Category: subassembly
-
Hawker Typhoon 1B – Part Two – Scratch
Even if you don’t itch. It’ll be good for you. The bare tunnel between the open radiator grill and the open cockpit on this model are extreme – even for the early days of moulding. Airfix and Matchbox at least gave you a pilot, even if he was attached to the fuselage side with plastic…
-
Ural Starter Truck – Part Two – Straight Into It
And likely to remain straight, as well. The designers of this Ural kit are smarter than the average bear. The moulded the basic frame as one piece with springs attached and a number of extremely precise location holes throughout it. This meant that, even in the hurley burley of a club morning – with the…
-
Hobby Boss MiG3 – Part Two – Day One
Tuesday at the club is always a balancing act – the opportunity to speak with friends vs time to build a model. Often friends win out and a great deal of manure exchange takes place. It makes the hobby all that more fertile. It is a good opportunity to work on a simple kit like…
-
French Lancaster – Part Three – Strut…
Alors! As soon as you see a good idea – then a better idea – all the ideas prior to it become bad ones. Students of model kit design are particularly sensitive to this, because we pay high prices for our education. Remember the old model airplane kits you bought that had a slot on…
-
French Lancaster – Part Two – Part Works
No, not one of those wretched Paul Hamlyn newsagency schemes that sell you a part and a line of guff each week until you either spend $ 2000 or throw the remains in the bin… This is about the little sub-assemblies you can deal with as the main parts are setting. Cockpit, tailplanes, engine nacelles,…
-
Atlantic Wildcat – Part Two – Look, Ma! No Instructions!
Do the wings go on the back or the front? Well, it was free. How can you complain at the lack of instructions with that in mind.? And how hard can it be to make a monoplane fighter? Not hard at all, as one afternoon at the bench showed. Even early Minicraft kits are good…
-
Mi-2T Helicopter – Part Two – When I’m Washi-ing Windows
Wi’ nod to George Formby… My relationship to clear plastic parts and canopy windows has changed over the decades. My original plan was to cover them with cement fingerprints and I can report that my first years in the hobby were entirely successful. Even if the Mounties in Kaslo B.C. lose my 1966 fingerprints (…
-
Mil 24 Hind F – Part Three – Goo Time
In some cases that is a good time and in some just a goo time. I have written before about making my own sprue goo and using it for seam and gap filling. I have largely thrown away the Vallejo, Perfect Plastic Putty, and Mr Hobby products in favour of this home-made solution. I also…
-
What’s The Biggest Headache In Model Aircraft Kits?
Is it gaps in the joints? Impossibly big sprue feed gates? Dodgy decals? Nope – the worst thing about a model aircraft kit is the landing gear. Unless you’re building a flying boat ( and they have their own problems ) you will encounter your worst moment with the legs. Your problem will be balanced…
-
Tupolev Tu-2 – Part Three – No Fill Nowhere
Watching a friend struggle with a small-run Czech model of a P-38 Lightning has been a sobering experience. Every corner of the model as it has been constructed from tiny sub-assemblies has been filled with white plastic putty. I don’t know which one he is using, but I hope it is economical. The mutterings have…
The Little World 