Category: Painting
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I Learns A Waluable Lesson…

In undoubted proof that you are never too old to learn, I have. Learned, that is…the old just comes with the territory. Shooting my scale model reports for this column, I follow a regular pattern. An introduction with the kit’s box, instructions, sprue trees, and decal sheet, then a number of building stages, then a…
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Bright Or Blight?

Are the colourful liveries spoiling us? If you are a scale hot rod or custom car builder, just quit reading now. This column has nothing to tell you. If you are an armour person, you can also go make a dark brown cup of coffee with flakes of rust in it. If you are an…
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Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 – Part Five – Three Cheers For The Transport Service

And their new SM.81 general service aircraft – set to deliver the liquid products of Ruritania as far away as Switzerland and Holland. The converted 1930’s Italian bomber that has just joined the RRAAF in the Transport Service started life with 6 machine guns and two bomb bays. It now has two bottle bays (…
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Savoia Marchetti SM.81 – Part Four – Stop Laughing

This is serious. That’s an Australian joke, for the overseas readers. For the locals, its a historic Australian cartoon. Go look it up. The Bulletin long ago. In my case the risible arose because I needed to occlude the window spaces of the Pipistrello before painting. I’d deliberately left out the bulls-eye plastic windows that…
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Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 – Part Two – Club Model

The discipline of building specific models in specific circumstances seems to be working out reasonably well – I keep two separate model kits for the two clubs I attend, and one kit a’building in my home workshop. Of course there are cross-overs when one comes to the painting stage – then I use my own…
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I Choose My Paints From The WTF Numbering System

It is the favoured organisational system of the major model paint makers. They each invent a complete system for their paints that has no relation to that of other factory. This means they can all stay in their corner of the playground at recess. And when I want to paint a modern jet that has…
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Handley Page Heyford – Part Four – HP Sauce

I did not even make it to March – the Handley Page Heyford that was to have been the crowning glory of Matchbox March was completed on the evening of February 28. And it was the last Matchbox kit in the stash. I shall do my research to see what other kits Matchbox made in…
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A Thousand Pictures Are Worth A Word

And that word is generally : ” inaccurate “… In a world awash in internet images, the scale modeller could be forgiven for thinking that they’ll never have a problem with colour again. All they’ll have to do is google up an image of the prototype they’re building and copy the picture. This is as…
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Nieuport 17C – Part Five – Silver Beauty

I intended this build as a little stop-gap project to fill the time until Matchbox March. It has proved to be a rewarding gem. The Revell kit was unprepossessing enough – indeed most of the tiny WW1 planes from this firm are old kits and you find yourself prejudiced because of it. Of course, if…
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Nieuport 17C – Part Four – Lumière Frères

The Revell box art for the Nieuport 17C does not match the colour call-out. Which is correct? M. Google, please step forward… And he advances magnificently. On the Wikipedia site, the entry for the Nieuport 17 shows a premier image of a 17 sitting quietly in a field. There are no other aircraft seen, and…
