Category: Self Reliance
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Know When To Fold ‘Em

Kenny Rogers’ good advice to scale model builders. We all know the virtues of perseverance and hard work, having had it drummed into us by parents, schools, and employers. What has been missing is the virtue of quitting while you are ahead. Kenny Rogers’ gambler knew it, and it is time we did too. You…
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Watching For The Delivery

Or, not every on-line transaction is seamless. The order for the little die-cast motor cars was made after careful consideration – I was going to need specific years and types to enhance my 2025 exhibition layout. Good sense would gather the elements needed now while they are still available. The net. A shop in South…
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The Home Printer

A guide for the scale modeller. I have long come to grips with the business of home printing. It started in the dear old darkroom days of film photography and locked the family out of the bathroom/darkroom many a night. Now we are digital, they can get in at any time, and I just sit…
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The Stoics Guide To The Little World

For stoics, if problems exist outside, they have ways of dealing with them, inside. The stoic dips very rarely into the pool of external anxiety, and then only briefly. Their first step is to determine whether some event truly affects them or is the affair of another and can be safely ignored. In our hobby,…
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” Model Not Recommended For Novices “

I have seen this on reviews and appended to the end of kit boxes. It warns the unwary that the designers have exceeded their dosage again and moulded up something that is near-on impossible to build. It is even more poignant when it appears next to a completed model – making you wonder if somewhere…
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LeO 45 – Part Three – The Unseen Hand

Ooh. Sounds like the title of a Sax Rohmer novel, doesn’t it? Well no, but don’t let me stop you from suspecting villains lurking in the dark. Some of them were responsible for this kit. The idea of masking off the canopy and nose area with the clear plastic parts that would eventually be cemented…
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Build What You Know

Not what you don’t. This doesn’t mean you have to restrict your building to domestic objects or your own trade. Scale models of insurance policies are probably exquisite but few people bother to read them in 1:72 scale. You can do anything you like, of course, but you’ll be happier doing something that you understand…
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I Asked About The Difference…

Between fantasy and science fiction, and the chap with the space helmet, ray gun, and rocket back pack just shook his head. So did his four-headed dragon, and that was a messy business. Took us half an hour to put out spot fires. In the future, I shall just observe the future from a distance.…
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The Visiting Club

Scale modellers who make plastic kits know that when an exhibition is coming up they need to steel their nerves to the sticking point for two things; the journey there and the journey home. Because the model that you spent three months carefully cementing together has a dozen points of protrusion – plastic guns, pitot…
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New Show

Old theatre. The Western Australian scale model exhibition took place this last weekend and a lot of people held their breaths. The long-serving committee that had presented it for many years past ( decades, perhaps… ) had decided to retire and there was some concern that the exhibition would cease. A new committee was formed…
