Category: Modelling materials
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Decal Or Not Decal
That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the agonies of masking tape and airbrush or to take scissors and water and end them. I am in the position of Hamlet every time I look a the colour call-out of a kit. I have the decal sheet in one hand and my heart in…
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Occam’s Razor Saw
Go google up William of Ockham and read the article. Follow a few of the rabbit hole links and then come back. You’ll want a stiff drink now. Don’t try to model as your hands will be shaky. Avoid bright lights. The principles that William seemed to be writing about and that have provided philosophers…
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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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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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Airfix Boomerang – Part Three – Jackson’s Art Mask
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound…I tried the Art Spectrum masking fluid from Jackson’s Art Supplies in earnest. The bottle seems a lot like Humbrol Maskol, except slightly thinner. It doesn’t have quite the strong formaldehyde odour of Maskol, but it’s latex, all right. If you do not clean a brush in…
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Airfix Boomerang – Part Two – Furrows And Fillers
How appropriate – I am writing this post on Australia Day 2023 – about a distinctively Australian airplane. And I’m eating a sausage roll and drinking a XXXX. I may go out and wrestle a crocodile later… The Boomerang has distinctively British grooves in it – down the wing roots and in the tail assembly.…
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Iron And Steel In The Soul
And let us have more of it. The recent big local scale model exhibition had a surprise near our stand – a model steel furnace. It may have been intended as part of a model railway layout, but could equally be a stand-alone display. It was good to look at from all four sides. Built…
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Italeri F/A 18 Hornet – Part Two – The Mock-up That Doesn’t Mock
I’ve given up a lot of things in my old age: marathon running, ballet, and regular bathing. But I have not given up dry-fitting models. As a kid it was a major part of a build, with gradual dry assembly taking weeks before any cementation. I’m faster these days ( no school homework ), and…
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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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Quonset Hut – Part One – The Tin Of Terror
If you have ever spent time in a Nissen or Quonset hut it is subtracted from your stay in Purgatory… These Corrugated Containers Of Discomfort seem to have been erected everywhere in peace and war. Australia housed service personnel, prisoners, and migrants in them, and still has some left in bush towns. They are still…
The Little World 