Category: subassembly
-
Douglas RB-66B – Part Two – Postponing The Office Work
Every instruction sheet for a model airplane seems to commence with work on the cockpit. This may be a simple as an old Airfix pilot-on-a-shelf to the most complex brass and resin aftermarket kit. I sort of like doing this are and sort of don’t. So I look around for a way of postponing the…
-
Slovakian Jigs – Part Two
A hot Boxing Day is the ideal time to do a new cool kit. You are not stressed by work or family commitments and the precision that good work requires is at your fingertips. At least it is if you have not been on the turps for the last week. My Christmas had been abstemious…
-
Doing The Slovakian Jig – Part One
I cannot say when my new jig kits were shipped from the port of Pressburg, but presumably it was before the Covid shutdown. My wife was able to order them from BNA in Melbourne a week before Christmas and they arrived in time to sit under the tree. I spent Boxing day with a new…
-
You Know Where You Can Stick It, Buddy
And wash your hands afterwards… I use all sorts of perfectly good adhesives for my modelling – cements, glues, resins, etc. And while they all have different formulae and different actions on the plastic models, they have one thing in common; I can make them go where they are not wanted. I have smeared every…
-
Yakovlev 6 – Part Three – The Beauty Within
The crude nature of some kits is so overwhelming that many people just cannot bring themselves to build them. This is the result of the continuing development of the hobby over the last 70 Years. We in the west have benefited tremendously from the initial efforts of the British, American, and French firms that took…
-
Do Kit Designers Hang Upside-Down In Caves?
I ask this because I have noted some of the priorities they assign to their kit designs. In the case of the beer, pretzel, and borscht bureaux, the decisions they make about the level of photo-etch to include in a cockpit area vs the basic fit of the thing into the fuselage hints at it.…
-
RCAF Privateer – Part Four – When To Commit Yourself…
Or alternately…when to have yourself committed… You have to make a decision eventually – whether to cement every blessed little part on the model and then try to paint and decal around them, or to break it down into stages and make your errors in a more orderly fashion. One road leads to madness and…
-
RCAF Privateer – Part Three – I Hate Windows
Not just the computer operating system – windows in general. Particularly when they are all down the side of a model airplane but only on the inside. If I want them to be open I have to carefully cut them out myself. That’s one of the horrors of the multi-purpose kit. I thought this sort…
-
Heinkel He 177 – Part Three – Having A Fit
Pink or otherwise – sometimes you get things that you just wouldn’t do. I’ve yet to find my limits but to be honest I’ve stopped looking… The dry-fit stage of the Heinkel promised to be a time of tears and gnashing of teeth. I’d seen what old Airfix moulds could do when stored in hobby…
-
Heinkel He 177 – Part Two – Riveting Detail
There are those in the world who would have me sand down the rivet detail of the 1967 Airfix Heinkel Greif, scribe lines between the panels, and re-mark sunken rivets. There are also people who would have me eat rutabagas and ground cockroaches…and I am here to tell you that I am as likely to…
The Little World 