Category: subassembly
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Fairchild Flying Boxcar – Part Two – The Silver Carcase
The Fairchild Flying Boxcar model is proceeding apace, but the pace is slow. This is a deliberate decision as I am using it as my weekly Men’s Shed project. This means I do most of the work on it in the Tuesday 9:00 to 12:30 time slot when I can attend the modelling club. So…
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” It’s Only A 1:72 Model…”
The word to look at in the title is ” only ” – and I would look at it askance, if I were you… I’ve noticed that there can be quite some little hierarchy in the scale model building fraternity – based upon a number of factors: a. Years spent doing the hobby. This is…
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Piasecki Flying Banana – Part Three – The Jesus Nut
My friend Warren tells me Air Force facts and trivia gleaned from his years of service. One of the latest bits is the slang term for the nut that finally secures a helicopter’s rotor to the vertical shaft that drives it – the Jesus Nut. If it fails you go to… Well, joking aside, I…
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Grumman Duck – Part Two – Ungainly Is As Ungainly Does
Like most seaplanes – the Rufe, the Spitfire on floats, the Seamew – the Grumman Duck looks vaguely like a practical joke the designers played on the factory that leaked out past the drafting table, and they were too embarrased to admit it was all in fun. Yet the planes worked and were very useful…
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Expansion, Contraction, And You – Part Two
The basic idea today was to see how much warpage by expansion or contraction would be produced by various adhesives commonly used in the Little Workshop for scale model building. The substrates upon which they were to work were selected from common fibrous sheet material; good photo-quality bond paper, thin card, and matt board. These…
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Well, Boys, I’m Sticking To My Workbench
Yet again. Where the hell did that patch of superglue come from? I claim no record for the number of times that I have inadvertently adhered to the furniture. Not that I wouldn’t get it, but it’d be nothing to be proud of. It shows a triumph of sloppiness over organisation – but at least…
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Piasecki HUP Retriever – Part Four – The Model As Teaching Aid
As a kid interested in mechanical devices and particularly in aircraft and cars, there were a number of remarkably stupid ideas in my mind at the time. I would look at some fabulous machine and admire the external styling without the slightest notion of what might be going on inside. That’s pretty standard for a…
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When Life Gives You Lemons
Or excess oranges…squeeze them and refine the oil from the peel. Then bottle it and sell it as model building cement. Or food flavouring. Or whatever – just get the customer to give you the money. Whether the resultant oily liquid makes good cakes or sticks model airplanes together effectively is irrelevant. As long as…
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Bell Model 47 – Part Two – Nothing Looks Like An Airplane
Upon opening the Italeri Bell Model 47 box and sliding out the two sprues I was struck by the fact that nothing on them looked like it could end up being an airplane. A collection of random boxy shapes interspersed with spindly framework. Frighteningly delicate parts. And when you come to think of it, wasn’t…
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Boeing-Vertol CH 147 Chinook – Part Three – Miniature Misgivings
When constructing a kit I have learned to look at the instructions carefully. Then ignore a certain percentage of them – in particular the ones that ask me to glue on small breakable bits early in the piece. If I do so, I condemn myself to great anxiety over them ever after. There is a…
The Little World 