Category: Painting
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Damn The French

Not for their food, or wines, or railway trains – which are excellent. Not for their beautiful women or their wise philosophers. Damn them for their aero camouflage schemes. Particularly the three-colour ones used in the 1930’s and 1940’s. They are hell to paint. The colours are fine – I like grey undersides. British Sky…
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Another Bronco – Part Four – Red Hot Mama

Don’t be puzzled – the name was given to the Bronco as it is a CFS fire spotter and the model was donated by a famous exotic dancer here in Perth. I love my life. The Bronco seems to be a superb choice as a working fire aircraft – twin engines, plenty of power, sturdy…
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RAF BE2c – Part Two – Club Work

And not the sort on an ice floe in sealing season… The BE2c is a Mens Shed model, which means the build is stretched out over a number of weeks – building interspersed with painting followed by more building. It is not a bad way of enforcing a sense of rhythm and giving adequate time…
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Potez 540T – Part Three – It’s A Fish…

But not the sort that you choose to eat – Rick Stein would throw this one back. Dick Stein is not so fussy. The addition of the nose fairing is marginally better than the glass turret, but it has given a deep-sea blobfish look to the poor old Potez – in grey primer it is…
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Grey – Gray – Grau

This is not a black and white post… I was gifted a number of paint bottles – a LARGE number – and had to decide what to do with them. The first step was to ascertain whether they could be used with my normal airbrush and thinners – and apparently they could, with good success.…
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RAF Wellington – Part Five – Desert Heavy

Well, not that heavy – remember that this bomber is twin engined to a pre-war design. But the theatre at the time saw few combat aircraft much bigger. The Vickers Wellington Ic is decked in a Western Desert night scheme drawn directly from the instruction call-out. The odd wavy top edge to the coal-black under-colour…
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RAF Wellington – Part Four – ” I Think You’ll Find…”

Rack off, anorak. I found the colour call-out sheet with this MPM model very pleasing and I am going to follow their instructions. I also found a number of images on Google that told me about details of the real thing. They are not in colour, but the tones of the photos are accurate. The…
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RAF Wellington – Part Three – Bow Pen For The Win

If you do not have one, get one. Get two. Get several. You can never have enough bow pens. I have three – one from a drafting set my Grandfather used – one from a set my Father used, and one from a cheap eBay buy. The first two are best, the last adequate. Whenever…
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Bellanca Pacemaker – Part Five – Wop May

Wilfred ” Wop ” May apparently had the distinction of being the target that Baron von Richthofen was chasing when he was shot down. There is a perpetual controversy about who did that shooting, but I’ll bet Wilfred was glad of it anyway. He went on to form a bush-flying company out of Edmonton that…
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Shoot Low, Boys.

They’re riding shetlands. The magazines that are published monthly, and bought yearly, all seem to praise extraordinary efforts put into scale kit building. It often involves extraordinary expense as well as inordinate time. The model engineer hobby is the prime example of this; years spent making a workshop – to spend more years making specialized…
