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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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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Five – The Captive Bird
A surprising number of airplanes have been captured in war and returned to flying on behalf of their enemies. Some as service machines, some as decoys, and some as test beds. This might seem to be a bonus for the people who capture the enemy’s warplanes, but remember that they also need to capture the…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Three – Suspicions…
I am not a naturally suspicious man, as anyone who has seen me in the police lineups will attest. I am ready to take anyone at face value…as long as I can pronounce them guilty. This benign attitude even extends to looking at pictures of fighter planes and trying to figure out their colour schemes.…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Two – Modelers Sushi
If that seems like a funny way to think of a kit, consider that the Hobby Boss products are sometimes served on plastic trays within the external box – rather like the tasty Japanese food that we get from shopping centres. The kit is just as well presented – all that is missing is the…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part One – Never Let A Chance Go By…
I am indebted to a friend, Paul, for that bit of philosophy. He’s another modeller/collector/builder type and makes regular visits to hobby shops and toy stores wherever he goes. And he has the modeller’s eye that sees viable scale building materials in completely unlikely products. In my case it was a visit to a store…
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The Bad Decision
Steel yourself – there will be some serious soul-searching in this post. You are going to have to confront your own failures. As for me, I’m going to hide mine by pretending that I never make mistakes. Anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault – even if there is no-one within 500 yds of…
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Repressed Desires And the Scale Modeller
I have come to this topic from writing another column dedicated to selling photographic goods. It occurred to me that if there is an id in the camera shop, there is also likely to be one in the hobby shop. I turned over the thought that Sigmund Freud might have been a model train buff,…
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The 2018 Catalogue
I have just been doing my extensive professional research…that’s code for surfing the internet…and studied the 2018 catalogue for a firm that makes model trains. They are a historic firm that entered into the plastic toy trade at least 50 years ago from a long association with the tinware business. I had the privilege of…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Five – The Newfie
Those of you from the Dominion of Canada will know I speak with affection about Newfoundland – The place where this Hawker Hurricane was based. Specifically at Torbay in 1943 when German U boats were feared. They had successfully sunk ships nearby in the previous year and the RCAF needed to have a quick-response answer.…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
The Little World 