Category: Painting
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Do You Dine Clean Or Dirty?
Old British officers will know the difference. For scale modellers the question may be posed differently; do you build clean or dirty? Are your models fully weathered, tinted, oiled, and matted, or are they factory-fresh. It can be a great topic if you want to get tempers up – the two groups striving to justify…
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Airfix Auster – Part Two – One A Week In Bull Creek
The Auster is going well. The build is not taxing, as sight of the sprue trees probably suggested. It is going well enough, indeed, to suggest that it might be a good return build for another form. One doesn’t get a great deal of detail, but then I don’t think Auster or Taylorcraft put a…
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Fokker DR.1 – Part Two – Schwartz
Specifically, Wilhelm Schwartz – in 1918 at Mesniles. That’s the plate that I have based my Fokker triplane upon. The kits that come out of this iconic aircraft all seem to assign it to Manfred v. Richthofen and mould it in red plastic. An understandable choice, as he was possibly the most famous ace of…
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Backed Away From The Airbrush
And no-one got hurt… My daughter – a net-savvy person – heard me chortling about the idea of using cheap vodka for airbrush working. She did some searching and found an Amazon product that could arrive at the door for 1.3¢ per ml. I had no words. She ordered a bottle, and I prepared the…
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Grumman Tracker – Part Three – A Bonnie Aircraft
Bonnie, but not magnificent… The Idea Model Company Grumman S2F-1 model that came to me at a low price has proved to be an excellent bargain. It might not have the precision of a Hasegawa or Tamiya product, but it is here, now, and has built up to a good stand-off model. The Royal Canadian…
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Mitsubishi Betty – Part Two – Not-So-Ghostly Seam
I wondered what that cracking noise was… It was the top fuselage seam giving way. I must have flexed a wing too much and surpassed the tensile strength of the thin cement used to seal the fuselage. Well that’s what undercoat painting is designed to catch – the flaw that occurs before you add a…
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The Odd Modeller
This will be a delicate subject. Give me a moment to put on my hob-nail boots. Firstly, let me say that I realise there are scale modellers with mental and emotional challenges. I sympathise with them and hope that they get adequate professional care to help them cope with life. Secondly, I am not the…
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Curtiss H16 – Part Six – Long Yellow Wings
And a remarkable scale model. The history of the Curtiss H16, as well as the British-built Felixstowe types, is available on the net. They were patrol birds in the WW1 period and undoubtedly endured very hard service over the waters. It is not surprising that so few have survived to become museum exhibits. This Roden…
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Curtiss H16 – Part Four – Donks Are Shön
With my sincere apologies to Wayne Newton… These two donks have been the most complex engines I’ve yet seen in a 1:72 kit. The fuel pipes and cooling assembly alone should have frightened me away, but I was too foolish to run. Over a couple of weeks the constituent parts have been cemented on –…
The Little World 