Category: Hobby Shops
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Play It As It Lays
That is either a very good rule for golf or a really weird idea involving musical chickens. But for our purposes we’ll apply it to scale plastic model building. Many people in my scale modelling club – The Tuesday Soviet – pursue the purchase of kits through the internet. They patronise larger shops in the…
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Back Yards Were Bigger Back Then…
And so were the manufacturers of scale models who conducted their businesses out of them, it would appear. And we didn’t realise it… I am not going to mention big names here. Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Lindberg, Airfix, Tamiya, etc. Their local representatives can breathe out again and put the axe back on the table –…
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Not Quite So Many Paints
Well, another day and another visit… I strolled down the paint aisle today to discover the SMS paints that I had reviewed yesterday gone from the shelves – an empty paint rack with their name on it where they once were. Leading me to a series of speculations: a. Did they not sell? They were…
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So Many Paints. So Many Choices. So Little Time.
I found myself agonising again in the paint aisle of Hobbytech. Not at prices or the paucity of paint – far from it. The prices are reasonable enough but the range of paints available is far greater than my discriminatory mechanism can cope with. I am past spoilt for choice – I am made anxious…
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The Christmas Hobby Traffic
I made a visit to my local hobby shop – Hobbytech – this week to make sure I had enough supplies to carry on through the holiday break. The drive there was hell, the parking was hell, and the drive home was hell, but the time spent in the shop was delightful. And I observed…
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Tool Time – Part Five – We’re There
Here’s what the Ustar people packed into their mini modeller’s tool kit – the kit I bought for the pair of plastic nippers inside. I’ll show you why today was a good day. The heading image was inside the cardboard case. That’s a 100mm x 200mm cutting board and sealed plastic box. Let’s tally up…
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Tool Time – Part Four – What Happened Next
Never glance. Glancing is dangerous. Either look deliberately or put your head down inside your shirt collar and see nothing. I know this because I glanced… To my left, as it happened, as I went to the till at Hobbytech to purchase the set of Ustar plastic nippers. I went past the rack that has…
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Tool Time – Part One – Not All Tools Are Equal…
We all use tools, and if we are in the dating market occasionally they use us. Some tools are good – some bad. Some are expensive, and some cheap. If you go into the wrong bar you will get the latter types exclusively. Sometimes you’ll be in the same dilemma at your hobby shop or…
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McDonnell Banshee – Part One – The Holiday Kit
On my holidays to Melbourne, I slipped into the new Metro Models shop in Bourke Street to see what I could find. This Academy model of the McDonnell F2H-3 Banshee did not call to me at first until I turned up the side of the box and was staring at three colour profiles of Royal…
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Someone Wants Me…
I’m a 1/48th scale model of a dust cart. In a world of Messerschmitts, Super Hornets, and Saturn V rockets…I’m a dust cart. Two wheels, a bin, and a handle. You get a broom and a shovel on the sprue and a set of decals that look like banana peels and cat puke. The instruction…
The Little World 