Category: design
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Tornado GR.1 – Part Three – Jet Jiggery
And the occasional jet pokery, too. In fact poking plays a great part in a lot of my builds – I need to poke myself to get enough enthusiasm to even start. The Vertigo jet jig has the marvellous feature of a two-part clamp on the front to secure the nose of an aircraft from…
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Tornado GR.1 – Part Two – Play Value
I am never one to decry play value. Whether it is a model railway layout or a burlesque dancer, getting pleasure out of fiddling around is what it’s all about. Above all, we want things to move… This was the case with the dear old Monogram airplane kits of my childhood. Things that moved sold…
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Build Simply
Or, in the case of the stash maniacs in the readership – simply build… Today’s posts on my other two weblog columns has centred around simplicity – in living and purchasing. It can also be applied to our hobby of scale modelling. Not every kit or model needs to be super-detailed to be super fun.…
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Foam
I have a theory about the Universe: If it cannot be done with foam-core board, it cannot be done. And I think I have Adam Savage to thank for that. He was seen on a YouTube feature constructing an architectural model of a house with foam-core board and hot glue. The facility with which he…
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Why No 1:64 Planes, Then?
If you were a kid in North America in the 50’s you basically had a choice of three scales for electric trains: 1:48 Lionel, 1:64 American Flyer, and 1:87 HO made by Varney, Athearn, and lots of smaller firms. The 1:87 HO has stayed with us – just as 1:76 has stayed with the British…
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The Box-Scale Kit
We’ve all seen them and we’ve all built them. And at one stage of the game they were the norm. The box-scale kit that was accurately drawn from official government plans and moulded in 1/60 or 1/94 or 1/287… We were captivated by the box art…or the fact that it cost $1.49 and we had…
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Austin Armoured Car – Part Two – Precision Product
Say what you will about some of the eastern bloc modelling companies turning out marginal models – and we have all see Mikro Mir and Amodel and such – there are some companies on the sharp edge of the hobby. This is the case with this Austin armoured car. There is enough detail in the…
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There Is No Time Like The Present
And there never was. That is the nature of time…it moves forward. Pity some of the plastic model moulding firms are so stuck in the past. This is particularly ironic when you consider that these firms want to make a profit in the future by moulding models of things that vanished a century ago…and they…
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You Can Be Sensible But No Good Will Come Of It
Not if you build scale models, it won’t. Sensible buys only the best kits at the cheapest prices and only ever builds one example of any prototype. Indeed sensible people do not build scale models at all – reserving their time for money making and hiding their sins. For the rest of us…drifting down the…
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Caudron C-445 – Part Three – The Jig Is Up
And as Lou Gosset might have it – ” and running…”. This was the first time that then new Slovakian jigs got their real trial. The Caudron was a perfect size for the WW2 pattern – though there were more adjustments to make on the rack than you’d think. The wing clamps were a little…
The Little World 