Category: Workshop
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Reaching For Occam’s Hammer
I’ve written before about Occam’s Razor as it applies to scale modelling – the topic at the time was producing rust, and it’s been getting rustier ever after. Today it is Occam’s Hammer. The old chap will forgive me taking his name in vain, but I intend to treat the principles he espoused with affection.…
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Lockheed RT 33 – Part Four – Don’t Mind If I Do
For all my tootling about over the use of an airbrush, I finally have to confess that there are times when a rattle can is a comfort. Painting the walls of the Police Station, for instance. You try dragging a compressor there in the middle of the night and asking the desk sergeant for the…
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The Physics Of Plastic Model Building
a. The shape of a fuselage is arbitrary. It can be one shape one side and another thing on the opposite side. This is known as the Buda-Pest principle. As there is a front and a back it can also be different there, so that’s four parts that may have their own opinion and refuse…
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Ilyushin 4 – Part Three – I Give In To Zvezda
I have written before about my technique of painting the canopies of my aircraft – how I use a bow pen to add the framework at the end of the build. It is closer to my past experiences and very effective in most cases. But looking at the glass nose of the Ilyushin I knew…
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Douglas Skyhawk – Part Two – Grey Ghost
The grey primer stage of the Skyhawk build is very accusatory – it accuses me of great failure in losing that canopy. The rest of the plane is superb. Ah, well, it is ever thus. I have a long history of losing parts – and not all on the concrete floor of the workshop, either.…
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The Carpet Monster
My friend Warren refers to the ever-present danger of losing small parts as the attack of the carpet monster. He should know what he’s talking about – he has carpet in his hobby room that has swallowed many a bit. I have a concrete floor in my workshop and a lino one in my computer…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Three – The Airfix Channel
Well, I’d watch it if they started broadcasting, and so would you. But this is not about the television – it’s about the Airfix channel that they put between the fuslage and inner wing panel of the DC3. It is so far the widest gap this side of Darien. Not on both sides of the…
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Federal 2 1/2 Ton – Part Two – If it’s ALL Green…
Is there any need to paint it? Yes there is. Bare green plastic is just that… you can see a mile away when someone puts a model out for display that hasn’t been painted. That’s fine and dandy if it is a display of production models that lets the customers see what it looks like…
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Dornier Do.17Z – Part Three – Perfect Plastic Putty
Since being introduced to this material two years ago I have found my respect for it increasing. It’s English and fairly specific to the plastic kit hobby but really does fufil its purpose. The purpose is best circumscribed – the filling of broad, shallow depressions. It does not form a structural component so you cannot…
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Dornier Do.17Z – Part Two – A FROG Of A Different Colour
The experience of the FROG Dornier is interesting. The kit is an older mould and has raised panel lines but no rivets. I don’t mind as it will have a dark finish anyway. But it is an older kit. Thus the fit in some places is approximate. The fuselage is excellent, the wing box assembly commendably…
The Little World 