Category: frugality
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A Kit Too Far
If you are observant at stash sales you can tell which models will be coming onto the table at a good price. Not initially, perhaps – we have all seen the ambitious price tag on a scale box. Sometimes it is high enough to over-run new kits currently available in the shops. This can be…
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Queen Mary – Part Three – Hughes Transport
Or what to do with a wartime leftover… If it is a plate of powdered egg scrambled with Spam, consider how many decades have passed since VE- Day,,,If it is an old QMT, also consider what time has done to wartime metal construction – particularly British metal with British engineering. The QMT trailer is marked…
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Queen Mary – Part One – ” Can You Use This? “
Whenever someone says this to you, reply ” Yes, please…thank you. ” . It doesn’t matter whether they are offering you a gold Rolex or a tin of condemned beef – take it. You can decide what to do with it later – the offer and acceptance is the fulcrum of friendship. This Queen Mary…
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Stand Off!
It looks as if the warning sign idea for exhibition tables is a success – at least in the making. The wood was purchased at the Big Clawhammer but the rest of the materials were all to hand in the workshop. Even the red and yellow paint. The later is a mix of all the…
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Scratch-building Pack
We often encounter notes on short-run kit instructions that tell us to scratch-build some part. It may be a strut or part of an interior. Perhaps a flap or plate or even part of the undercarriage. Indeed there can be kits where the parts are provided but are of such poor quality that you are…
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Hawker Typhoon 1B – Part Three – Bombphoon
The Best That Could Be Done. There are some kits that you can build to the max of the craft. Others are on a lesser level – they can be to the max of your skill or the max of their limited potential, As long as you get to one of these points, you have…
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Hawker Typhoon 1B – Part Two – Scratch
Even if you don’t itch. It’ll be good for you. The bare tunnel between the open radiator grill and the open cockpit on this model are extreme – even for the early days of moulding. Airfix and Matchbox at least gave you a pilot, even if he was attached to the fuselage side with plastic…
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Hawker Typhoon 1B – Part One – Squashed Kit
Another flattened amphibian from 1974 – a WW2 Typhoon fighter-bomber. A kind gift from a club-mate – to whom I was able to reciprocate. This old Typhoon is in excellent shape, even if the box is not. All sprue trees complete and the canopy has not cracked. The instructions are not snail-eaten and the decal…
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You Really Do Need Two Pairs Of Cutters.
I should have laughed at myself for writing that header a few years ago. I had just re-started in scale kit building and had purchased a Ustar tool kit with knife, cutter, sandpaper blocks, etc. I still have most of it and most of it still works. What more could you want? Well, you could…
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Hobby Boss MiG3 – Part One – The Kiddie Shelf
For very old kiddies… I saw a brilliant series of posts on INCH HIGH GUY recently that dealt with the various iterations of the MiG fighter. He got kits from a number of different makers and compared them as he built the lot. Many were extra-detailed from his own scrap box and scratch materials. They…
