The Little World

I love you…

Okay, there is an earworm for you. If you are too young to know the tune put your cap on backwards, go away, and stare at your mobile phone.

I am the strange old guy in the supermarket that looks at clothes pegs. Or the weirdo in Bunnings that tests out every adjustable clamp. If it is a special day I test them out on you.

You see I am looking for the elusive Universal Clamp – that fabled tool that will allow me to close a fuselage, join a wing, or straighten a warp in defiance of the kit moulders. I have at least 6 styles that nearly do it, but the Eldorado Clamp is still somewhere out there over the horizon.

The pair of plastic pegs you see in the heading image were captured during mating season when they had fastened themselves onto the fuselage and wing of the new Spitfire kit. The seams at the back of wings are often problematical and you need to clamp many of them during the closing process. The double act allows a softening of the spring pressure and prevents further distortion.

I hasten to add that they had previously done duty at the front of the fuselage bedding the leading edge of the wing in.

One kit I bought had no distortion at all. Every panel fitted with no gaps or warps. Each part inside was perfectly positioned straight off the sprue tree.

When I realised this, I fainted. After I came to the kit was gone, and I have never seen it again. I am inclined to think it was a hallucination.