Category: Modelling materials
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Cessna Dragonfly – Part Two – Weighty Nose
You only have to forget once to weight the nose of a three-wheeled plane to impress it on your memory forever. And there is no effective way to excuse it when you are faced with the fact – other than accepting your fate, putting the wheels up, and the model on a flying stand. I…
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Com Pro Mise
Don’t turn away. And don’t make that noise in your throat. Compromise is not a filthy word. You’ll find this out soon enough when you are a scale model builder – particularly if you build from commercial kits. They have compromises on every sprue tree. You can also buy after-market brass approximations and resin-cast bad…
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Farman NC 223.3 – Part Three – Sprue Goo
I have taken the – so far – free advice from Phil Flory and made up a jar of Sprue Goo. The Evergreen plastic card was from the surplus scrap bin – a little brown and a lot of white chipped up and dissolved in Supercheap Auto lacquer thinner. It was an overnight success and…
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Dornier Do-17Z – Part Three – So Near…
And yet so far… I was really hoping to get the Dornier 17Z buttoned up with no need for filler as a tribute to the old Monogram moulders. Such was not to be the case, but in the meantime I am puzzling over the inside of the wing. The Monogram engravings are there alright, as…
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” Recapture Your Childhood “
Said an advertisement for a reissue of an old kit. I opened the box and looked in… My childhood was moulded better than that – and it was made in the same mould. I might have aged a lot and some of my edges have become worn, but I have avoided sinkholes in every corner…
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Gloster Javelin – FAW 9 – Part Three – Trench Warfare
Try as you might to buy kits that need no major work, you are still at the mercy of the moulding shop. Tamiya may be a safer bet than FROG but do not let the tube of putty out of your sight… This was a case of trying the new sprue goo mixture. I finally…
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S.P. – Part Two – Polish Soft Serve
The plastic with which this Polish kit is moulded is not quite as soft and flaky as that used in the French Mach 2 offerings…but not too much harder. It is softer than new Airfix styrene and it pays not to cut too close to a moulded surface for fear of gouging or tearing. However,…
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Dewoitine D- 510 – Part Two – I Underestimated Them
I should not have been so cynical about the KP moulders. The wings of the Dewoitine D-510 looked a little unsure at the start – the tabs seemed vestigial. The fitting surfaces minimal. I foresaw structural re-enforcement needed. I was wrong. The kit fits. The cockpit goes into the fuselage without trimming – the fuselage…
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Belt And Braces
And a bolt and a rivet and MIG welding and a big bracket. I like my models to stay together. The increasingly scale appearance of some models demands increasingly fine attachment points for some parts. The shafts, brackets, and pivots that might once have been fitting into thick plastic sockets and pins are now just…
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Albatros D.III – Part Three – Little Pink
Which, if I recall, was the title of a Damon Runyan short story….and nothing to do with today’s topic. Some months back, in the midst of the viral shortages at our hobby shop, I was reduced to purchasing a pot of Mr. Surfacer 1200 in pink..my normal buy – Mr Surfacer 1000 – being off…
The Little World 