Category: Painting
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We Need The Tiny Tin Can

I am looking at small and large cans of paint – spray paint, as it happens – and wondering at the rationale around it. The can contained a grey Tamiya primer. I’ve just sprayed the very last of it on a 1:72 aircraft and can feel satisfied – it completed the job just before it…
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Cheap And Nasty Or Cheap And Nicely?

When I came to Australia in the 60’s I encountered a whole new division of language. Coming from North America I had experienced Canadian English and American English – now I had Australian English to learn. It wasn’t that hard, once you discarded the ocker colloquialisms. Of course you had to pick them up again…
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Is There A Worse Way To Do It?

Because if there is, I want to know all about it. I love horror stories and the things that people invent to do for themselves in their modelling workshops are no exception. Oh, I don’t mean the accidents and mishaps. I can cut my fingers or spill thinner into the electric fire myself. And who…
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Special Greetings From The Hobby Shop Siege

This is the second day of the hobby shop siege and the management hasn’t gotten me out yet. I’ve holed up behind the paint racks and taken hostages. Police negotiators have turned spotlights onto the acrylics but I am refusing to budge until my demands are met. I have sent out a manifesto and have…
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Hakenkreuz

Swastika. Deal with the idea your own way* – imagine it to be an ancient symbol of good or a modern symbol of evil. Remember whatever you wish to remember. I’m not in charge of your thoughts. I noted some years ago that there was a legal barrier to display of the swastika in Germany…
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When All Else Fails, Cheap Out.

We all cruise the aisle of the hobby shop, hardware store, craft shop, or toy store looking for the Great Bargain. The Score. The Once-In-A-Lifetime chance to buy a $5000 model for 50¢. It never eventuates, of course, and we can become bitter and twisted. The thing we all need to do is realise that…
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The Myriad Of Little Worlds

In one holiday weekend – devoted to Western Australia Day – I found I visited five different Little Worlds. And in most cases the costs were under a sawbuck, including coffee. You can’t beat that on the international travel circuit. Day One: I appear as a cameo walk-on at a belly dance concert…the Little World…
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How Did They Do That? Vs How Would I Do That?

Well there you go. You are now officially trying to out-think the designers and manufacturers of the model kit in the box. You may also be about to transcend the thinking of the original equipment makers. It’s your 30 bucks and your tube of glue, so more power to you and keep out of the way…
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Extra Dark Sea Yellow-Pink

Or was that RLM Light Puce? Or Cockpit Poo Brown? Every source of information that one can access about authentic colours for scale models is based upon the opinion of the person who wrote it…and that may be perfectly valid, adequately valid, nearly valid, or a dog-bone lie. If it is connected in a commercial…
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The Great White West Is Not A Great White Waste

What’s white and cream and arctic and matt and gloss and lives in an old Patak’s curry paste jar? My new model paint, that’s what. And I think the most expensive component was the empty jar. I was up to the paint stage with my Air World museum buildings and they were daunting structures –…
