Category: Uncategorized
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The Glaring Omissions

In hobby shops full of Messerspitstang kits and the space ships of the latest franchise movie, it is actually painful to stride the aisles looking for the missing links. I concentrate most effort on 1:72 scale aircraft and have long built the standards. I’ve built the semi-standards, and a fair few of the obscurities as…
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The Danger Of The Custom Colour

A custom colour is defined as any admixture of standard paint that reproduces perfectly some particular hue or shade. It may be produced by any modeller who has a spare bottle and a mixing spoon. In keeping with colour and art theory, it is best mixed from a light colour with careful application of dark.…
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Get Right Back On The Horse

The iron rule of horse riding is that, after a fall that has not killed you, you get right back on the horse. This has the effect of showing your moxie to the other riders, quelling your fears, and giving you a chance to show the horse that you mean to be the master or…
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Eat All Your Peas

And one of several things will happen: a. You will earn dessert. b. You will be too full of peas to want dessert. c. More peas will served, as you obviously enjoy them. d. You will come to hate peas. e. You will fart like a dog for hours. I like peas, as it happens,…
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The Temptation To Re-Stash

And just when they thought you were cleaning out the old one… Many people I know go through a cycle where they alternately empty and replenish their stashes This conforms to the universal rule of physics that you can never have a completely full shelf nor a completely empty one. There must always be either…
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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…
