Cliff --

In 1979 I set out to see just how good I could get a Sure Flight Spitfire kit to look. This was also an all-foam model. At the time, there was a company that made fuel proof, flat, scale colors for painting foam. The name of the company escapes me now. I also put the Robart strut covers on it, and fake strut doors on the gear legs. Found a "blank" veco spinner so I could cut it for a 3-blade prop (the spinner was also highly polished). Even made a non-scale cockpit complete with pilot. At the time, everyone in my club thought it looked really good, "for a foamie". The attached photo is of that finished model.

While it looked good, that finish didn't do anything to "toughen up" the foam. Practically everytime you even looked at the plane, you came away with more dents, dings and hangar rash. It seems, in this day and age, someone would have come up with a product that you could apply to foam that would toughen it up, and would be fuel proof. I've got a Sure Flight Waco Cabin biplane (also foam) that I've delayed building just for this reason.

Maybe the lightest fiberglass cloth would be the way to go. In my nearly 50 years of modeling, I've never fiberglassed anything but would like to learn those skills. I always thought fiberglassing a small model would add too much weight, but I'm hearing others say if you use the light weight cloth, it's not much different than say, a Koverall finish.

One more thing about that Sure Flight Spitfire - it was a real pig when it came to flying. It loved to snap roll if you slowed it down to much (like when trying to land).