Category: design
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The Colour Of Your Model Is Wrong

But it’s not the fault of the paint – or of you. It’s the result of history. Cast your mind back to when you were a kid during the Boer war. When you could still get that crispy bacon. Remember what the photographs taken at the Battle of Bloemfontein looked like? The videos taken by…
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Italeri F/A 18 Hornet – Part Three – Perkkele!

Not really – I have nothing to complain about. Stay where you are. The finish on this Finnish aircraft is courtesy of the paints that were gifted to me by Warren Jones – I am getting to grips with the business of enamels with lacquer thinners and in many respects they seem to be easier…
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Italeri F/A 18 Hornet – Part Two – The Mock-up That Doesn’t Mock

I’ve given up a lot of things in my old age: marathon running, ballet, and regular bathing. But I have not given up dry-fitting models. As a kid it was a major part of a build, with gradual dry assembly taking weeks before any cementation. I’m faster these days ( no school homework ), and…
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Italeri F/A 18 Hornet – Part One – Who Actually Makes This Thing?

I was nearly going to write ” McDonnell Douglas ” in the title until I saw it was claimed to be a licensed product from Boeing. Whether this means Boeing have bought out McDonnell Douglas, or just the company that makes the cardboard box, is unsure. The kit comes from Italeri, so I’ll go with…
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Understanding The Language of Modelling

And listening to what it tells you about the rest of the world. Welcome to the classroom. Every time we approach a foreign land we look first at the language it speaks. If it is not our native tongue we either try to learn enough to get by or go all arrogant and demand that…
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Soviet ZIS-5 – Part Five – Fiddler On The Workbench

Oy! The various sub-assemblies of the ZIS-5 have been models in their own right – the Hobby Boss factory having moulded them in such detail as to justify taking a great deal of care with them. This is good practice anyway, but here the diagrams of the instruction sheet were particularly useful – the sequence…
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Soviet ZIS-5 – Part Three – Non-Rolling Chassis

You can say what you like about Tamiya paints – I swear by their Dark Iron for nearly all the chassis I make – tank, car, or truck. I’ve been under motor vehicles and I know what colour they are… In this case the ZIS-5 truck ( made by the Ural factory, I surmise )…
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Soviet ZIS-5 – Part Two – The Truck Factory

Well, that’s what it feels like as you sit at your bench with a kit of this type. You are working in the factory. This same feeling was encountered years ago with a 1:24 scale kit of a Bedford fuel tanker made by Emhar. They obviously had an original vehicle to base the model upon,…
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The Medium Is The Message

As Marshal McLuhan said, and was misquoted ever after. He had a right to be mad – he’d ordered a large, instead of a medium. And he was too Canadian to complain. In the hobby world, and especially in the hobby shop, there are lots of mediums – paint mediums, medium brushes, and medium tank…
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Quonset Hut – Part Two – One A Week In Bull Creek

The title refers to the current batting average for 1:72 scale models – one a week completed. It’s not a contest, so the only prize I win is a fresh model for my collection or a layout but I can tell you – It’s Satisfying! The Rix Products Quonset is a tough build as it…
