Hawker Sea Fury by Danstream - FINISHED - Airfix 1:48

[Danstream]

Hi all,

visiting this part of the forum stimulated my appetite for aircraft modelling, so I decided to start this little beauty that landed on my desk for Christmas:

 

 

I always wanted to have a model of this handsome aircraft which was one of the pinnacles of piston, propeller driven fighter development. Unluckily, it appeared at a time when the era of piston engine fighters was at a close and jets were starting to dominate. It was, however, one of the fastest propeller driven plane ever, had outstanding handling qualities and flighted effectively against MiG-15 jets.

 

It was exported with some success to other navies and air forces and, indeed, the version I would like to build is the one of the Dutch Royal Navy which is included among the options of the kit:

 

 

I started, as you can easily guess, from the cockpit. I knew that for some reasons, Airfix did not include the gunsight in the kit, so I outsourced a Eduard detail set that included it.

 

 

Assembling the photoetched details implied that the molded in details, had to be completely removed. Although a bit soft, the original details are quite alight. These are the concerned pieces, filed, painted and ready to accept the Eduard parts:

 

 

The cockpit, being painted black, presents a small challenge because there is the risk that it will appear just as a black hole. A true black color does not have a place in my models, hence I painted all the parts with NATO black. To highlight some details and add a bit of a 'lived' look, I brushed some pastel powder on the more exposed parts. I also added footstraps to the rudder pedals that looked a bit basic otherwise. Then, I started to add the photoetched parts getting this intermediate result:

 

 

Indeed, the instrument panel looks quite well detailed and I am pleased with the outcome so far. At the moment, there are still a large number of parts still to be added and it is not advisable to rush with them, so I will need some more days to complete this work.

 

That is all for now, to the next time,

Dan.

 

[Old Collingwood]

Very nice kit and start, Airfix have been really improving with thier new moulds.

 

OC.

[ccoyle]

I had the pleasure of seeing one of these at an air show a number of years ago, where it was definitely the show-stopper among the piston-engined aircraft -- amazingly fast and nimble.

[Canute]

Good work on the cockpit. Having spent a few hours in jet fighter cockpits, you could scuff up the rudder pedals and such there on the floor with some drybrushing of silver/steel colors. The cockpits get beat up fairly quickly from the pilots and maintenance people walking in parts of the "office". But over looks very good. 👍

[Danstream]

Dear all,

a small update on my Sea Fury interiors. I completed the cockpit bathtub with the still missing photoetched parts and added some more wear on the floor below the pedals, as suggested above by Ken:

 

 

The seat was completed with the Eduard seatbelts:

 

 

The gunsight was added to the instrument panel. As I said before, the gunsight was not included in the parts of the kit and the compass was missing as well. These are some of the few omissions in this otherwise very good kit.

 

 

Finally, the cockpit is assembled:

 

 

Clearly, the Eduard set adds another level of detail, at the cost of a bit of time (quite a bit) to be spent in folding and assembling the various components. The drawback is that all that work will be hardly seen from the rather small cockpit opening. 😒

 

This is the last work done on this model for now. I still want to do some more work on my ship before the close of the year. I wish you all a great and more 'normal' new year.

Best regards,

Dan.

 

[Canute]

Your "office" has that used look now. Nicely done, Dan.

[Old Collingwood]

Very nice work.

 

OC.

[popeye the sailor]

great looking cockpit.....the detail set does wonders for it     hope to see more soon!

[Danstream]

Hi all,

going slowly on with my build. The cockpit posed with the left fuselage:

 

 

As said, unfortunately little will be seen from the cockpit opening:

 

 

 

I also added few details in the wheel bay which otherwise quite empty. The pictures of the real plane show a lot of components and an intricacy of pipelines. Clearly, it was not my intention to realistically replicate it, I just wanted to make the bay look busier and I used the tubing to hide some extractor marks that were not sanded satisfactorily:

 

 

Once inside the wing, what remains visible seems OK to me:

 

 

Finally, the wheel bay was primed and painted:

 

 

That's all for now, until next time,

Dan.

[Danstream]

Hi all,

some little progress on my build of the Sea Fury. The wheel bay got gloss clear coated, black panel liner applied and finally the satin finish was restored. This is the result with the bay piece glued inside the lower half wing:

 

 

I also added two blisters (fairings of the fuel tank sumps) that Airfix forgot to add. I had removed the two oleos for the actuation of the central doors because they were all the time in the way. I will add them back later, after painting the belly and the doors. Before gluing the lower wing, I modified the parts holding the muzzles of the cannons to accept replacements made of portions of 1 mm dia. brass tube:

 

 

However, I am not gluing the muzzles now. Instead, I will put them definitively in place only after having finished the leading edge of the wing and sanded the holes to get a nice round shape. This is a fit check to show how they will eventually appear (excuse the out of focus picture):

 

 

The lower half wing could now be glued to the fuselage. This is the way indicated in the instruction, and it is also the way I normally follow in my builds to obtain a good joint between the wing root and the fillet avoiding the use of filler.

 

 

After removing the centering pins, I can obtain a clean butt joint by matching the upper half wing edge with the edge of the fillet.

 

 

However, in this case, it must be also said that the fit was anyway generally good. I am liking a lot this kit which is an accurate replica of the original, with nice surface details and, at the same time, it has a very good fit. In addition, I love the light blue color of the Airfix plastic 🙂. In my view, the few omissions of the kit (gunsight and compass in the cockpit and the blisters under the wing) do not detract much from the appearance of the model even if they are left out.

 

That is all for now,

Greetings,

Dan. 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2021 by Danstream

[ccoyle]

Your work thus far suggests that this project will have a fantastic end result.

[popeye the sailor]

very nice progress........your idea for the wing guns is good.......what are you using to cut such small diameter tubing?   I have small tube cutters,  but I think I should get new ones.  I know that the blades are replaceable,  but I've had them for so long,  that the screws are frozen.  another one that I have fastens them with roll pins....but I've seen them in Hobby Lobby

[Old Collingwood]

Can get over the natural detail with those pre - painted PE  instument and swith panels  - lovely jubbly.

 

OC.

[Danstream]

Hi all, thanks for the likes! Few answers to some of you.

 

On 1/16/2021 at 9:50 PM, ccoyle said:

Your work thus far suggests that this project will have a fantastic end result.

Thanks Chris for the confidence, I hope to to fall now in a state of performance anxiety 😀

 

@popeye the sailor: cutting these small tubes is very easy. On a cutting mat I press gently the a #2 blade (the larger one) of a X-acto knive and keeping it perpendicular to the tube I let the tube roll under the blade moving the blade back and forth. Typically, within 4-5 strokes, the tube gets cleanly severed. You might need to press the tip of a steel needle inside the hole to clean up the remaing possible burrs.

Kind regards,

Dan.

Edited January 21, 2021 by Danstream

[Danstream]

Dear all, assemblying of the main parts continues. These are the horizontal stabilizer surfaces where the riveting details are a bit heavy handed, recalling Airfix design from an older era. I sanded down these exagerated details.

 

 

The upper half wing panes are glued omitting any glue along the joint where the wing folds. This is made possible by the the nice way Airfix engineered the wing parts.

 

 

In fact, the wing panes can be glued to an internal support part:

 

 

As it can be seen, the surface details are nice, but a bit overdone. I will try to tone them down when I will paint the model. For now, I restored and rescribed  some of the details that were obliterated during the sanding and finishing of the joints:

 

 

Stabilizers needed filling of gaps with sprue wires and some Mr. Surfacer 500:

 

 

I started also with the cowling and the engine. The mighty 2500 hp Bristol Centaurus did not get any additional detailing because very little will be seen from the gap left by the carefully faired cowling and the large spinner.

 

 

It just got painted with Vellejo matt aluminium followed by Tamiya panel liner to pick up the details of the finned cylinders. Once inside its fairing, not much will be seen:

 

 

The main airframe is now completed showing the compact shape of the plane. The fuselage is almost etirely behind the envelope of the engine with the exception of the cockpit bubble which sits on top of a small 'hump'. The quasi-elliptical wing planform can also be noted now. The wing design was derived from the previous Hawker Tempest and was kept to make the plane more appealing to the RAF evaluators, who allegedly 'would not have bought anything that did not have an elliptical planform'.

 

 

Finally, I have addressed the fairing of the leading edge with its various openings, added the nav lights and thinned as much as possible the trailing edge which otherwise looks quite too thick (although, I see now from the picture that I still need to do some finishing on it).

 

 

 

Next steps will be the preparation for priming and painting.

Best regards,

Dan.

 

 

 

[Canute]

Dan, good looking bird. I remember building a number of the old Airfix ones. learned a lot about fixing them.

[Danstream]

Hi, I am going slowly on this, I work in the rooms under the roof of my house where I found several leaks after the snow that we had over here. Hence, no big progress to show. Nevertheless, this is what I have done so far. I sprayed the entire model with Mr Surfacer 1000 as a primer. Usually, I do not use primers, but, in this case, I used it for muting a bit the prominents surface details.

 

 

With its levelling thinner, the primer provided a nice and smooth surface, but probably it did not fill much the panel lines. In a normal application, this is a very good thing for a primer. I also sprayed a primer on the engine cowling and spinner. This time, being the cowling to be painted with an orange color, I used a white primer which provides a good backround color for the orange. I used the white Tamiya primer in a spray can which also provided a very nice smooth finish.

 

 

Afterwords, I used the brown Tamiya accent liner to highlight the junctions of the panels.

I had to stop for now, I will show more as soon as I have finished with the repair of the roof.

Best regards,

Dan.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Danstream

[Canute]

Dan, the Like is for the fine work you're doing. Has to stink to be doing roof work in the winter.

[Old Collingwood]

Same as Ken said  Dan.

 

OC.

[Edwardkenway]

Ditto to the above.

It looks a great base for the colour finish!

[mtaylor]

Same here.  Lovely work on the airplane, but it is miserable to work on the roof in winter with the snow and cold.

[Danstream]

Thank you guys, actually it is not me who climbs on the roof, but I called a company to do that. Fortunately, we are now blessed with a very nice weather that in few days has melted the snow making it possible to work outside. I will have to refurbish the inner side of the rooms which have been marred by the leaks. Actually, it is thanks to my wife who was the first one to realise the problem while I was at work and moved away models and materials form the area were the water was dripping. And thanks for your messages of sympathy anyway 🙂 👍.

Cheers,

Dan.

 

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by Danstream

[lmagna]

Hello Dan

Haven't you heard the statement that you can't fix a leaky roof when it is raining and there is no need to fix it when it isn't?

 

GET BACK TO YOUR HAWKER BUILD!

 

No really. Your work so far is impressive. This is going to be a nice model.

[Old Collingwood]

10 minutes ago, lmagna said:

Hello Dan

Haven't you heard the statement that you can't fix a leaky roof when it is raining and there is no need to fix it when it isn't?

 

GET BACK TO YOUR HAWKER BUILD!

 

No really. Your work so far is impressive. This is going to be a nice model.

A friend of mine once said  "It takes about Three buckets to fill the rain falling on the floor and only Two up on the roof"  I asked  why  he replied  "cuz its higher up on the roof"😁

 

OC.

[popeye the sailor]

very nice progress.......sorry to hear about the roof issues

[Danstream]

Dear all,

I am back at the workbench with my Hawker Seafury. In the last post, I finished applying the primer to the model. In preparation of the Navy livery, I wanted to give some pre-shadow texture to the surfaces that will be painted with Sky color. At the same time, having selected a display airplane, the effect should be rather subtile. I decided to go with a red brown which has a value lower than black and, being kind of complementary to the greenish Sky color, should result in a shadowy effect, in theory. Let's see what it will be in practice. After the pre-shadowing, I added also some white random mottling. After that, I wet sadanded everything getting an extremely smooth surface and some additional variation of the colors.

 

 

I ended with applying the Tamiya panel line along the panel junctions. The engine cowling and the spinner got instead a layer of yellow and they were also wet sanded in preparation for the orange.

 

This is how the sides of the fuselage look now;

 

 

 

The portions on the side that are covered by tape are the areas of the steel shrouds in the vicinity of the exhausts. The model is now ready to receive the Sky paint on its undersurfaces and on the sides. Mind that, being the subject airplane supposedly well maintained, most of the texture should almost disappear. I am curious to see the final result.

 

That is all for now,

Best regards,

Dan.

 

 

 

 

[Landlubber Mike]

This is going to be stunning (already is).  Really nice work!

[Danstream]

Hi all,

just some intermediate results on my build. I apologise for my extremely slow pace, many things keep me away from the workbench. At any rate, I started to lay down some layers of Sky paint made of a mix of Tamiya XF-21 (4/5) with white XF-2 (1/5). First steps:

 

 

 

Clearly, the look is too worn out and I continued with the above mix:

 

 

 

Being this plane a display plane, I would like to proceed further to smooth out the preshading work and in a sense vanifying it, but at least I have shown how I like to give in general depth and variations to what could be otherwise a flat finish. I sprayed also the engine cowling and the other orange parts with the Tamiya orange X-6:

 

 

The orange was applied in thin layers and at least one other coat seems to be needed.

That is all for now, if you have comments and suggestions, please let me know them.

Best regards,

Dan.

 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Danstream

[Old Collingwood]

That is looking so nice  - love the panel line work.

 

OC.

[Danstream]

Hi all,

a small update on my Sea Fury build. After several additional coats of color, I stop here and declare it finished. The photos of the actual plane show a quite uniform finish, but I would like to leave some variation be visible to justify all the work done with the pre-shading. The theory of the complementary colors worked partially, but next time I will get back to traditional dark gray preshading. This is how the underside looks now:

 

 

I completed also the orange color on the cowling together with the propeller:

 

 

 

The clear parts have been prepared and masked waiting for being painted, black first followed by camouflage color:

 

 

A final view of the fuselage with the cowling posed on it:

 

 

That is all for now, I hope you like it, comments or critiques are welcome.

Best regards,

Dan.