Category: design
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Canadian Car And Foundry Harvard II – Part Two – You Need Not Believe All You See
But you should believe me. Honest. The aviation aficionados may be wondering why a railway carriage company should be credited with building Harvard II aircraft – when we all know North American made the AT-6 Texan and SNJ. Well they also leased out the plans for the things to other makers – a lot like…
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Not Every Kit Is For Every Body
And some kits are for no-body at all. The choice you make of a kit to build is affected by many factors; type, era, maker, price, availability, and box art. The last-named may seem like a stranger to the list, but it frequently is the most powerful impetus to buy. Unfortunately it can also be…
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Problem Solvered
Advice offered in jest to a person in a modelling club has just lit up a lightbulb in my mind. I’ve a perfect solution to the problem of painting. Well, not to ALL the problems – but at least to the business of getting the right colour onto the models. We all spend hours…days…years…acquiring pots…
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Douglas RB-66B – Part Three – Knuckle Down
And buckle down and do it, do it, do it… Roger Miller was right – you just have to make the cockpit eventually. This was not as bad as some – the amount of detail was enough to populate the space without demanding excess bending and fiddling. The basic grey could be done with exactitude…
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Slovakian Jigs – Part Two
A hot Boxing Day is the ideal time to do a new cool kit. You are not stressed by work or family commitments and the precision that good work requires is at your fingertips. At least it is if you have not been on the turps for the last week. My Christmas had been abstemious…
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Doing The Slovakian Jig – Part One
I cannot say when my new jig kits were shipped from the port of Pressburg, but presumably it was before the Covid shutdown. My wife was able to order them from BNA in Melbourne a week before Christmas and they arrived in time to sit under the tree. I spent Boxing day with a new…
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You Know Where You Can Stick It, Buddy
And wash your hands afterwards… I use all sorts of perfectly good adhesives for my modelling – cements, glues, resins, etc. And while they all have different formulae and different actions on the plastic models, they have one thing in common; I can make them go where they are not wanted. I have smeared every…
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The Hiatus
The Hiatus was a heavy triplane bomber designed by Handley Page…but they paused the production… All modellers stop occasionally to take stock. To draw a breath. To pacify the wife. It doesn’t mean that they will not be building again – it just means that it will not be today. Today will be devoted to…
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The Non-Brush Brush-Off
There is a name for brushes; hairy sticks. Because that is what they are. And they do very basic hairy things… There is a current phrase – ” hairy stick ” – used to describe paint brushes – that is both humorous and accurate. Because that’s what the wretched things really are. Oh, there are…
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Do Kit Designers Hang Upside-Down In Caves?
I ask this because I have noted some of the priorities they assign to their kit designs. In the case of the beer, pretzel, and borscht bureaux, the decisions they make about the level of photo-etch to include in a cockpit area vs the basic fit of the thing into the fuselage hints at it.…
The Little World 