Category: Modelling materials
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What’s In This Stuff, Anyway? – Part One – Paint And Cement

An inveterate visitor to hobby shops in my old age, I am now also a sucker for little vials of chemicals. Whether it is glue, paint, liquid mask, thinners, retarders, or clear coats, I never seem to leave anywhere without bearing away another expensive bottle. And i do mean expensive – At the bottle shop…
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MiG 15 – Part Seven – Supercheap To The Rescue

Do you remember my series of tests done to find out which acrylics, enamels, and lacquers would spray best? And the subsequent quest for clear coatings that would let me do decals and then protect the models? Well I looked out my sample tablets today and reassessed them. The local version of a floor polish…
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MiG 15 – Part Four – Seams To be Working

The anhedral of the MiG 15 wings… -3º…was cranked into the build today and I like to think it was successful. You’ve seen the jigging in the last post. The cementation was Mr. Cement Deluxe smeared on both the wing and the fuselage. It sets up pretty quickly and goes hard enough for jazz well…
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MiG 15 – Part Two – Bring On The Clowns, Popov

Well, I stared and stared at the colour call-out and decal sheet for the MiG 15 and just couldn’t get excited. The entire outside of the airplane was aluminium colour – with only a little red or blue on a tail or nose. I am not against aluminium colour per se but I’ve recently built quite a…
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The Vacuum Forms

If you want to put the fear of God into someone, just say vacuum-form. They will either go very hot or very cold, and you must be prepared for them to pull the lever on the ejector seat. You may end up talking to yourself and landing the thing yourself… The vac-form kit seems to…
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I Think We Have A Winner – GSI Creos

Constant experimentation within the model building craft is a two-edged sword. Do too little of it and you never find out how to advance your skills – to too much and you never develop any skill to its maximum capacity before you’ve hared off to another… But occasionally you can get it just right. The…
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North American AT6 – Part Four – Nailing The Colour

I have discovered many interesting things about colour since I returned to scale modelling – both upon the original subjects and on our models: a. The best colour reference is the actual article – untouched by time and not modified by any curators or experts. The fact that nothing is ever this perfect is beside…
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Fairey Fulmar – Part Three – The Dirty Bird

The Mister Craft Fairey Fulmar is proceeding apace. There were so few pieces to assemble that the basic structure went together in a day – and the decision to use solvent-based lacquers meant that the following day saw most of the painting taken care of. So now it is sitting on the jig airing out…
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Good Local Advice

I am benefitting today from the fact that this column automatically circulates out to our local social media network. One of my friends has seen the recent post regarding paint and has responded with what i needed to know. He mentioned in a Facebook reply that many paints have more than just evaporation happening as…

