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The Hobby Room
I have a hobby room that has accommodated any number of pursuits – yet I am still chasing perfection. And it is still elusive. The first use of the hobby room – the 5th bedroom in a house that has only three sleepers – was as a photographic darkroom. It was the days of film…
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F-16A – Part Four – Play Nice
How many times did your mother deposit you with your cousins and say that? And you did, thus allowing them to eventually grow up and become miserable beasts. If you had only disobeyed when you had that opportunity… Well the F-16A was an opportunity that has come out well. Hasegawa kits are either wonderful or…
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F-16A – Part Three – In Every State Except…
In every state of the Union and nearly every country of the world, the heading image would raise little interest; it’s a toy airplane with a lead weight glued in the nose. In California, I suspect, it would cause sirens to wail and lawyers to leap from their kennels. Lead! A known carcinogen! A dangerous…
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F-16A – Part Two – The Staged Build
I am constructing this aircraft model on the Fortnight System. It is opened and worked upon at the Cambridge Public Library during a meeting of the Historic Modelling Friends – a rather informal group of retirees who have been granted permission to use the library’s function room of a Saturday afternoon. As the room contains…
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F-16A – Part One – The Day Of The Dead Decal…
Is there any more disheartening a sight than a sheet of decals that is older than most of your relatives – and even more wrinkled? You stare it it hoping it will come back to life but eventually you bury it in a coffin filled with the earth of its country… and hope that it…
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Was Lacquer Thinner Good For Covid?
I had no idea, but one week I tested it out. I went down in iso with a positive RAT and a number of kits in the stash that needed paint. They had gone through the preliminary stages and were ready for primer and paint. And I did not intend to let a spare week…
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Ready-Made Mistakes
Or, how to tread the primrose path in spite of the barriers. You cannot blame me, unless I am guilty. And I always am. Guilty of following orders, guilty of believing what other people tell me, guilty of valuing theatre over intellect. Not in real life, I hasten to add. When someone in vague authority…
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JS-2 Tank – Part Four – Czech This One Out…
Despite indecision about the Zvezda JS-2 kit’s deficiencies, I think it has fulfilled my vision splendidly. The idea of armour and military modelling is new to me – heretofore I just collected die-cast vehicles that suited my model airfields. I admired the efforts of expert armour modellers i saw at my club and at interstate…
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JS-2 Tank – Part Three – Zvezda Economies
I am still making my mind up about the Zvezda kits. They seem curate’s eggs in many respects, but I have not built enough to be able to judge accurately. My first Russian kit was a MiG 15. It was chosen as the only kit of its type in that shop at that time –…
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JS-2 Tank – Part Two – Can Vermibus
I should have known better – but in my defence I was unsupervised in front of a computer… The Facebook group that deals with 1/35 scale tanks is quite skilled in their model building. Every day there are pictures of builds or completed models that have amazing detail, fine camouflage, and careful weathering. They far…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
The Little World 