Category: damage control
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Schmattarim
Stop groaning. It’s my model airport and I get to make the jokes. Actually, it’s a museum layout – a very useful way to display a variety of aircraft. In this case they are Israeli, and the idea is patterned on the real IAF museum at Hatzerim. I’ve built enough models to mount two separate…
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Have You Ever Been Tempted…
To chime in at the local hobby shop when you hear someone ask a question of a salesperson? Well, stifle that impulse…unless you are asked a direct question by the staff member, your input is not helpful. You may know the answer, but consider that the answer you know may be one of many. The…
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The Unwritten Rules Of Scale Modelling Competitions
Hah. Fooled ya. There are no unwritten rules. They were going to make some but with the months it took to produce the written ones, time just got away. The sub-committee for underwater vehicles took a very long time to surface and there were real fears. As it is, the printing costs for the rulebook…
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Lid
Or, ” How Not To Flip Yours “… Over a period of years I have been painting with multiple airbrushes – my compressor unit has two output hoses. Starting with cheap kit guns and trigger actions, I have finally settled on two Mr. Hobby Procom Boy units. One is single action – on double. They…
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When You Take The Leap Of Faith
And it works. I tried a new technique in the construction of scale model parts. I needed a hollow engine cowling for a bomber and had a similarly-sized one to use as a master model. A few weeks ago I embedded this master in a casting box made of cheap cardboard and poured two-part silicone…
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Not Every Good Idea…
Is good. Brains do burp occasionally… One of my episodes these last few months centred around building some 1/144 scale fighter planes – my Fifty Cent Fighters. The kits went together well and the painting was a lot of fun; a lot more successful than I expected. But one of my ideas for putting the…
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Better Is The Enemy Of Good
Just as happier is the enemy of happy. Once you introduce comparison you have picked a rotten apple off the tree and are headed out of Eden. Because you have discovered that there is something you don’t have and that something is MORE. Were you happy with your food, you would not be hungry for…
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Disaster In The Cabinet Room
No politics – this is the story of a collapse in a scale model storage cabinet. In finitely more distressing than anything that happens in Canberra. A call at my studio discovered the bad news – a glass shelf in one of my IKEA cabinets had dropped on one end and crushed to scale models.…
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Airspeed Oxford – Part Two – Pink Dot Special
You’ll note the pink dots on the wings and fuselage of the Airspeed Oxford – these are the lesions of Moulder’s Pox. It was a disease that afflicted scale models in the 1950’s and 60’s. It was caused by styrene mixtures that tended to shrink. This was exacerbated by pulling the sprue tree from the…
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The Third-Party Direct Hearsay Evidence
That you read once, but can’t remember where. You know, the absolute shining truth that is too good to repress… The sort of tale that you tell to the other modellers around the table as they cut and glue, enhancing your status as the expert who has seen it all. With a bit of luck…
The Little World 