Category: damage control
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RCAF Hudson – Part Two – I Been Airfixed Again
And I didn’t even know it until now… Look at Part One for the parts layout picture. Note that only one elevator panel is shown on the shot. I did not pick this up until I came to assemble the horizontal stabiliser. Airfix had dudded me again. But I don’t dud easy. I remembered what…
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The Most Expensive Model I Have Ever Made
Vs the most economical one. Which was better? Why? The most expensive model I have ever made to date would probably have been an R/C ship I constructed in the 1970’s. It took fibreglass resin, cloth, a Futaba radio control set, several motorcycle batteries, a Taycol and then a Graupner electric motor, perspex sheeting, and…
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The Bad Batch
Whenever something goes wrong we search for an explanation…that’s just human inability to accept fate. Sometimes it turns out not to be our fault – though smart money always bets the other way. When it is genuinely not us, it can be the maker. The kit that is moulded wrongly. Or warped in the packaging.…
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If It Is Not A Pleasure…
Does it need to be a pain? I am brought to this question by the effort of completing a 1/400 scale model of a very small naval vessel. It is well moulded. It is presumably accurate. It may be relevant, but then the well-mannered never mention the relevant in the room… It is not excruciating,…
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When Are You Actually Done?
Well, some people would say when you put your half-completed model out on the road and the council sweeper brushes it up into the bin. That’s DONE! A little less desperate than that for most of us. Perhaps when the last part goes off the sprue tree and onto the rest of the plastic? Perhaps…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Three – Goo-ing It
You have to wonder how we did it. I mean back in the last century when we built scale model kits and did not use putty to fill in seams. Were the kits seamless them? Were we blind? Was filling a gap considered a disreputable act? Well times have changed, and many of you have…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Two – The Evitable
You can only put off the inevitable so long. Eventually it becomes horribly evitable and you either have to shit or climb off the pot. I finally had to start sawing on the Bristol. The vac-form plate was a surprisingly easy task. I’d YouTubed a group of modellers in Canberra who were discussing vac-form modelling…
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It Is Hard To Sell A Poisoned Chalice
Especially if you have been killing off people’s enthusiasm with it for years. This sentiment applies to a lot of things; hobby publications, exhibition organisation, and box-scale kits come to mind. The magazines we loved to buy are slowly giving way to YouTube presentations that take up hours of our time for minutes of information.…
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The Scholarly Modeller
People in the arts, sciences, and humanities will all have encountered the scholarly author or researcher – who will vastly overbear anything the average enthusiast can bring to a discussion. The scholars will have read, experimented, thought, or created their way to eminence in their respective fields and very likely have published and publicized all…
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Was It Edison?
Who said he had discovered 10,000 ways that you could not do something before he made a successful electric lightbulb? I feel like that sometimes dealing with the scale modelling world. Whether it is painting or moulding, soldering or carving, there seems to be a long and winding road always ahead of me. A case…
The Little World 