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Is There Life After Enamel?

Now that everyone uses acrylics? Yes. We may have lost Testors but there is still Humbrol. You may have cut your teeth on them, grown to hate them, but now are curious about them. Find a test-bed model…something you can afford to ruin. Sand it, prime it, and grab a dear old a Humbrol pot.…
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Pride Is A Cheap Emotion

Well it is, if you do it right. Scale modelling can be done with pretty nearly any purse…though the hobby shops would like you to browse on the expensive shelves. The prices can rise to pretty nearly any level that you could name. People who purchase and build the expensive kits can generally be assured…
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SAAB J22 – Part Three – Defender Of Neutrality

You have to give the Swedes credit for neutrality. Otherwise they might sell themselves to your enemies. Perhaps this is a little harsh on them. They have not been officially at war for over 200 years, though they were key players in Scandinavia and Middle Europe prior to that. They made a number of enemies…
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SAAB J22 – Part Two – Dry Swede

Or, the first series build for the Little Workshop. I have just completed three big builds for the collection. They were spread over three work areas and many weeks. There were problems that held matters up and were then solved. I learned a couple of new facts. And noted an unsettling thing with the workflow;…
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SAAB J22 – Part One – Small And Cheap

And it doesn’t come with meatballs or an Allen wrench. Here is yet another newie for me – a genuine Swedish home-grown fighter moulded in Lund, Sweden. Box long gone, but the top and sides preserved to give a colour reference. The plane is a well-designed stop-gap Swedish product along the lines of the CAC…
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Is it Puttering Or Pottering?

I mean the faffing about that you do in between builds. The tidying up of the workshop and the sharpening of tools. The filling of thinner bottles and the tossing out of dried-up paint. The time when you blow down the air compressor tank and then have to wash the floor. When you vacuum up…
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Better Is The Enemy Of Good

Just as happier is the enemy of happy. Once you introduce comparison you have picked a rotten apple off the tree and are headed out of Eden. Because you have discovered that there is something you don’t have and that something is MORE. Were you happy with your food, you would not be hungry for…
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Douglas Skyray F4D – Part Three – Good For One Thing

And very good, at that. The Douglas F4D Skyray was built to intercept Soviet bombers as far away from American aircraft carriers as was possible. This was in the mid 1950’s when the threat from manned aircraft was at its height. The airframe – derived no doubt in some wise from a Lippisch design –…
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Douglas Skyray F4D – Part Two – Peacetime Colours

Or at least as peaceful as a Cold War aircraft could get… I am always happy to see military aircraft in bright colours – the yellow wings of the pre-war US Navy – the dazzling squadron codes of the pre-war RAF – the bright stripes of the pre-war Italians. Because brightly coloured aircraft are not…

