Category: Painting
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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…
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Tupolev ANT-5 – Part Four – Trebly Armed…

On a wing and a half. This model of the Tupolev ANT-5…or 4 – it’s hard to make head or tail of the Soviet numbering system – is a curate’s egg in many respects. The basic kit is buildable, but there are breakable parts that do so and then need to be joined with cement…
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The Irony Of It All

The use of bright yellow and bright green to attract the eye is a pretty standard practice in construction and road building – vehicles, structures, and people are all decked out accordingly to make sure someone sees them in the confusion of a building site. And the colours are all so bright and solid. Yet…
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Aichi Seiran – Part Four – Underwater Bomber

I puzzled a bit at the Tamiya box for this float-plane. No Allied code-name. Normally they give that to let people know what it was called – but this one wasn’t called anything…I suspect the Allies never saw one flying. It was meant to be an attack bomber carried by a very large submarine –…
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Aichi Seiran – Part Three – The Dance Of the Spray Booth

I have numbered the photos today for the new members of the club who wonder how to spray paint things without injury. It is not possible – expect to lose a lung at some stage of the game. In the meantime, No.1 is the Seiran in grey undercoat – in this case Mr. Surfacer 1200.…
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Gloster Gladiator Mk I – Part Three – The Mandate Of Heaven

Or of the Gloster Aircraft Company. The Gladiator is complete and ready to join the Swu Ping Provincial Air Army. The delightful thing about the SPPAA is that they have a variety of paints with which to decorate their aircraft. Oh, they do follow the guidelines provided by Nanking, but Nanking is a long way…
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Gloster Gladiator Mk I – Part Two – One Day’s Work

Every fortnight or so I visit a private home for a friendly scale modelling session with a group separate from my normal modelling club. The experience can be quite different. I enjoy the routine of each experience, but I keep them separate in my mind. Oddly, one of the other participants in the home sessions…
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Westland Whirlwind – Part Three – The Admiral’s Barge

Part of my research material about this green -and-white helicopter suggests that it wore these colour so that it could function as an ornate flying Admiral’s barge for part of the Royal Navy. Other sources assign it a training role at a Naval Air Station. Whichever is correct – and they both may be –…
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Westland Whirlwind – Part One – A Green Stranger

The Vintage Classic shelf again – this time something I have never built before – the Airfix Westland Whirlwind HAS.22. In reality, it was a Sikorsky S-55 sold to the Royal Navy. The original kit is apparently of late 50’s vintage though I never saw one in shops in Canada. Basic, as you would expect,…
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A7 Corsair II – Part Six – Library Build Champ

This is the first aircraft that I’ve built in the Cambridge Library – not in the UK, but in Floreat, Western Australia. The venue has allowed a small group of plastic modellers to have a facilities room on alternate Saturday afternoons for a model-building meeting. We share the space with slightly bemused students who effect…
