Matchbox 1/32 Sea Venom

by Phil Brandt

One thing that can be said about long-departed Matchbox is that, in their day, they surely released an eclectic lineup….clunky and plain but assuredly eclectic. A confession: I chose to build this long-stored kit about six years ago because I've always been enamored with the chrome yellow-and-black stripes seen on FAW birds during the short-lived 1956 Suez Crisis. To prod along the project were various, old clipped magazine articles in the Bondo Industries Archives, the most useful of which was the Sea Venom detail piece, "Gilding the Lily" by Dennis Teague, Aircraft Modelworld, July 1988.

In one very busy page of hand-rendered sketches Dennis provides practically all any modeler would need to know about embellishing the basic plainness of the Matchbox offering. The sketches are accompanied by actual pix of a Sea Venom, with details keyed to the specific job at hand.

I chose one more area to add busy-ness to the overall airframe presentation: wingfolds. Luckily, a June 1982 article by Joe Saki in Scale Models had two closeup pix of said wingfold area, and they were more than enough to ensure the accuracy of my scratchbuilding.

The one area I would change were I doing the model today, would be to vacuform the typically Coke bottle-thick windscreen and canopy. Dipping them in Future did somewhat alleviate the appearance.

What should have been a slam dunk paint job turned into a nightmare when the Polly Scale Sky color wanted to lift up everywhere along the lightly-masked (well-"fingered" Scotch drafting tape) sky/Gunze extra-dark grey dividing line. The paint lifting required much delicate featheredging of the chipped areas, then remasking and shooting. This time the masking tape left a small marred edge everywhere it had touched the well-cured Gunze grey I havn't used Gunze colors since! Much clear coating helped cover up the marring. I smartened up and shot the yellow-and-black stripes with Model Master enamel, but the underlying PollyScale still tried to lift under the masked areas!

As with so many Bloke kits, the waxpaper "protective" cover for the decals had practically welded itself to the sheet, virtually ruining their use. I scraped and applied heat and even swabbed rubbing alcohol with very little success. The decals that I was able to remove were slightly marred on their surface. By handbrushing at least five layers of Microscale SuperFilm, the marring mostly disappeared.

All in all, an interesting subject. The Sea Venom was entered in the IPMS Santa Clara Nats.

© Phil Brandt 2004