Category: Modelling materials
-
Peas And Carrots – Part Four – The Top Coat
The top coat on a model is intended to seal the decals in place and give the surface whatever sort of reflectivity you feel is appropriate. Night bombers might have a matt or semi-matt surface while civilian planes get a satin or gloss finish. I am partial to the latter myself for some of the…
-
Peas And Carrots – Part Three – The First Sealer

The first clear coat on the paint mule chips was meant to duplicate the sealer that one puts on after the paint job is completed to allow decals to be applied without silvering. The US and UK modellers speak of using Future or Kleer acrylic floor polish for this. I tried three of the new…
-
Peas And Carrots – Part Two – The Colour Coats

Why peas and carrots? Because they are vegetables that always look better in the images on the cans than they do on your plate – and they are always greener or more orange in someone else’s dinner. My experiments are designed to improve their colour and flavour on mine. The colour paint coats that went…
-
Peas And Carrots – Part One – Haunting the Shops

And paint mules. A fine dinner combination, but you have to be trained up to the taste. Today has been another day spent in the Lawrence Liverwurst labs, experimenting with finishing materials. I have seen intriguing advertisements for different clear coats and decided to see if they were indeed the El Dorado of painting. I…
-
When The World Gives You Lemons

Make a lemon meringue pie. SImple. This meme business is getting tame… When the world gives you MDF board, Foamcore sheets, and old pieces of matt board you have more of a challenge. The thing to realise about it is that the ingredients essentially cost pennies and anything you do with them raises the value…
-
The Aftermarket Kit

Or how to spend money with both barrels. I have now started to take a scale modelling magazine each month at the local newsagency. This is great, because I was starting to lose faith in the publishing industry there for a while. I would run the racks and find nothing that could hold enough interest…
-
That Hint Of Fraud

I was attracted to a weblog column that mentioned a famous British modeller – Phil Flory – and his video productions. The chap who wrote the column from the US was not at all pleased with Phil, and made his unhappiness evident. I was not convinced by it…it seemed to have a ring of spite.…
-
Supermarine Spitfire Mk XIX – Part Two – ” Well! Excuse Me! “

Oops! Sorry, madam. I have intruded upon you while you are in a state of composition. One might take pictures of a lady in a state of undress, but one should never do so when she only has half her make-up on. I seem to have caught the new PRU spitfire with putty in her…
-
Can You Hear The Cheaping?

No, it’s not the sparrows on the lawn or the dry wheel bearings on the Toyota…it’s the cheaping noise the modeller makes when they want to do something frugally. Put another way, it’s the sound a penny makes when you pinch it. No, this will not be a post on how to crochet a Sunderland…
-
” There Should Be An Enormous Kerboom…”

As Marvin the Martian was wont to say…and if my mazel runs to form this year that is exactly what I might produce in my Little Workshop. You see I have taken to collecting solvents and thinners. It started with a simple bottle of Tamiya X-20A and seems to have burgeoned. The advent of lacquer…
