Category: frugality
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Do What You Can
With what you have – where you are. This may have been Teddy Roosevelt’s line or it might have been from an earlier writer. Since I just typed it, it’s mine now. You are free to use it as you will. You have a kit in front of you – for which you may have…
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Atlantic Wildcat- Part One – Older Than Dirt
But just as attractive. The is an Academy/Minicraft kit, which nails the age at 1996 – not really old at all, when you consider some of the fossils I have built. A donation, and welcome, but what should be done with it? Missing a canopy* but complete otherwise, with a spare tail plane and an…
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Less Can Indeed Be More
Well…more or less… This famous fashion dictum also applies to a lot of scale modelling. Those of us who model in smaller scales are often unable to apply the same structures or details that other people can achieve. We have to paint suggestions rather than cement on actual structures. We also spend less on individual…
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All My Best Models Cost Under $ 10
Because they are the poor, sad runts of the hobby shop litter – or the nearly-dead ones that just pass from stash to stash without ever getting built. I give them hope and dignity. I clip their parts off the distorted sprue trees without making noises of obvious disgust. I sand off flash and rivets.…
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Mi-2T Helicopter – Part Three – Andrusiak Air Field
It turned out nice again, eh? I was very pleased with the result of my Hobby Boss Mi-2t Hoplite helicopter kit. I couldn’t have asked for a better fit on the parts and I’m pleased to say that the masking experiment has resulted in some of the best windows and frame lines so far. The…
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YF23 – Part One – Y-Leftovers
The Box of Possibilities. This box contained two aircraft – I suspect it is the residue of a failed project from someone unknown. Abandoned in the club storeroom, it fell to me after a grand clean-out. This is no new sensation – it often happens here at home when the wife or daughter decide to…
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Egyptian Mig 21 – Part Three – O..1
When life gives you MiGs – you make MiGaid… You research the internet until you find a real picture of the model you have in the box. Colour, for preference, and well-lit if possible. You can make do with older B/W photos but be wary of other people’s colourizations or the precise artwork of virtual…
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The Plastic Torch?
Is what we do a bit historical – or hysterical? I once bought an armload of 1:72 kits from a very nice chap who visited our modelling club. They were a number of items from his late fathers collection – the man unfortunately passed away far too early to build them. This is sad –…
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Mil 24 Hind F – Part Three – Goo Time
In some cases that is a good time and in some just a goo time. I have written before about making my own sprue goo and using it for seam and gap filling. I have largely thrown away the Vallejo, Perfect Plastic Putty, and Mr Hobby products in favour of this home-made solution. I also…
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Mil-24 Hind F – Part One – WA Salvage
They no fancy, but they cheap… And even cheaper when the kit in question – a Hong Hong cheapie to begin with – is dumped n a container load in WA and eventually ends up on the shipwreck shelf at the scale model club. Unbuilt, unloved, unappreciated. Just the thing for the kit-whisperer. The Kitech…
