Category: Scale Models
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Koolhoven Fk 58 – Part Four – Quick Change Artist
Sharp-eyed readers will notice something unusual about this small Dutch fighter of 1939. It is undressing… Or rather, it is caught in between one set of colours and another. The real planes were delivered to the French air force from the Rotterdam plant of Koolhoven just prior to war with the diplomatic ruse of painting…
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Koolhoven Fk 58 – Part Three – When Disaster Strikes
Don’t roll over – Strike back. Firstly, don’t panic. Nothing that you can do to a plastic model kit will kill anyone or bankrupt you. You can lay the worst result down in the rubbish bin, walk away from it, and go with new knowledge that could not be got any other way. It’s like…
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Koolhoven Fk 58 – Part One – One Of The Few
Not the RAF Few – the Dutch few – few made and few supplied. An export order from France. This Azur kit has fallen into my eager hands through a stash sale and is everything that the proper Czech short-run kit should be; obscure, and composed of styrene plastic, acetate, brass and polyester resin. The…
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Consolidated B-24 D – Part Three – Take That, Ya Basket!
A new selection of things to add to my least-favourite kit experiences. Don’t get me wrong – after smoothing the lumpy exterior of this old Revell casting, the parts have gone together pretty well. I used the progressive cementation method and the workshop clamps coped with the complex forces needed – the fuselage and wings…
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Consolidated B-24 D – Part Two – The Toxic Rivet
Or should that be noxious? Whatever, the exaggerated rivet detail on this old Revell kit is probably what causes it to be rejected by the modern builders. Yet, under the spotty exterior is a pattern of decent engraved panel lines. I researched other’s efforts and found one ambitious chap who sanded the rivets off entirely.…
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Consolidated B-24D – Part One – The Unloved
It started as a bit of a joke amongst club mates. One chap had been given a Revell model of a B-24D made sometime in the 1980’s and everyone who saw it condemned it as unbuild-able. He was so discouraged that he was going to bin it. But then offered it around the table for…
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Whenever You Feel Guilty
Whenever you feel guilty about spending money on your scale models at the hobby shop, reflect on the other places you could go to: a. The liquor store. There are bottles of wine that cost more than your entire wardrobe, including the Mickey Mouse bathrobe. Once bought, most of these bottles can never be drunk;…
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Lockheed Ventura – Part Three – Shiny Is As Shiny Does
And you can’t tell a paint by the tin. The ugly bug in the heading image had just received the third colour of a standard RAF day bomber scheme and was waiting to be de-husked. The masking was, if anything, worse looking than usual, but for a good reason. The worms were standard but the…
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Lockheed Ventura – Part Two – Assembly LIne
Well, it worked in Burbank – it’ll work in Bull Creek. I tackled the Lockheed Ventura in two club meetings as well as here at home by the simple process of parcelling it out into sub-assemblies and assigning them to places where the work could be done with the most facility. This was exactly the…
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Junkers D.1 – Part Four – Does What It Says
On the tin… I wonder what the Junkers man said to the first German test pilot who climbed aboard old No. 1 and settled down into the corrugated metal? ” You von’t stick your finger through zis one, Herr Baron…”. While I find the vertical tailplane to be somewhat agricultural, the rest of the structure…
The Little World 