The Little World

When I came to Australia in the 60’s I encountered a whole new division of language. Coming from North America I had experienced Canadian English and American English – now I had Australian English to learn.

It wasn’t that hard, once you discarded the ocker colloquialisms. Of course you had to pick them up again in the 70’s as Whitlam established his People’s Ministry Of Culture, but by then I was able to tell the beauties from the bewdies.

The use of the word ” cheap ‘ was one of the hardest little adjustments to make. In North America, ” cheap ” means shoddy, meagre, and undesirable. Here it means inexpensive…and little of the pejorative attaches to it*. Hence whenever I discover another frugal means of operation, I can congratulate myself on the cheapness rather than be ashamed of it. The heading image presents a simple scene on my work top in the Little Workshop

a. The Hong Kong jewel case. Two free with every order of fried rice and lemon chicken. Wash them out and you have secure storage for every small thing a Little World can accumulate.

b. Sprue dissolved in acetone – inside an old Tamiya glass paint jar. The sprue was cut up into 1/8″ lengths with a pair of side cutters and enough was put in the jar to half fill it. The cheap acetone was made to cover it and left sealed overnight. Result is a thick but workable plastic goo on the bottom of the jar. I’ve fished out a blob and attached it to the original sprue. Time will tell how long it takes to set and what adhesion it has to the sprue.

Probably not a substitute for regular putty, but we shall see if it is useful somewhere.

c. Painter’s stands for figures. I do them only rarely so a dedicated stand is unnecessary. But a piece of padded double-side adhesive tape makes a good temporary hold and you can make as many as you need for a batch job.

d. I cannot see spending money on small wipes and applicators when a roll of paper towels cut into 6 or 8 pieces per sheet does the same thing. And I think they shed less fibres than commercial pad wipers.

e. It is not Silly Putty, but at 2.95 a tub, you don’t have to be all that serious about it. It bounces like Silly Putty and moulds around things to make masks for painting . It also doesn’t stick tight like Blu-Tak. It will receive a trial by acrylic shortly and we’ll find out if it is as good.

The next cheap idea is an extension of the plane stands that I make out of cut-up foamcore scrap. The C47 is larger than anything heretofore built so I needed a bigger stand.

I also needed a way of holding the model steady as I painted Micro Mask on the windows – and it had to hold the fuselage flat while the material dried. Hello foam core and the shop vice, and the problem is solved for no money whatsoever.

*  We had a Lord Mayor of Perth in the 70’s who was known as Tom The Cheap Grocer.