Category: Workshop
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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…
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I Was Saving That For A Rainy Day…
When we set out stockpile materials, kits, plans, money, and tools with a hazy vision of one day making the grande supremo opus de-luxe model…we condemn ourselves to a lifetime of anxiety. For how will we know when that ultimate opportunity arrives? When can we open the secret vault door and bring out the ”…
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When All Else Fails, Cheap Out.
We all cruise the aisle of the hobby shop, hardware store, craft shop, or toy store looking for the Great Bargain. The Score. The Once-In-A-Lifetime chance to buy a $5000 model for 50¢. It never eventuates, of course, and we can become bitter and twisted. The thing we all need to do is realise that…
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Apply White Glue…
And there is no racial overtone to that headline – the glue is white and that’s all. You can use it no matter what colour you are. And you can use it for damn near anything. I am still discovering modelling tasks to which it can be the perfect answer – even things that I…
The Little World 