There are a few things to do before the Spitfires can be painted. Time to get them done.
First up is the tailplanes. The elevators slot in behind the rudder and need to be attached to the tailplanes. I don't want to fit them yet, so attached the elevators to the tailplanes in a neutral position. I will split these after painting for attaching to the aircraft. There is a small block which encloses the elevator join. This is real fiddly, and the rudder glues over that.
I have two replacement 20mm barrel sets. One has wing inserts and the other doesn't.
The resin insert fits well though some sanding is needed to get it to sit right.
For the other set, you need to cut off the plastic barrels and attach the brass. But there is no mounting peg so the joint will be fragile, so decided to use the kit parts which fit good.
I attached the brass barrels to the resin parts on the other aircraft with superglue.
There are a three canopy options in the kit. I decided to use the same for both.
I used an Eduard mask set and some Tamiya masking tape. The set is for a Hasegawa kit so the fit isn't great and the windscreen side panels needed replacing completely.
I attached the gunsight next nd painted the base black.
The front and rear canopy sections were glued in place using PVA glue.
When the PVA had dried I attached the sliding section using some Vallejo masking fliud. When the painting is done, there will need to be some touch up as there is some overlap.
Next will be paint!