Category: workflow
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Lockheed S-3A Viking – Part Two – Cut And Glue
And really – that is all there was to it for the day. Some jobs are too hard and some too easy. The Hasegawa Viking fell into the space between these two extremes, and I am not complaining one little bit. When surfaces fit without fettling, when there is enough space for the nose weight,…
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Dissatisfaction
Is the step-mother of invention. With cheapness as a sibling – how could I resist the temptation to rebuild the modelling desk. The old one featured a wall of Chinese take-away food containers that held tools and materials – they were hot-glued to a sheet of foam board gaffer-taped to the workbench. No expense spared…
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Is Your Kit Pre-Painted?
A friend once showed me a model kit in very small scale – 1/144 or smaller – that was pre-painted by the maker. It was delightful to look at, in a sort of toy-like manner. The makers had finished the fighter in camouflage but I think there were a choice of decals that could be…
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Nothing To Excess
This is a fine philosophy, but I wouldn’t go overboard on it… It is also good counsel for the people who make the moulds for plastic kits. I was dealing with an old Revell B-24 D kit from the late 70’s that had recessed panel lines and raised rivets. They were the size that would…
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What Everyone Knows…
Can be absolute truth, malicious nonsense, or anything in between. When your scale model building intersects with public knowledge, you would do well to determine exactly which sort you have. I have built glaring mistakes, and made a good job of them, too, based upon what everyone knows. In most cases, even if everyone agrees,…
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Grumman Hawkeye – Part Two – Filling And Filing
And not just in one stage, either. When you take on an older kit, you accept the limitations of the art at the time that it was made. You can build it with the skills of that time or with modern ones. Either way is a sort of compromise. Here we have a combination of…
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Once You’ve Done The Worst Of The Kit
You need not fear the rest of the kit. My club-mate Michael Marchant showed me the tank tracks he was working on – they were from one of those Czech productions that have multiple parts per link, and multiple links per track, and no fun anywhere. I sympathised with him but left before any of…
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Out Of Stock
But always in the catalogue. Sitting there on-line, sneering at you…the kit you want but will never be able to buy. You have no way of knowing whether it is only gone for a week, a month, or a millennium. And you have no indication whether its absence stems from the factory, the wholesaler, the…
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Can A Table Of Modellers Build A Kit?
Yes, if they do not all try to do it at the same time. A dozen pairs of hands in a small cardboard box is a recipe for disaster. Likewise, a dozen minds making up decisions about colour, marking, fittings, etc…fine if you are making a 1:35 scale model of the Tower Of Babel, but…
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Three – Sub-Assembly Is The Go
When you are building a model in three or four different locations, it pays to view each of these workshops as a separate shop. The real aircraft makers did this – in particular the American ones like Ford who could count on a number of plants in a general area. They assigned a particular sub-assembly…
The Little World 