Category: Uncategorized
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The Model Competition
I just read a meme-text put up on Facebook by an artist that has really resounded with me. Most social media philosophy is so much eyewash, but this one actually made sense. The gist of his post was that art is not a competitive event. There are no contests that should be won or lost.…
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Handley Page Heyford – Part Three – All The Appeal..
Of a hairless cat… The period between the wars was a time of increased streamlined elegance in the design world. Cars, locomotives, buildings…they all got sleeker and more aerodynamic. How ironic that the HP Heyford – designed to fly through the air – should do so looking like a washing machine. I attached the upper…
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Handley Page Heyford – Part Two – Paint-Be-Gone
I was a little nonplussed at discovering that the Heyford wings and tail were painted on their sprue trees. The job was well, done, but it wasn’t what I would have used myself. What to do? Risk leaving the paint on and then having a top coat of lacquer start to react and dissolve into…
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A Thousand Pictures Are Worth A Word
And that word is generally : ” inaccurate “… In a world awash in internet images, the scale modeller could be forgiven for thinking that they’ll never have a problem with colour again. All they’ll have to do is google up an image of the prototype they’re building and copy the picture. This is as…
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” You Could Do A Mediocre Job…”
So could you, mate. Which one of us would be raising our standards and which one would be lowering them? Self-criticism is often the tool of the tyrant – they get you to do it under threat because they don’t have the time to continually nag you themselves. Sort of a case of putting your…
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Nieuport 17C – Part Two – Old But Good
This very old mould still can teach the new firms several lessons. The first one is that you need not engineer gaps into your parts. They can, indeed, be made to meet all along their surfaces. Unless your firm derives the bulk of its income from plastic putty and sandpaper sticks, providing close-fitting parts is…
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Nieuport 17C – Part One – 1957 Again
1957 was a big year for me. My dad’s firm failed and we had to move to Quebec for him to continue in the heavy construction business. I had to learn school French – fast. And I got to see a whole new world of scale model kits that never made it out to Western…
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” I Want To Return This Kit “
And I want a full refund for it. a. It is the wrong kit. I wanted the right kit. Okay, I brought it from the shelf to the till myself and paid for it, but it was the wrong kit when I got it home and the wife found out how much it cost. b.…
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Are We Having Fun Yet?
When that question comes up, the answer is never ” Yes “. Yet it could be… I do things that are pointless and expensive and embarrassing. And fun. I’m not going to tell you what, but you can let your imaginations run wild. As this is a scale model column, wild is likely to involve…
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Dodged A Bullet?
Perhaps. And it was just a series of events… The Scale Modellers Club of Western Australia newsletter that has just started to appear in this column was initially going to be an email-based bulletin that would reach out to some 50 or so members and local shops. I gathered email addresses from the club members…
The Little World 