Jakko’s Revell Spad XIII C-1

[Guest]

And so it begins …

Sprue shots:

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And the tools you get with the kit:

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The brush is … interesting:

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The red side looks like it’ll be hard to paint with, but the blue side feels like it will be hard to paint with. The blue side definitely much harder bristles than the red, and like I said before, they seem to be glued together.

The only other tool I’ll use will be this knife:

[ATTACH]336994[/ATTACH]

Because when I used to build kits much like this one, I used to use a round scalpel. These days I use an X-acto-like knife, usually No. 11 (triangular) but for this, to get that retro feel, I’ll stick to this round blade instead.

Instructions fit onto a single page:

[ATTACH]336991[/ATTACH]

Of course, there a one-page history, two pages of safety warnings and a page with paint colours before that, but the actual build fits onto one side of A4 paper. After that, and last, is the paint guide:

[ATTACH]336992[/ATTACH]

Oh, and the decals:

[ATTACH]336993[/ATTACH]

For some reason the red centres of the roundels are separate, but the red parts of the rudder decals aren’t. Oh well.

I began by painting the fuselage interior and pilot:

[ATTACH]336997[/ATTACH]

The insides are supposed to be a 3:1 mix of Revell 45 light olive plus 48 sea green, so the closest I have is the dark green. The pilot and cockpit coaming are to be painted dark earth, so I did; though it’s hard to see in this photo, I left the pilot’s face unpainted, because that’s a better approximation of flesh than the brown or green will be.

The brush isn’t half bad, actually. I used the red end, and though it’s softer than I’d like, it got its act together quite quickly once I put some paint on it:

[ATTACH]336995[/ATTACH]

And after cleaning it out with some water, it still did. I also cleaned the blue end, and though it remains quite stiff (more than I’d like, really) it should be usable now.

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My advice: if you’ve got (to use) a brush like this, wash both ends out first before actually using it.

[Steven000]

Looking at the painting instructions I did some extensive calculation and I figured out you're missing about ... 5 colors :thinking::smiling5:

Goodluck and cheers,
Steven

[Guest]

I got on with the build right away. This is step 1 complete:

[ATTACH]336999[/ATTACH]

The smell of Contacta brought me back to about 30 years ago, when my best friend at the time used to always use it for his models. I was never really a fan of that needle applicator, and though it works fairly well, I don’t think I’ll be emptying this bottle on my future models. I find a brush much handier. Maybe I could pour the contents of this bottle into my normal cement, though? It certainly seems thin enough to brush on.

Then on to step 3:

[ATTACH]337000[/ATTACH]

Step 5:

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… and we’re done:

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That took about 40 minutes. If I hadn’t bothered to clean up mould lines or paint the interior, I suppose I could have made it fit the Blackadder episode about the RFC

The propeller turns, but it’s very heavy. Maybe I should have tried cleaning up the hole its axle goes through, but too late for that now.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Fastest build you have done since childhood. Actually doesn't look bad.
Jim

[Guest]

Quite possibly my fastest build in ages, yes To be fair, it only has 28 parts, so not like this is a major assembly job. Let’s see if I can paint it tonight … (No guarantees, chances are I’ll be doing something else instead.)

[Guest]

This is as far as you can get with the paint provided in the kit, used straight:

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I tried mixing the two colours to make the other green, but it came out too dark:

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You can just see the demarcation between the two greens on the fuselage, but it’s not clear enough. This was about 2:1 of green to dark earth, so I’ll try again with closer to 1:1 mix. The dark earth is rather stronger than the green, though, so I have a feeling it will be difficult to get something that looks green but lighter than the one supplied with the kit.

[Guest]

I mixed up a lighter shade of green and repainted the bits that were too dark, then also used the dark earth to paint the struts, the propeller and the exhaust pipes:

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That’s really as far as you can get, paint-wise. I had the idea to see if I could make black or dark grey paint using a method Guest probably approves of: setting fire to some of the model’s cardboard backing and mixing the dark ash into the paint. However, this produces nothing but gritty paint without changing its colour

Rather than applying the black, then, I went on to add the decals:

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The decals adhering to the bare plastic is a pleasant surprise — in my youth, only Matchbox decals did that, and Revell’s especially had the bad habit of 1) letting go once dry, and 2) silvering very badly.

And that’s pretty much it. There’s little I think I can still do to this model with on,ly what was in the kit.