Category: Modelling Supplies
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Grim Reality Vs Grim Fantasy
I am often puzzled at the selection of model kits on the shelves of my local hobby dealers. They’re good dealers and I love them dearly – just as I love the dealers in the eastern states when I visit them. Every one is different but they all have a certain feel to them that…
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B-17 – Part Two – What’s In The Box?
What’s in any kit box? Hopes and fears, mostly. Hopes that the kit is all there and not fractured or warped and fears that the mould may have deteriorated with time. The decals are an entirely separate class of anxiety… In this case the sprues are nice clean Academy products, which may have been nice…
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Boeing B-17 – Part One – Why Do I Buy Famous Airplanes?
Why indeed, if I don’t intend to build the famous version? Because the famous versions are what sell to other people and that’s what the kit makers manufacture. The best I can do is look at the basic structure of the thing and see if it conforms to my plans …or can be modified enough.…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part One – Katyuska
I was on tenterhooks when my daughter came back from Japan recently – I had tasked her with getting me a nice 1:72 model aircraft kit that we couldn’t get here in Australia. She obliged by searching out both a major and a minor hobby shop in Tokyo and bringing back 4 models – all…
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Play It As It Lays
That is either a very good rule for golf or a really weird idea involving musical chickens. But for our purposes we’ll apply it to scale plastic model building. Many people in my scale modelling club – The Tuesday Soviet – pursue the purchase of kits through the internet. They patronise larger shops in the…
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Model Porn
No, you fools. Not THAT kind of model porn. Scale model porn. The tempting images that the manufacturers of model kits put out to lure you into the dens of plastic iniquity so that they can separate you from your money. Box art, posters, videos. And the columns and columns of aftermarket accessory packs advertised in…
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Vought CorsairF4U-1 – Part Three – Thanks, Doc…
Thank you, Dr. Tamiya. I needed that. That slap in the face with a model kit: That fits together without sanding or filing. With an entire cockpit in 1:72 as a matter of course. With wing seams that need no putty. With the engine where all cylinders are part of the injection moulding and no…
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Vought Corsair F4U-1 – Part Two – Which Came First?
Well, which came first; the chikin or the tamago? Did Tamiya get a good reputation by building precise model kits or did they build precise model kits because they had a good reputation? At what point did they say to themselves ” We must make excellent products above all…”. Did they have a modelling adolescence in which…
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Not Quite So Many Paints
Well, another day and another visit… I strolled down the paint aisle today to discover the SMS paints that I had reviewed yesterday gone from the shelves – an empty paint rack with their name on it where they once were. Leading me to a series of speculations: a. Did they not sell? They were…
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So Many Paints. So Many Choices. So Little Time.
I found myself agonising again in the paint aisle of Hobbytech. Not at prices or the paucity of paint – far from it. The prices are reasonable enough but the range of paints available is far greater than my discriminatory mechanism can cope with. I am past spoilt for choice – I am made anxious…
The Little World 