Category: design
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Jet Jig Jive
I’ve just used the second of my new Slovakian assembly jigs for a jet. It is the Tornado GR.1 from Italeri – a perfect testing piece for the tool. There are square fuselage panels to rest upon. The geometry is markedly different from the WW2 small jig – though the construction materials are just the…
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Morane-Saulnier MS 500 – Part Two – Le Criquet
If you started reading this build as a Fieseler Storch you can be forgiven for wondering what happened. The end of the war happened and the French and Czech aviation industries needed to get started – and there were plans and parts for ex-German aircraft galore. The French army and the Aeronavale needed small liaison…
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It Do You Good
To look at reality every so often. Be careful if reality wants to look at you… As model builders we are engaged in reducing reality to a small space full of small objects. We get very good at this with our kits, aftermarket parts, paints, and weathering. We construct imaginative dioramas and sets. We focus…
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I Believe In You
Of course, I also believe in pixies and the Lone Ranger, so take that into account. You may want to put a disclaimer on most of this conversation. Verbal advice in scale modelling is generally worth the paper it’s not printed on. It can be had from shopkeepers trying to sell you something, friends trying…
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Handley Page Jetstream – Part Three – Big Body And Tiny Wings
I was always puzzled by two aircraft; the Douglas X-3 Stiletto and the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. They were fabulous looking and built for speed, but the tiny size of the wings always suggested that they just couldn’t lift themselves. There were troubles galore when they overloaded the F-104 but otherwise they seemed to work. But…
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Handley Page Jetstream – Part Two – Saturday Build
I have three divisions of kits; Tuesday Mens Shed builds, home Little Workshop builds, and Saturday Historic Modelling Friends builds. I keep them as separate as painting requirements permit so that my pleasure in building them comes undiluted. The HP Jetstream is the Saturday Historic Modelling Friends kit. I enjoy an invitation once a fortnight…
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No Apologies Kingfisher
This post is somewhat different from my normal practise…You get to see it built without seeing it a’building. This is because it is very nearly the same as the wheeled version made by the same maker – AZ. I built one last year in that configuration with a full report. Refer to it if you…
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One Tool To Rule Them All
And that is all I intend to borrow from Tolkien. I saw the movies years ago and that was all I needed. But the real topic here is that one tool. You know the one. The one that is there in your tool kit. It’s the one you had when you started model building. The…
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What If It’s Misnamed…?
” What If ” modelling – colloquially known as Whiffery – is an established genre in the scale world. It is the basis for a good deal of science fiction work, and can be very well thought-out indeed. It permeates the doll house genre and appears in many hot rod builds. But it is most…
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Canadian Car And Foundry Harvard II – Part Three – Precision in Plastic
We are accustomed to read about how precise Tamiya model kits are. This is no exaggeration – they fit pretty well perfectly as soon as you clean the sprue feed points. We are also used to reading the groans of people who have tried to work with Mach 2, Amodel, or PM kits. They also…
The Little World 