[laffs] MASTERPIECE OF DETAIL

From: "Gene Hatfield" <hatter@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org>
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:29:46 -0600
Message
Subject:  MASTERPIECE OF DETAIL








      Masterpiece of Detail 
        

      Below are pictures of a scratch built 1/5th scale Supermarine Spitfire MK 
1 by an English model builder. It's hard to imagine such infinite detail can be 
accomplished even with super human devotion and dexterity. The pictures and 
accompanying text are by the model maker, David Glen.






      If anyone asked me why I set out to build a Spitfire in one-fifth scale, 
and detailed to the last rivet and fastener, I would probably be hard-pushed 
for a practical or even sensible answer. Perhaps the closest I can get is that 
since a small child I have been awe inspired by R. J. Mitchell's elliptical 
winged masterpiece, and that to build a small replica is the closest I will 
ever aspire to possession.

      The job took me well over eleven years, during which there were times I 
very nearly came to giving the project up for lost. The sheer amount of work 
involved, countless hours, proved almost too much, were it not for a 
serendipitous encounter at my flying club in Cambridge with Dr Michael Fopp, 
Director General of the Royal Air Force Museum in England.





      Seeing the near complete fuselage, he urged me to go on and finish the 
model, promising that he would put it on display. I was flabbergasted, for when 
I started I had no inkling that my work would end up in a position of honour in 
one of the world's premier aviation museums.

      As I write, the case for the model is being prepared, having been 
specially commissioned by the museum with a case-maker in Sweden. I have not 
yet seen it, but from what I hear, it is enormous!

      In one respect the story has gone full circle, since it was at Hendon 
where I started my research in earnest, sourcing Microfilm copies of many 
original Supermarine drawings, without which such a detailed build would not 
have been possible.

      The model is skinned with litho plate over a balsa core and has been left 
in bare metal at the suggestion of Michael Fopp, so that the structure is seen 
to best advantage. The rivets are real and many are pushed into drilled holes 
in the skin and underlying balsa, but many more are actual mechanical fixings. 
I have no accurate count, but I suspect that there are at least 19,000!






      All interior detail is built from a combination of Supermarine drawings 
and workshop manuals, plus countless photographs of my own, many of them taken 
opportunistically when I was a volunteer at the Duxford Aviation Society based 
at Duxford Airfield, home of the incomparable Imperial War Museum collection in 
Cambridgeshire, England. Spitfires, in various marks are, dare I say, a common 
feature there!





      The degree of detail is probably obsessive: The needles of the dials in 
the cockpit actually stand proud of the instrument faces, but you have to look 
hard to see it! 

      Why the flat canopy? Well, the early Mk.Is had them, and I had no means 
to blow a bubble hood, so it was convenient. Similarly the covers over the 
wheels were another early feature and they saved me a challenging task of 
replicating the wheel castings.











      The model has its mistakes, but I'll leave the experts to spot them, as 
they most certainly will, plus others I don't even know about. I don't pretend 
the little Spitfire is perfect, but I do hope it has captured something of the 
spirit and incomparable beauty of this magnificent fighter perhaps the closest 
to a union that art and technology have ever come a killing machine with lines 
that are almost sublime.






      So, with the model now in its magnificent new home, what comes next?

      Well, I'm planning a book that will have a lot to say about its genesis 
and perhaps just a little about me and those dear to me, including a long 
suffering but understanding and supportive wife. And then there's the Mustang? 
Yes, a 1/5th scale P-51D is already taking shape in my workshop. How long will 
it take? I've no idea, but what I am sure of is that at my age (58) I can't 
expect to be building many of them!

      David Glen
      Whaddon, Cambridge
      Dec. 06, 2006
[laffs] MASTERPIECE OF DETAIL

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