Simon's Spit cousin, the 224

[SJPONeill]

I'm been a bit of a slow starter for this GB - had to wait until I got Easter and family visits out of the way...

After much consideration and trawling through the stash, I've opted for the Rareplane Supermarine 224, one of Mitchell's close but no cigar designs before he got it right with the Spitfire...


I think I picked this up in the 90s from an op shop, partially started...Like most Rareplane models it is nicely molded and well-designed...I would like to show you all some pictures but one of my guests over the weekend seems to have absconded with my camera cable...

Last night, while watching the last few episodes of New Captain Scarlet, I sanded the fuselage halves and removing the excess plastic from the single piece upper wing...

Pix to follow as soon as I find something to connect my camera to the PC...a coat hanger perhaps...?

[JohnRatzenberger]

Good, I can watch you. I was going to do it for the Spitfire GB, then for this one, and it lost (or won) both times ....

[AndrewR]

Great! I also have this in the stash.

[JohnRatzenberger]

There went the Shared Build

[SJPONeill]

Hmmmm...this is becoming 'interesting' in the sense of the Chinese curse. Not only has the camera cable failed to put in an appearance but I now cannot find any of my plastic glues or fillers. Looking back through my Workbench Window, it seems entirely possible that I haven't actually two pieces if plastic together since 1 May last year, having succumbed in the interim to the charms of the devil paper...

Having had no joy finding any such plastic bits and pieces in the house, I will dedicate my next day off, Tuesday, to ripping the garage apart in search of said bits.

In the meantime, sanding is going well...

[splash]

I built this kit back in the late 70's early 80's it was my first attempt at a Vacform, I enjoyed the build so much that I also built a vacform conversion for a Seafire 17. Unfortunately that was the last vacform kit I tuched untill last year and this GB

[SJPONeill]

It is really a lovely little model, Alan, and I wish that more like it were still available. While the current range of resin models of lesser-known topics is nice, i do find them a lot more work and not as satisfying as vacform, even one of the more scary ones...

[SJPONeill]

I have been lagging well behind the pack on this one...RL has been really busy but the real stick in the mud is that I still haven't found my supply of glue and had to wait until a trip to civilisation to resupply...of course, this means that the missing items can now feel safe to put in an appearance anytime from now on...

As there wasn't too much else I could do on the 224 sans sticky stuff, my hands wandered...

[SJPONeill]

Previously on "Simon's Spit cousin, the 224"...

I completed cutting the parts from the backing sheet...some of these had already been removed but it is so long since I bought this model i cannot remember if I did that when i got it or if it was already started...

In tonight's episode...

The parts are all sanded - or so I thought - on closer examination, with some thought bouncing around my head like 'measure twice, glue once', I found some extra plastic needed removal from the trailing edge where it meets the fuselage...

That taken care of, I've joined one wing, working from the sponson outwards. The instructions say to cut the lower wing into five pieces but don't offer too much advice on where the cuts should be. I'm hoping that getting one wing right, will show the best place, if any, to make a cut for each gull-wing section...

I think that I may have removed a little too much plastic from the lower leading edge hence the apparent mismatch of the upper and lower leading edge surfaces. It doesn't look as bad in reality and the way I am holding the wing is bowing the mid-section out...still, I am expecting to have to do some filling along the gull-wing section of the leading edge, with a cut on each side just inboard from the sponson...

[SJPONeill]

A little more progress tonight...examining the wings this evening it was quite clear that they were not going to fit together without some surgery...I forgot to take a picture of it but once I fixed one wing tip as I did last night the sponson on the other side was too far outboard so it was out with Mr Razorsaw...

...removing the inboard sections of the lower wing which allowed me to fix the other wing with the sponsons in the right spot but...

...this did create some issues elsewhere...this will sand out easy enough but I'm not sure how we got to this point as everywhere else looks balanced up...I did experience I similar problem with another Rareplane gullwing design - a 30s US aircraft that has since wandered off - but that one I was not entirely sure was not a cutting issue...that whole measure twice, cut once thing...

I'be added some scrap to shim out the leading edges where I sanded back too much plastic from the lower wings and I'm hopeful that, with this extra in place, the inboard lower wings with fit OK, albeit with some quantity of filler necessary...

It's a tad fuzzy but I fixed the lower fuselage in place as well: it has some sort of tubular vent thingie on it and what looks like a larger vent at the rear...

[SJPONeill]

Couldn't bear the thought of that out-of-kilter wingtip though who was to notice if it was sanded flush...

...placed the wing in the freezer overnight in the hope that the cold would weaken the join enough to allow the wing halves to be coaxed apart...which it did...

I made a cut just outboard of the port sponson and sanded the cut edge until the wingtips aligned...a bit of filler and gollop of paint and you'll never know...

Next stage will be to shape and fair in the inboard wing panels, and then sharpen up the fuselage'wing interface...

[SJPONeill]

PS. The scrap card along the trailing edge is just to to hold the sponson level while the reattached wing dries...it's not fixed in place or permanent...

[DavidWomby]

This looks tricky. Well done correcting the wingtip.

David

[SJPONeill]

Fitted the inboard wing panels this evening...the left side one is the one that has been giving me fit problems throughout and is still too short with the wing panel in place...I would be interested to learn from anyone else trying this model if they have a similar problem with the lower half of the starboard wing being 2-3mm too short...?

Also joined the halves of the tail planes tonight as well...

[Barry]

It's really hard to not have vac pieces warp from the pressure of sanding. Oversanding issues were what prompted me to start using a new blade to carve most of the excess away first,
so as to have to do as little sanding as possible.