Category: after-market
-
When It Is All Too Flaming Much

Do not despair. Do not allow kit makers to sell you unhappiness. If they have decided that you need to model the rivets on the underside of the toilet seat in the 1/144 scale airliner, consider your own opinion before theirs. They may very well be making fools of themselves and you at the same…
-
Buy Two Kits For Next Year’s Competition

And buy identical ones. Build one the best you possibly can. Use all the techniques and care that will make it look good. Lavish PE and resin and brass gun barrels as much as you wish. Bring copies of the reference material for the judges. Bring paint samples for the ‘raks. And bring the second,…
-
Is Your Modelling A Spiritual Experience?

Do you get out enough? Is your diet adequate? It seems these days that every thing is a spiritual experience – and that can be a damned blessing…You may just fancy a walk through the park – some people would have you commune with nature and a deity until you need to sit down. It…
-
Straight Out of The Aftermarket Box

Or not, as the case may be… The decision of whether to use aftermarket parts or just what is in the kit box is often a hard one to make. It’s one of the marvels of the age we live in that we have this choice. At one time there was nothing between the Airfix…
-
Aero Vodochody Delfin – Part Two – If You Call For Your Czech Early

You don’t have to leave a tip. A morning at my scale modelling club begins with 45-60 minutes on the road – coping with a series of traffic lights and a clogged-up river bridge. It is wearisome but I figure you have to pay for your pleasures somehow. The comes up to 3 hours of…
-
What To Do When You Can’t Get It

Relax, lady. This is about scale modelling – not sex. What do we do when the scale model magazine shows a wonderful new range of after-market parts to detail a kit and everyone else in the world can get it except us? Stuck on the edge of the Indian Ocean way out past where the…
-
How Far Down Do The Rabbits Go?

And I don’t mean on the internet. How far down does a scale modeller pursue the business – at what point does the quest for detail stop? How about weathering and appearance? Where does the line of diminishing returns cross that of fatigue? I think it differs with the genre and scale of the models,…
-
A Model Philosopher’s Stone

Alchemy in scale. The old concept of the Philosopher’s Stone that would transmute lead into gold never quite got off the ground – both substances defying the power of 18th century aero engines to achieve lift. Even when modern jets and rockets were strapped to freight cars full of lead and the vehicles sent down…
-
Such A Simple Idea

So effective. The decal box was a gift from my friend John – he is a constant shopper on Temu and other Asian hobby sites. As a scale model builder himself, he is razor-sharp when looking for tools and paints. This was a real find. It is a plastic box, fitted with a fine-grain foam…
-
The Brass Band

In my hobby clubs there are people who risk death daily by building models using photo-etched brass parts. The fatal danger they run is showing the rest of us up with their skill and precision. One day they will be found out the side door with little knives in their backs. To be fair, some…
