Category: Miniature Philosophy
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Beware Simplicity

For it will complicate your life every time. Scale modellers looking at a kit for the first time are all different creatures. One looks at the sprue trees and sees the big parts – another sees only the tiny details. Someone else goes first to the PE fret or the resin blocks. The artistic look…
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Renault R-35 – Part Six – Hit Me With That Rhythm Stick

Or a German tank shell – because that seems to be what the French armoured corps were hoping for when they thought up their paint scheme and then added tricolour insignia at all the best aiming points. I realise that they did not know what they were up against, nor what to do about it,…
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Safety Instructions

Please read the following safety instructions carefully and keep them for future reference. a. Your kit is made by people who are underpaid. This means they are hungry, tired, and unhappy. Inspect the box carefully to ensure than no-one has sabotaged it with poison needles or razor blades. b. The kit is made of plastic…
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Drivin’ Miss Crazy

If you ever want to practice your anxiety, I can think of no better exercise than driving somewhere with a scale model in the car. Oh, I hasten to add, that’s a completed model…just tooling home from the hobby shop with a kit in a box plus $ 85 dollars of new paint is no…
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Don’t Do Anything With Your Hobby…

That isn’t fun. Because then it will not be a hobby – it will be a task – and a burdensome one, at that. Once it becomes work, you become a worker, and then you have to beware of the boss: a. a shop owner who employs you as a salesperson or repairman. Perhaps as…
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The Dinner On The Workbench Idea

No, I’m not talking about a plate of stew in the middle of painting a new model. That will not end well. This is a post about prices. We pay varying amounts of money for our models – Some come free and are all the sweeter for that – some cost a lot. Unless we…
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Understanding The Language of Modelling

And listening to what it tells you about the rest of the world. Welcome to the classroom. Every time we approach a foreign land we look first at the language it speaks. If it is not our native tongue we either try to learn enough to get by or go all arrogant and demand that…
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Four Chances To Be Happy

You have just got your new model kit home. You’ve paid for it – no more eating or drinking for a month. All your money is gone. But now is the time to decide whether you are going to be happy or not. It all depends on whether you are going to follow one of…
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The Medium Is The Message

As Marshal McLuhan said, and was misquoted ever after. He had a right to be mad – he’d ordered a large, instead of a medium. And he was too Canadian to complain. In the hobby world, and especially in the hobby shop, there are lots of mediums – paint mediums, medium brushes, and medium tank…
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The PREMIER Club…

I listened to a chap tell me that one of the scale modelling clubs that he belonged to was the PREMIER club in Western Australia. There was a touch of gas and o’erweening pride in the announcement, but it set me to wondering about club rankings. What constitutes supremacy? Is it member numbers, models turned…
