Category: design
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Beware Simplicity

For it will complicate your life every time. Scale modellers looking at a kit for the first time are all different creatures. One looks at the sprue trees and sees the big parts – another sees only the tiny details. Someone else goes first to the PE fret or the resin blocks. The artistic look…
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Renault R-35 – Part Six – Hit Me With That Rhythm Stick

Or a German tank shell – because that seems to be what the French armoured corps were hoping for when they thought up their paint scheme and then added tricolour insignia at all the best aiming points. I realise that they did not know what they were up against, nor what to do about it,…
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Renault R-35 – Part Four – Art Deco Armour

I cannot see the French armour colours in any other light than that of the 1920’s Art Deco movement. They are straight out of a pattern book of the period. Whether they disguised the tanks is another thing, but I’m guessing not. I have done a small bit of dirt-spray weathering on the hull at…
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Renault R-35 – Part Three – Running Gear

There must have been as many designs of tank suspension as there were designers – so few seemed to quite agree with each other. Even when one tank was the norm – like the Sherman – there were a number of suspensions and wheel arrangements This Renault R-35 seems to make use of the squeeze-a-rubber…
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Renault R 35 – Part One – The Little Frog

I bought this Tamiya tank kit on a whim – and a case of mistaken identity, too. But I am not disheartened. Because I went to another shop and purchased the one I was originally thinking about later. Yet this Renault light tank is the one I’ll be building first. The kit is pure Tamiya…
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No Lincoln

But you can get a model of a Leomontichvskyovic Lemon 8 from Moldovistan at your local Hobbyhell. I cannot decide whether this is because Airfix are not game to invest in a new mould that is not a Spitstangschmitt or whether the name ” Lincoln ” is seen to be too American for the British…
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Safety Instructions

Please read the following safety instructions carefully and keep them for future reference. a. Your kit is made by people who are underpaid. This means they are hungry, tired, and unhappy. Inspect the box carefully to ensure than no-one has sabotaged it with poison needles or razor blades. b. The kit is made of plastic…
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Academy SPAD XIII – Part Four – Buongiorno!

Issa nice-a day for-a the flying! And a nice SPAD serving the Italian air force in WW1. I strayed from the box markings deliberately. The Lafayette Escadrille Indian head will have to wait until another time, as will the native American swastika. I did some research for SPADs with that combination and only found one…
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Academy SPAD XIII – Part Two – Ick…

Perhaps I am getting too fussy – or watching too many YouTube speakers complaining about sink holes and ejector pin marks. I am starting to see them more and more. Of course some kits make them more obvious than others – the Academy SPAD XIII being one of them. Note the pink spots of sprue-goo…
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Don’t Do Anything With Your Hobby…

That isn’t fun. Because then it will not be a hobby – it will be a task – and a burdensome one, at that. Once it becomes work, you become a worker, and then you have to beware of the boss: a. a shop owner who employs you as a salesperson or repairman. Perhaps as…
