Category: frugality
-
Douglas Skyraider – Part One – Abandoned On The Shelf
Started, but incomplete. Very low price – my kind of kit. And a definite prototype in mind for the finished build. The previous owner had cemented the wing and fuselage halves together and done a pretty careful and precise job of it. The kit is designed so that the cockpit tub slips inside before the…
-
Have I Got The Latest, Latest Kit?
With the photo-etch and the resin and the masks and the pots of paint and the signed copy of the designer’s baby photo? Gee, I hope not; I don’t think I could stand the pressure to perform. The 14th coat of weathering oil/lacquer/authenticity magic would reduce me to tears. I could not win a court…
-
Am I A Modeller?
Or a Tetris player? This thought occurred as I was shifting cabinets and restringing electric lights in my workshop. There was no real need to do so – the space produced perfectly good scale models prior to this. But, like a woman moving a piano about the living room, I just could not stop myself.…
-
Vickers Viscount – Part Four – Smooth Success
My internet enquiries have failed to turn up a list of names given to the Vickers Viscount aircraft flown by Trans Canada Airlines and then by Air Canada – just a corporate change. However they were titled, they seem to have been quite a success on the Northern American routes – passengers noting the smooth…
-
The Odd Model
Occasionally you encounter a scale model kit that has as its primary characteristic…oddity. It may be a remarkable rendition, well-moulded, with good instructions and a decent decal sheet, but the basic thing is so strange as to make you, and most of the buying public, shy away. It is the kit that sits on the…
-
Vickers Viscount – Part One – A Dollar Bet
Ever the gambler, I decided that this one-of-a-kind Hong Kong kit was going to be built. It was one of a legacy stash, and totally unique. The firm that made it, Kader, seems to have started in 1970 with a range of British-prototype aircraft kits. Internet searching turns up a number of box-scale offerings and…
-
What’s Brown And Sticky?
A stick. Now that we’ve gotten the classic dad joke off the board, we can continue to the real topic of this post: the cocktail stick. Also known as the wooden skewer, satay stick, or kebab stick, this thin bamboo or wood shaft is available in any grocery store or Asian shop. Bundles of a…
-
US Navy Phantom II – Part One – Airfix Series 3
This older Phantom came as a part of a legacy sale. It is a Series 3 Airfix kit – boxed, and from 1965. Even if the actual production of this box was in later years, that’s a long time, and the instructions, decals, and moulding are bound to have suffered. Since then, of course, many…
-
The Ideal Stash
The ideal stash is just as easy to construct as the ideal house or the ideal marriage. All you need is about ten centuries of unremitting toil to buy, shelve, rearrange, sell, build, discard, and trade your scale model kits and eventually you will have it perfect. I should start now before the summer heat…
-
The Opened Box
And the started model. I find that I can slumber, bored, in most horror or adventure movies. They are predictable, and I know that there will be creepy music, several minor characters will die, and the hero will be saved in the end. Ho Hum. No such thing with the scale model kit that falls…
The Little World 