Category: Workshop
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I’m More Eco-Virtuous Than You Are
So there too, hah! Actually all us model builders have an opportunity to stick it to the Facebook/Shopping Centre/News bite saints who scold us daily about everything we think or do – particularly the ones who would deny us everything from plastic straws to bear traps. We are ahead of their game: a. Plastic straws.…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Four – The Production Line
I cannot think of a worse way to approach the business of being a scale modeller than that of a production line worker with a contract to produce a product in a set time. This also applies to the full-size workers who made the full-size airplanes – Some were employed and some were drafted and…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Three – The Beauty Salon
It was cold tonight. Rainy. I adjourned into the computer room with a portable modelling tray to proceed with the Hurricane in some comfort – the Little Workshop was just too miserable to work in, even with the heater on. The task was masking the pattern illustrated in the Avia publication on Canadian warplanes. I…
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The Only Thing We Have To Fear…
Is fear itself. And the spiders that live under the bench. I am writing this from Perth in Western Australia. If you are reading it in Canada, the USA, the UK, or anywhere else in Europe or Asia, you will know that the whole continent is populated with venomous animals. Whether it is ladybugs, sheep,…
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Mustard On The Side Of The Plate
The English firm Colman’s made their fortune in mustard. There’s probably a biblical analogy in there somewhere, but the idea that always stuck in my mind was that they really made their fortune on the amount of the product that people left on the side of their plate. It’s strong mustard; we all take too…
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The Longest Day
No, it’s not another D-Day memorial blog. You can wash the black and white stripes off your computer monitor… It’s a post about which day in the build of a model is the easiest – which is the hardest – which the least enjoyable – and which is the one you like the best. As…
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Ticking Them Off
Ticking them off is ticking me off. I mean the various means for producing camouflage paint schemes on model aircraft. Recently I tried the Silly Putty Snake method for making British A and B aircraft patterns. I had two pots of different brands of silly putty and had researched all the YouTube videos on how…
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We Need The Tiny Tin Can
I am looking at small and large cans of paint – spray paint, as it happens – and wondering at the rationale around it. The can contained a grey Tamiya primer. I’ve just sprayed the very last of it on a 1:72 aircraft and can feel satisfied – it completed the job just before it…
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Cheap And Nasty Or Cheap And Nicely?
When I came to Australia in the 60’s I encountered a whole new division of language. Coming from North America I had experienced Canadian English and American English – now I had Australian English to learn. It wasn’t that hard, once you discarded the ocker colloquialisms. Of course you had to pick them up again…
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Is There A Worse Way To Do It?
Because if there is, I want to know all about it. I love horror stories and the things that people invent to do for themselves in their modelling workshops are no exception. Oh, I don’t mean the accidents and mishaps. I can cut my fingers or spill thinner into the electric fire myself. And who…
The Little World 