Category: Tools
-
Which Cement Shall I Use To Ruin My Sweater?

I’m glad that I own more than one garment – because I sure as heck own more than one kind of adhesive. I did not realise just how many until I got a kit that is moulded from cheese and determined to try out which would be best to stick it. In many respects it…
-
De Havilland Mosquito Mk II – Part Seven – Challenges Must Yield To Science!

Part Six of the DH Mosquito Mk II saga showed the dull and sad paint job that I ended up with after failing to think properly about what I was doing – I sprayed a matting acrylic too heavily and cured it under too high a temperature. I regarded the result as a failure on…
-
I’m More Eco-Virtuous Than You Are

So there too, hah! Actually all us model builders have an opportunity to stick it to the Facebook/Shopping Centre/News bite saints who scold us daily about everything we think or do – particularly the ones who would deny us everything from plastic straws to bear traps. We are ahead of their game: a. Plastic straws.…
-
Messerschmitt 109 – Part Four – The Production Line

I cannot think of a worse way to approach the business of being a scale modeller than that of a production line worker with a contract to produce a product in a set time. This also applies to the full-size workers who made the full-size airplanes – Some were employed and some were drafted and…
-
Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Three – The Beauty Salon

It was cold tonight. Rainy. I adjourned into the computer room with a portable modelling tray to proceed with the Hurricane in some comfort – the Little Workshop was just too miserable to work in, even with the heater on. The task was masking the pattern illustrated in the Avia publication on Canadian warplanes. I…
-
Ticking Them Off

Ticking them off is ticking me off. I mean the various means for producing camouflage paint schemes on model aircraft. Recently I tried the Silly Putty Snake method for making British A and B aircraft patterns. I had two pots of different brands of silly putty and had researched all the YouTube videos on how…
-
Cheap And Nasty Or Cheap And Nicely?

When I came to Australia in the 60’s I encountered a whole new division of language. Coming from North America I had experienced Canadian English and American English – now I had Australian English to learn. It wasn’t that hard, once you discarded the ocker colloquialisms. Of course you had to pick them up again…
-
The Little Workshop – When A Hunch Pays Off

I rarely go downtown these days unless it is to haunt the bookstore or check up on the branch of the camera shop I used to work for. The rest of the shops are filled with wonderful things that I don’t want and the streets are filled with people I wish to avoid. But there…
-
And A Tip Of The Hatlo Hat* To…

Wayne Robinson. Who read my piece on canopy painting and replied – alerting me to a very good English drafting pen that could be used to apply precise paint lines to models. I went to the site he quoted, looked it over and spied one line in their advertisement that looked interesting. They compared their…

