Introduction: Cardboard Supermarine Spitfire Mk.5
Materials
For this project you will need:
Corrugated cardboard
A marker pen
A craft knife of scissors (I recommend a craft knife)
Some glue (a glue stick works perfectly)
A printer that can print in A3
Optional:
Materials for paper mache
Paint
Step 1: Cutting Out the Parts
For this step, you'll need to down load these templates and print it out (If you want it to have a 40cm wingspan, like the models in the photos, you'll need to print on A3).
Once it's all printed out, I recommend to cut out the templates and draw around them on the cardboard rather than sticking them to the cardboard, as you'll need to use them twice each, to make the model more symmetrical down the centre line. Cut out the pieces. You don't have to be super accurate in this step, as you can always trim down the parts when you stick them all together. For the sections with stripes on them, you have to cut off most of the cardboard, leaving only the opposite layer of paper (see the photos). For the horizontal stabilizers (at the tail of the plane) you'll have to peel back the paper on either side of the corrugated part of the cardboard, so that you can have better surface area to stick them to the plane (also see the photos).
Step 2: Gluing the Plane Together
This is probably the easiest step in the build.
Get all the parts in order from the centre pieces to the outside parts (largest to smallest). I glue the centre pieces together, and then make my way out, adding one piece to each side every time, just to keep everything as symmetrical as I can.
To put together the wings you do the same thing: get all the bits from the bottom of the wing to the top (largest to smallest), and glue them on top of each other, leaving enough room to fit the fuselage in the middle.
When you have both the fuselage and the wings, you just have to glue them together by putting glue on both the fuselage and the wing, and then sliding the fuselage into the gap between the wings.
Step 3: Optional: Covering the Plane
I decided that I wanted a smoother finish on the plane that the stacked cardboard allowed, so I covered it with paper mache. There are loads of tutorials for this online, so I won't tell you how to do it here, but I would recommend covering it in sections, and letting them dry before moving on to the next section e.g. do the wings first, let it dry, then move on to the front half of the fuselage, let it dry, then do the back half of the fuselage. This will give the moisture time to escape, which means that the cardboard underneath won't go soggy, and the model won't lose shape.
Step 4: Optional: Painting the Model
For this step I under coated the whole model with a black spray paint, and then I did two coats of green (covering the whole top of the model), and then I painted on the brown patches so that it looked like the camouflage pattern, and then went over them again. I covered the bottom with a shiny, chrome paint (only one coat, because I thought that the one coat covered enough). I decided not to stick with the official paint job, but you can feel free to paint it however you want.