Category: design
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Science To The Rescue – Part One
Having recently made a batch of bad decals, I determined to investigate the problem before printing the next sheet. The surface of the previous ones was cracked and broken – and I reasoned that it was the brittle nature of the Tamiya Gloss Lacquer spray that did it. I looked out all the bottles of…
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De Havilland DH2 – Part Four – You Got To Push It
To make it go… Think of this as a proto-Vampire made of wood and cloth. The SOOTB Revell WW1 kit can be good or bad. So far most of mine have been in the former category. I realise that further construction may push the joke too far, and will switch makers shortly. But while I’m…
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De Havilland DH2 – Part Three – Wing Day
Well there is no point in putting it off and just sitting in the club rooms drinking coffee. Glue the bastard together or go home. 12 struts – reasonably formed for all that. 4 cabanes and 8 inter-plane ones. Socket dimples in fuselage and wings, but everything’s separate. The only saving grace is that all…
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De Havilland DH2 – Part Two – Shit Muckeldy Dun
You rarely see that shade on paint racks these days. There are plenty of colours that qualify, but they tend to have kinder names. The Spanish make a small fortune in tiny squeeze bottles of them. They invent names that suggest you need them for your model – in reality you just need olive green…
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De Havilland DH2 – Part One – Another Revellation
This little guy was sitting forlornly in the legacy sale box – along with the Fokker Eindekker and the Nieuport 28. Well, if you are in for a penny… The idea of making a 1:72 scale model of something this spindly is pretty desperate – as much on my part as on that of Revell…
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Triumph Herald – Part Five – We’ll Get To It When We Can
Just park her down the back of the shop and leave the keys in the ignition. And so the Triumph Herald arrives at Ess Bend Engineering. Stranded with a Lucas electrical system and a Coventry carburettor, she will eventually be reworked to Canadian standards. Many of her sisters will suffer the same fate in the…
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Triumph Herald – Part Four – The Non-Rolling Chassis
Despite appearances, I have grown up. I no longer build scale models with working parts. I can accept fixed wheels. Particularly when they are dependent upon thin plastic axles and cemented suspension parts. I have too many experiences with 1:72 landing gear legs to be sanguine about engineering in styrene. The Herald chassis is square…
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Triumph Herald – Part Three – Down The Rabbit Hole
At my model building club I see many of the other members building models that are a larger scale than the ones I work on. Up until now I have not thought how much harder their minds must be working – because a lot of the things that are just omitted from my 1:72 aircraft…
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Triumph Herald – Part One – Well, It Seemed Like A Good Idea
At the time. Buy a cheap old English sedan and do it up. How hard could it be? People who have experienced Austin, Morris, Triumph, and Hillman vehicles in their lives fell into two groups – those who never opened the bonnets, and those who never closed them. Some came to their fate through fond…
The Little World 