Category: Self Reliance
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What To Do When You Can’t Get It

Relax, lady. This is about scale modelling – not sex. What do we do when the scale model magazine shows a wonderful new range of after-market parts to detail a kit and everyone else in the world can get it except us? Stuck on the edge of the Indian Ocean way out past where the…
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How Far Down Do The Rabbits Go?

And I don’t mean on the internet. How far down does a scale modeller pursue the business – at what point does the quest for detail stop? How about weathering and appearance? Where does the line of diminishing returns cross that of fatigue? I think it differs with the genre and scale of the models,…
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Never Leave Well Enough Alone

You do not need a Stradivarius to fiddle like mad. You can be dissatisfied to your own satisfaction, and go from there. I looked at tmy new tool wall inside my hobby room and was struck by how sad it all looked. An online search for an alternative turned up nothing good – all the…
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Tasman Airspeed Oxford Mk I – Part Six – French Silver Grey

The Mr Color pot of French silver grey may have started life as a grey – or a silver… I can’t remember which. Over several years it has been topped up with a dash of whichever sliver I have in the airbrush pot as a left-over – and equally be whatever light grey is swirling…
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Definition Of A Hobbyist:

Person who does dumb things, pays over the odds for them, and then waylays everyone around to show how they turned out in the end. Stop blushing. No matter what your hobby is, this is true. And God bless you. You are often the last repository of happiness in a miserable society. You can smile.…
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Dissatisfaction

Is the step-mother of invention. With cheapness as a sibling – how could I resist the temptation to rebuild the modelling desk. The old one featured a wall of Chinese take-away food containers that held tools and materials – they were hot-glued to a sheet of foam board gaffer-taped to the workbench. No expense spared…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Three -Guessing Game

Meetings in the design bureau of a scale model company must be interesting to attend. Are there knives? Do people disappear? Do they call in dancing girls and order pizza? I ask because some of the decisions that come from these meetings seem to be motivated by strange desires. Who would have split the fuselage…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Two – One-Man Pit

If you were a front gunner in a Tupolev SB2 you were wise to take a flask of tea and a novel with you for the flight. As you entered by a hatch under the nose, were out of touch with the rest of the crew, and were not given the key to the toilet,…
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Is Your Kit Pre-Painted?

A friend once showed me a model kit in very small scale – 1/144 or smaller – that was pre-painted by the maker. It was delightful to look at, in a sort of toy-like manner. The makers had finished the fighter in camouflage but I think there were a choice of decals that could be…

