Category: Uncategorized
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Play It As It Lays

That is either a very good rule for golf or a really weird idea involving musical chickens. But for our purposes we’ll apply it to scale plastic model building. Many people in my scale modelling club – The Tuesday Soviet – pursue the purchase of kits through the internet. They patronise larger shops in the…
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Model Porn

No, you fools. Not THAT kind of model porn. Scale model porn. The tempting images that the manufacturers of model kits put out to lure you into the dens of plastic iniquity so that they can separate you from your money. Box art, posters, videos. And the columns and columns of aftermarket accessory packs advertised in…
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Percival Provost T Mk 1 – Part Three – A Decent Set Of Clothes

The Percival Provost is done – and inside of a week. I am not surprised, as it is a rather simple kit on a mechanical basis. That is as a trainer should be – after all, the student pilot needs all the help he can get and the flying school doesn’t want to do more…
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It Works, Igor! The Creature Lives!

This week’s photo session at the scale model club was the first actual use of the new focus-stacking technique I’ve just learned. It is undoubtedly old hat for many, but I have a new head and it just fits me fine. The technique is based in Photoshop 2019 and required several steps – but as…
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Hawker Seahawk – Part Two – Ess Bend Aviation

Now that the contract for refurbishing aircraft has been let out to Ess bend Aviation in Alberta, Stein’s Air World can concentrate upon preparing museum displays rather than spreading an aircraft over an entire shop for years. This is what happens when in-house restoration is undertaken. Here are a couple of pictures of the work…
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Hawker Sea Hawk – Part One – Memories of the 60’s

A casual post on the internet alerted me that my favourite go-to model company had released a 1:72 version of one of my favourite models of the 1960’s: the Hawker Sea Hawk. And this one from Hobby Boss was reported to be more than just a quick-build kid’s kit. Be that as it may, I…
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The Scale Modelling Culture

Or ” How I learned to cut throats on a green plastic mat “. As scale model builders we mess with the ideas of popular culture all the time. The vast majority of the population who have never built anything smaller than an IKEA bookshelf have no idea what closely focusing on a fresh kit…
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Back Yards Were Bigger Back Then…

And so were the manufacturers of scale models who conducted their businesses out of them, it would appear. And we didn’t realise it… I am not going to mention big names here. Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Lindberg, Airfix, Tamiya, etc. Their local representatives can breathe out again and put the axe back on the table –…
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AIrfix Mosquito – Part Two – The Lists…

There can be two lists connected with every scale model airplane kit; the list of things that went right and the list of things that went wrong. You’re only in trouble if the lists contain the same items…Here’s the good one for this Airfix Mosquito: It was free. I had special decals saved up for…
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The Courage To Bin The Trash

If you are an inveterate collector and hoarder like me, throwing materials away is a difficult task. Every cut scrap of something looks as if it will be useful for some project and you save it in the appropriate storage tub. Plastic, wood, metal, cardboard, etc. Eventually you fill up the tubs and find yourself…
