I've just finished a 1/24 Speedline kit of K7 for workshop colleague Andy, so thought I would share.
Although I've built models all my life, I shied away from this kit as I'm not a fan of 'garage' kits at the best of times, and I'd not been impressed when I saw the contents of the kit online once. Well, Andy foisted his kit on me one day and I could hardly say no to a mate, so I rolled my sleeves up and dived in! Let's see, what's in the box...

Hull going together, tail fin (very poor shape as supplied) in place, and two bits of thin dowel as supplied for the spars.

I did what I could to add some life to the otherwise totally smooth hull by adding a few bits here and there to give it some detail and ultimately, some depth.
More bits added, and the intakes carefully opened up. I elected to leave the canopy solid as supplied and just hint at it with paint. Very poor that a vac-formed canopy isn't included for the RRP.

Spars on and seagull damage applied. You'll note that an approximate waterline is marked on the kit- this is because I intended the model to be set into a base as if afloat, so anything below the waterline was ignored. Plus, the bottom half of the hull was a different length from the top half and the transom shape as supplied was all wrong too!

The sponsons ready to go on.

Some gubbins at the back.

The basic boat all together-

-and getting some filler primer. LOTS of filler primer!

After much consideration re. colour choice, I decided to paint it blue.

Then I masked a certain area off and applied some different blue...

I added a lot of the intake/engine cover screws with a little point dipped in silver paint, and various other chips and scuffs, all to give the thing some life. Half the stickers provided with the boat were undersized- the sponson infinity symbols in particular were half the size they should be, so I muddled through with markings I made myself. Then it got set into it's 'lake' (a layer of interior filler, painted and heavily varnished to represent water)


Dented spars, funny coloured intakes, tatty paint on the fasteners...dare we do that on the 1/1 scale version?

Didn't turn out too bad in the end. Lots of artistic license and compromise, but Andy professed himself pleased, so that was nice. With thanks to our illustrious project leader, who hacked up his old bicycle pump in the name of the model having a jetpipe!
