Category: Self Reliance
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The Mask

And I don’t mean Jim Carrey. I may be crazy about my hobby, but there are limits… It was Windows Day at the Little Workshop. Again, I need to clarify; this means I was masking windows on a scale model airplane – not seething in rage and frustration at clunky computer commands. I use an…
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Was It Edison?

Who said he had discovered 10,000 ways that you could not do something before he made a successful electric lightbulb? I feel like that sometimes dealing with the scale modelling world. Whether it is painting or moulding, soldering or carving, there seems to be a long and winding road always ahead of me. A case…
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Doing It The Way You Want To Do it

Vs doing it the way someone else forces you to do it. Guess which feels better in the end. I am brought to this realisation with my change of activity in the scale model hobby field. I have removed one of my club connections from a public space to a private one and rearranged with…
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MiG 3 – Part Two – Can O’ Worms Canopy

You have to confront your fears as they come up. Or run away. I have been dreading the missing/broken/spoiled canopy situation ever since my first cement fingerprints on a P-47. I hasten to add, that was when I was seven – I now glue the little beggars on with PVA glue and all is serene.…
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MiG 3 – Part One – The Bag Of Almost

Another dusty diamond from the bowels of the storeroom. This is No. 180 model in the Italeri catalog – it could have been from any time between 1978 and 2018 but I’m betting on the earlier dates. I’ve no way of confirming this as it’s been supplied in a battered plastic bag full of almost.…
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The Little World Hall

Perth needs a Little World Hall…or perhaps a Little World Centre. Some place that people interested in all forms of modelling can come to for sharing, display, and learning. The SMCWA and some other clubs use the Noranda clubrooms for this, and benefit greatly. Some disciplines use other suburban halls for meetings or have premises…
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Équipe Super Mystère – Part One – L’idée Dormante

For years these Heller kits have lain on the shelves. Ignored, discarded, unconsidered. Rather the story of many lives, eh? Well the reforming zeal of the SMCWA committee swept them from the storeroom and into my stash cabinet. Whence they have flown to the workbench and photo table. They are 1:100 scale – not a…
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Your Stash Is Not You

You are not your stash – any more than you are your collection of CDs or your underwear and socks. You may indeed possess many kits, and CDs, and socks and jocks, but they do not represent your skills, thoughts, or achievements. At best they are potential things. And just as you cannot wear all…
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Should You Slow Down?

I mean at the modelling bench – not on the roads. Out there you can go as fast as the car will do and no-one really cares. Swerve from lane to lane, as well… No, at the modelling bench you need to pace yourself. If you do not have an unlimited stash to dip into…
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You Look At It

It looks at you. The scale model stand-off; you have bought a kit well beyond your comfort zone. It has 1468 parts plus a booklet and a decal sheet with 47 different options. Every track link has 18 parts and you need to make up 256 of them. This might be fine, except it is…
