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The Little Workshop – Part Two – The Bare Chassis
Having grasped myself firmly by the collar and demanded that I pay attention, I can come to the point of individual rules. I have a very threatening manner when I catch myself fooling around… a. You have your own interests and goals – you must build for these, and not for the demands of others.…
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The Little Workshop – Part One – Rules of the Road
You’ve heard of preaching to the converted? Preaching to an empty church? Well, how about preaching to yourself…Pull up a pew. I recently sat down and wrote some rules for myself. Rules for my Little Workshop, Little Studio, and Little Office. They are designed to make my life better, though it remains to be seen…
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The Impulse
For every model built – for every Little World commenced – for every article purchased in a hobby shop…there is an impulse. Something triggers off what may be a very long and expensive sequence of events. What can it be? a. The memory of an experience – a car you owned, a place you visited,…
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Junkers 52 – Part Six – A Lekker Job, Eh?
Well, the final rush to finish the SAAF Junkers 52 went as expected. The only hindrances were integral to the design of the plane. a. The corrugated nature of the external cladding meant that a flat paint would never have accepted decals without showing silvering or separation. Each roundel or fin flash position, therefore, needed…
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Junkers 52 – Part Five – The Research Pays Off
Having done some research into masking and finishing this year – some of it reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote and the Acme Manufacturing Co. – I have come to practical solutions for impractical problems. Impractical problems are those that no-one else has, that need not exist, and that leap out from behind the door and…
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Junkers 52 – Part Four – The Interior Gem
Remember I once wrote that you should make a model of anything that you model? Well here is a prime example provided by Italeri in their moulding of the Junkers 52 – the interior fitments. As you can see a fair amount of the interior through the large rectangular passenger windows, I figured it would be…
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Junkers 52 – Part Three – The Sprues Goose
Okay, that was a bad aviation pun. I’m not ashamed of it, though, as the contents of the Italeri kit have braced me up immensely. This is the sort of modelling I like to do – just the level of detail that supports 1:72 scale without going too far either way. Of course there are…
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Junkers 52 – Part Two – Contemplating A Corrugated Road
You can’t get away from the fact that the Junkers people – like Henry Ford and the Citroen car designers – knew a thing or two about the way materials behave – in particular on how to make a sheet of metal stiffer than you’d expect. Simple. Bend it in repeated folds like a corrugated…
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Junkers 52 – Part One – The Call Of The Mild
Not all my model aircraft builds are warplanes – though the economics of the model industry mean that they make up the bulk of offerings on the shelves. And even if they are military aircraft, not all of them have to be fighters or bombers…as evinced by the Douglas Dakota with RCAF markings. So there…
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Poor Quality Landing Gear Legs
I apologise to the readers of this column for leaving them to their own devices these last few days. I have not been arrested for debt or run off to shack up with a popsy. I am in hospital connected to one end of a septic leg… It is getting better and I have cheered…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
The Little World 