. This will result in a clear lense with a coloured bulb showing inside. The tape is just to give the CA something to set against, and is pulled off prior to sanding. 

And so to some interior work. 

This is the majority of the interior assembled ready for painting. The clear vision ports have been filled with clear resin and sanded smooth rather than use the kit parts, this ensures they are flush to the exterior. The port side gun hatch was taped in place and a bead of CA with dental resin run around the join inside to secure it. This results in a much more consistent appearance on the outside compared to using liquid cement where you could end up with parts appearing filled, parts not filled and just a scrappy looking hatch It also means the clean up is easier without any soft areas

Interior detail - should you decide to, my recommendation is as detailed in the above picture. Simply put, the nose has a large area of clear which will benefit from some detailing should you choose (although in my opinion, get more than 10-12 inches from the model and even that is open to debate). But behind that? Again, my opinion only but detailing these areas is a complete waste of time and effort better spent elsewhere. Even with the gunner's hatch open you'd be hard pressed to see anything - maybe, just maybe some detail on the starboard fuselage area opposite the gunner's hatch.  Otherwise? It's hours of time spent on an area nobody will notice and fewer will ever bother to look at. I learned many many years to detail what the casual eye can see, and cut my losses elsewhere. (For instance, in building the Zvezda Hercules with the rear ramp closed, I just blasted everything aft of the cockpit with medium grey, painted the seats red and moved on - and you can't tell a single thing from the finished model. I may as well not have even bothered with the grey paint!) 

My opinions, YMMV. You do you, but it *IS* something nobody will see. 

And so to the cockpit itself. As you can see I added some spare seatbelts from the etch bin. Otherwise it was painted interior grey/green, washed with a dark brown, details picked out black, brown and other colours, some of the internal framework painted a slightly different green to the main colour, given a coat of VMS matt varnish and that, dear reader, was it. Remember - 12 inch rule for me! 

I had decided to use superglue to join the fuselage, to make eradicating the seam easier. When I do this I bevel the edges of the join with a knife blade - just a couple of scrapes at a 45 degree angle are enough to do the job.

And you can see here the result of the bevelling. When you hold the parts together there is a distinct vee for the glue to flow into. This will make the seam really easy to eradicate when filled with superglue. 

Sunday August 1st 2021

It's been a relatively quiet week this week for various reasons, so progress has been slow but has at least been made.  As of Saturday night this is where we are (wings not yet glued in place!)

As you can see the majority of the airframe is now assembled, and joints have been dealt with. The turret insert needed some filling (in the end I simply dropped it in place with some black rubber-infused superglue which filled any gaps completely and made sanding a rescribing a cinch) After rescribing I also riveted the areas of the fuselage around the joins I had left when initially scribing. 

Nacelles were also glued in place and fit was superb, and engine cowlings and engines have been painted and assembled. Again, fit was great. The exhausts were drilled out before adding them, a simple two minute job that aids appearances greatly. I removed the tabs from the tailplanes to allow the fit to be adjusted as there was some mismatch. In the end a tiny dab of black superglue at each leading edge and some light sanding was all that was needed. Gluing surfaces are substantial so strength shouldn't be an issue unless you're a bull in a china shop kind of person (watch as I snap at least one off now!) Really starting to look like a Beaufort now.

The rudder clicked into place pretty nicely, but I was concerned at the strength of the join, so I drilled and pinned it with some Albion Alloys tube for strength

I could have left the rudder off until the end with this pinning and had no concerns, you can see below how it slides into place.

You can see in this image that the rudder leaves a large gap between the fin top and the front of the rudder. There *is* a gap here as they are not joined, but this was too much.

A piece of .5mm plastic card was glued to the rear edge of the fin with super glue and left to dry for an hour or so.

After which the majority of the excess was trimmed away with a #11 blade

And then sanding stick were used to blend the sheet into the fin

And with some light trimming and sanding this is how it looks with the rudder slotted into place. A huge improvement IMHO for a small amount of effort. 

August 21st 2021

So a bit of a break, but longer than I had expected!  I got distracted by a Boeing 757 and music festivals and the like, apologies.

I picked the model back up today and continued with it - specifically today saw the addition of the rear turret and shroud.

The shape of the shroud makes it basically impossible to add the turret at the end of painting like I always prefer, it HAS to be added before the shroud goes in place. This means there are some things that need doing - the frames need painting, and then you need top protect the turret after addition from sanding, finishing and painting stages.

I thinned the rear edge of the shroud for scale effect, but the fit isn't great. A couple applications of CA and sanding were required, and a final coat of Mr Surfacer 500 sanded and blended through, before restoring the panel detail and rivets in the area. The wings still aren't added at this point, just placed for effect.

And then I started adding the nose transparencies. Fit seems to be pretty nice, but care is needed. In this picture the main canopy, side panel and aimer's transparency have been added. They'll be left to dry before adjusting and fitting the main nose transparency. Typically British WWII, massively over complicated clear nose parts! 

More soon, stay tuned.