Category: 1:72 scale
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Airbrush Designers, Please Take Note

I love my airbrushes now. The first one was a daunting challenge a few years ago but I have progressed since then – acquiring 4 altogether by now. I’m proud to say that using the latest model to spray an aircraft was…a daunting challenge. It is not the fault of the airbrush maker, nor of…
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Douglas Digby Mk I – Part Four – The Full Measure

I use that title because in many respects this Special Hobby build has taken the full measure of several things; my patience, my eyesight, and the remnants of several paint containers. The patience started to run out early on when the instructions called for the rudder pedals to be folded up out of photo-etched brass.…
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Douglas Digby Mk I – Part Three – The Name…

I am puzzled. The name doesn’t seem to fit. When US airplanes got a name – as opposed to a model number – they generally got one that tied in with an established pattern – as a for instance, take the Boeing series of bombers – from B 17 to B-52 in four steps –…
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Douglas Digby Mk I – Part Two – The Split Herring

Well, you gotta admit the heading image looks a bit like that. I decided to show the office before I closed it up as the thing took the best part of two days to do. The club session was spent assembling big structures like wings and tailplanes but the rest of that day and all…
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Douglas Digby Mk I – Part One – The Show Find

Another show find from last year’s Victorian Scale modelling exhibition, folks, but this time it was not on the bargain tables. It was firmly in the fancy kit section – an area in which I look but do not touch. However, it had the magic word on the box ; ” Canadian ” and that…
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Hawker Sea Fury – Part Four – Perfect Paki

The PM model of the Hawker Sea Fury is just done and onto the photo table. It has been a symphony of pleasant surprises right from the start. And it’s a good lesson for the modern modeller – particularly the person who hangs on every internet report and thinks that there are experts who know…
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Hawker Sea Fury – Part Three – If You Look Very Carefully…

And I did. I did look carefully. And I’m glad I did. The external fuel tanks of the PM Models Hawker Sea Fury fit together very well. A lick of MEK, a clamp, and they were ready for sanding. And not a lot of that needed – the seams fit very well. As I had…
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Hawker Sea Fury – Part Two – Hours Of Building

About two, as it happened. And part of the time was spent making beef pies in the kitchen. This aircraft kit is a fair way shy of the 1000-piece puzzle… But the pieces that do exist are rewarding. Well-shaped, and with few flaws. The wings and fuselage went together with the kind of precision that…
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Hawker Sea Fury – Part One – A New Maker

I’m a bigger sucker for novelty than I readily admit – I make noises like all the old goods and methods are the best and the new ones are rubbish, and you’d think I have not advanced since the 1950’s. But in truth l’m always buying something new from the shops just to try it…
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I Now Know…

I now know my least favourite scale modelling task: making up propellers from separate blades and hubs. I have just completed the gluing on two propellers for the Lockheed Electra Junior and am waiting for them to set. The maker decided to do the hubs in resin and the blades in styrene – so I…
