Category: Uncategorized
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The Prefab Model
You might justifiably say that all plastic model kits are prefab. If something is moulded and needs no shaping it is the factory modelling – not you. But we all realise that there is a great deal of re-shaping in most kits before any assembly can be contemplated. The sprue tree – that basic component…
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Ever The Sucker…
I seized upon a new cyanoacrylate glue in the hobby shop. This one had the word “plasti ” in the name and that was enough to start the curiosity going. I suspect it will just be the same CA gleue that the others in the brand are, but I’ll have to wait to see what…
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1/Price X Sticky = What?
Your forefinger bonded to the kitchen table, that’s what. Senior modellers out there: Let us be honest with ourselves. Had cyanoacrylate glues – ” super-glues ” – been available when we were building models as children, we would spent our childhoods in the E.R. waiting room with things stuck to us. We are older and…
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The Low-Vis Paint Scheme
Or how to survive on the battlefield. See them before they see you – then run away. This also works with blind dating. The almost universal adoption of low-vis paint scheme and insignia by the world’s air forces has been founded on a number of assumptions – but not all of them seem logical: a.…
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Decal Or Paint?
Not a difficult choice when the design is complicated. Also not a tough decision when the decal sheet has something exactly as needed. There are any number of decal setting solutions today that will let you drape a design over a wet porcupine, so just take your time. When it comes to bigger scales and…
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Welcome To The Club
You don’t need to fill out an application form – just sitting there with cement on your fingers and tears streaming down your face is enough. You’re one of us. Now peel that ruined canopy off your jumper and tell us why you decided to do this to yourself. You had a chance to escape.…
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Grumman Albatross – Part Two – Shipmates Stand Together
Don’t give up the ship. Or the kit, for that matter. My first club morning with this kit went very well - the dry parts fit was excellent for a period piece and I was ready to work on the interior by the time I left for home. I did paint the inside and started to…
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Morality And Styrene Cement
A guide to repentance and the re-enforced joint. As scale modelling sinners we often risk judgement and damnation through our treatment of the innocent…the innocent kit, I mean. Each one of these comes to us pristine and unsullied, unless it has been bought at a stash sale – and in that case anything that happens…
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Do We Read Or Watch?
A good question for scale modellers. We used to have books and magazines to inform our modelling. Increasingly we turn to screens…sometimes to read, as you are doing now…but sometimes to watch an unknown person tell us how to do something or what to think about some subject. The video proceeds at its own pace…
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Minimalist Modelling
Paint everything white. Corbusier Kits: sheets of foamcore board and you just glue them together in slabs. I have been experimenting with a less complex approach to scale model building these last few months. Not that kit building can ever be truly simple…or for that matter neither can Lego or Meccano work. Doll houses are…
The Little World 