Category: Lacquer
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Rain Clouds At Dawning

Gather round me now… Rain clouds at dawning, model maker take warningWhiskey at night, model maker’s delight. Arrr, the old tales be the true ones… I have never taken so much notice of temperature and humidity as when I started airbrushing scale models. I was fool enough to try the art when the weather department…
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Me 262 – Part Three – Shinee!

I am starting to see why a friend of mine is so attracted by shiny objects. I have just glossed the Messerschmitt and it is all I can do to stop myself from touching the surface! I know it needs time to cure, but so does my infatuation with the gloss. I wish someone had…
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Koolhoven Fk 58 – Part Three – When Disaster Strikes

Don’t roll over – Strike back. Firstly, don’t panic. Nothing that you can do to a plastic model kit will kill anyone or bankrupt you. You can lay the worst result down in the rubbish bin, walk away from it, and go with new knowledge that could not be got any other way. It’s like…
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Lockheed Ventura – Part Three – Shiny Is As Shiny Does

And you can’t tell a paint by the tin. The ugly bug in the heading image had just received the third colour of a standard RAF day bomber scheme and was waiting to be de-husked. The masking was, if anything, worse looking than usual, but for a good reason. The worms were standard but the…
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Well, Hello Masking Fluid

Goodbye putty worms. My Facebook feed has just put up a reel of the world’s only flying Avro Anson Mk I in preparation for take-off. The shot is of the starboard wing, engine, and nose. The colour scheme is the standard RAF Dark Earth and Dark Green. And all the colour edges are sharp lines.…
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Junkers D.1 – Part Four – Does What It Says

On the tin… I wonder what the Junkers man said to the first German test pilot who climbed aboard old No. 1 and settled down into the corrugated metal? ” You von’t stick your finger through zis one, Herr Baron…”. While I find the vertical tailplane to be somewhat agricultural, the rest of the structure…
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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…

