Category: Lacquer
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Fairey Battle Mk I – Part Five – The Hangin’ Tree
I am not a naturally cruel man, though I have trained in the art… Nevertheless there is a certain grimness about constructing a gallows on which to execute a model airplane. You start to think of Sidney Carton or Till Eulenspiegel… The advantage of it all is the ability to spray from all sides in…
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Is It Semi-Gloss Or Semi-Matte?
Come to that, is it matt or matte? I’m sure there will be frantic semantic pedantics out there who can make a half-hour lecture out of these questions. There is also the question of whether you need to use any paint apart from gloss if you intend to varnish the finalproduct. You crank in the…
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Model Car Sunday – Part Four
Overblown is my favourite colour. You cannot look at a modern motor car and not experience a heart-stopping moment. The colour – whether black, white, or grey – will be so depressing that your ticker will slow dangerously. You may lose consciousness or go into deep depression. Memories of the actual spectrum may fade from…
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Mitsubishi Babs – Part Two – Just When You Thought…
Just when you thought modelling could not become uglier…I had a good idea. The camouflage patterns for many aircraft are wavy, blobby things. You can spray them freehand or mask them, but in most cases of 1:72 planes, masking is better. I’ve tried many different ways of doing it, but settled upon the putty worms…
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FROG Stash Avenger – Part Four – Show Bird
Casting about for a role for the FROG Avenger, I came upon a series of photos taken at a recent Dutch air show. They show a Grumman Avenger painted in what I assume are authentic colours for the Aéronavale – the air arm of the French Navy. I expect the aircraft would have been a…
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Is There Life After Enamel?
Now that everyone uses acrylics? Yes. We may have lost Testors but there is still Humbrol. You may have cut your teeth on them, grown to hate them, but now are curious about them. Find a test-bed model…something you can afford to ruin. Sand it, prime it, and grab a dear old a Humbrol pot.…
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SAAB J22 – Part Two – Dry Swede
Or, the first series build for the Little Workshop. I have just completed three big builds for the collection. They were spread over three work areas and many weeks. There were problems that held matters up and were then solved. I learned a couple of new facts. And noted an unsettling thing with the workflow;…
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Painting With Perceived Wisdom
Or painting with rumour, advice, lies, advertisements, and blind faith. Pardon – that should be blind, stumbling faith. What could possibly go wrong? Painting white is tough. Painting red is tougher. Painting yellow worse. Painting silver worst of all. Woe is us, woe and wailing. And particularly if we listen to everyone else’s advice. And…
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English Electric Lightning – Part Three – Cross My Palm With SIlver
Very few aircraft are made of silver* – yet that is what the kit maker would have us paint them. And there is no one silver – as there might have been in the dear dead days of Humbrol tinlets. Now we have lacquers, clads, super metallics, etc. Some experts swear by certain brands and…
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Sprue Spray?
It was decades before I figured it out. In fact, Airfix and Revell knew it long before me. But it finally took Phil Flory to wise me up. The 5 ” P’s “: Paint Piddly Parts on the Plastic Prior to Parting them. Oh Gosh – I counted wrong. That’s 6 ” P’s “. Of…
The Little World 