Hobbycraft 1/32 SPAD XIII

By Mikael Terfors

This is my take on Hobbycraft's SPAD XIII in 1:32. Overall, a nice kit that with a bit of work can be turned into a good rendition of the SPAD. I fancied doing the last mount of French Ace Guynemer, an early SPAD XIII. This is the plane in which he disappeared over the Western Front in the fall of 1917. The decals for this SPAD was one of the options in the box, but presented a problem since the early XIIIs had rounded wingtips, and the kit comes with the later squared off wings. This problem was taken care of with a small surgical operation and layers of Plasticard and putty. After this, construction was pretty straightforward, with some details added here and there, mainly in the cockpit. Rigging was done using fishing line, by gluing the line into holes drilled halfway to the underside of the upper wing. Then threaded through holes drilled in the under wing and cyano-glued in a stretched-out position, using weights. To really stretch some of the more hard to get at lines, I applied some gentle heat to shrink the line into shape. Painting was done using enamels and weathering with watercolour pencils and oil washes.

© Mikael Terfors 2006

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This article was published on Friday, September 27 2013; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016