Category: damage control
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The Detail Is In the Devil
And I am starting to believe that is where it should stay. I stand in awe of the fine detail that can be achieved by some modellers working in 1:32nd and 1:35th scale. When they commence work on tank tracks with 5 or 6 pieces per link…and a couple hundred links…I know it is time…
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A Very Personal Boycott
And for a very personal reason. A recent visit to a hobby shop in our metro area ended unpleasantly – when I asked to use the toilet the owner directed me outside to the end of the car park and told me to pee behind the dumpster. Fortunately I was able to make it in…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Three -Guessing Game
Meetings in the design bureau of a scale model company must be interesting to attend. Are there knives? Do people disappear? Do they call in dancing girls and order pizza? I ask because some of the decisions that come from these meetings seem to be motivated by strange desires. Who would have split the fuselage…
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Grumman Hawkeye – Part Two – Filling And Filing
And not just in one stage, either. When you take on an older kit, you accept the limitations of the art at the time that it was made. You can build it with the skills of that time or with modern ones. Either way is a sort of compromise. Here we have a combination of…
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Netmodelling
The computer rules nearly every room of our house – save the toilet. There are still uses for paper… I’m not a Luddite. I like my computer and the facility it gives me to communicate to others…until they block me. Sometimes that can be done in remarkably short order. But until then, the net is…
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Bristol Belvedere – Part Three – The Mehcopter
Cue enthusiasm…reboot…reboot. I think this is the first of the Airfix Vintage Classics that has disappointed. It is undoubtedly what it was in the original release, but like the original Blackburn Buccaneer, the Hovercraft, the Fairey Rotodyne, and the prototype Harrier, it strangely fails to please. Perhaps Airfix were precipitate in issuing something that was…
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Bristol Belvedere – Part Two – How Right They Were
This kit has all the appeal of a Revell re-box. The two halves of the fuselage may have been pulled out of the mould while still hot and allowed to cool on a window sill. The result is a progressive rolling distortion that will never allow the parts to join in one cementation I decided…
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Can A Table Of Modellers Build A Kit?
Yes, if they do not all try to do it at the same time. A dozen pairs of hands in a small cardboard box is a recipe for disaster. Likewise, a dozen minds making up decisions about colour, marking, fittings, etc…fine if you are making a 1:35 scale model of the Tower Of Babel, but…
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Do You Tell The Truth?
I should rephrase that; should I tell the truth? You probably tell it all the time. I would too, if it were a good idea. I used to practice strict honesty when I was in professional work, and quite good honesty when in trade. Now I am retired and writing about scale model making I…
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Douglas Skyraider – Part One – Abandoned On The Shelf
Started, but incomplete. Very low price – my kind of kit. And a definite prototype in mind for the finished build. The previous owner had cemented the wing and fuselage halves together and done a pretty careful and precise job of it. The kit is designed so that the cockpit tub slips inside before the…
The Little World 