Tag: cement
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Morality And Styrene Cement
A guide to repentance and the re-enforced joint. As scale modelling sinners we often risk judgement and damnation through our treatment of the innocent…the innocent kit, I mean. Each one of these comes to us pristine and unsullied, unless it has been bought at a stash sale – and in that case anything that happens…
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De Havilland Beaver – Part Two – Let Me Clear Something Up…
A recent build of another Airfix Vintage Classic kit – a Westland Whirlwind helicopter – pointed out the perils of remoulding 1950’s models. The clear plastic on that one was appalling. This Vintage Classic is of a newer year – 1971 – and the clear parts have improved immensely. But they are still just the…
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The Things I Never Knew…
Are probably only half the things that I don’t know yet. This has never been the case so much as in scale modelling, and particularly in the adhesives. Until I started adult modelling I had no idea of the possibilities for success or failure of PVA glue when I tried to use it on a…
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Timing…
A ticka, ticka, ticka…Good Timing. A tocka, tocka, tocka. If you model by the clock you’ll never go wrong…until Daylight Savings starts or your Big Ben falls off the bench. Then you’ll be back to counting up to one thousand before letting go of the cemented parts. The intrusion of time into a hobby is…
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S.P. – Part Four – Precision Is As Precision Does
I had no idea what to expect with the Mirage model of the little armoured car – the firm was a mystery to me. I was pleasantly surprised. Precision in some scale modelling is everything…and in other cases it is nothing. Some makers have magnificent box art disguising parts that frankly do not fit together.…
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Belt And Braces
And a bolt and a rivet and MIG welding and a big bracket. I like my models to stay together. The increasingly scale appearance of some models demands increasingly fine attachment points for some parts. The shafts, brackets, and pivots that might once have been fitting into thick plastic sockets and pins are now just…
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Patience is A Virtue
Or so we are told – by people who want to get in front of us in line at the petrol station. It is also preached for the scale modeller – by makers who give you tank tracks made up of 6 plastic parts per link or sheets of infinitesimally small brass etched parts. Their…
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Piper J3 – Part Four – The Irish Jig
Faith and begorrah, and here’s to the Auld Sod. I mean the one who invented jigs to assemble airplanes. I have reviewed all the commercial aids for assembly – the plastic, wood, and metal jigs that are touted on the modelling sites. Also the ones that appear in catalogs from places that will not ship…
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Grumman Goblin I – Part Three – Fuselage of Courage
The title of this column recognises that there is a certain stoutness of spirit required when you try to close up a fuselage, car body, or hull. The reality of what the plastic is going to do can be a lot different from the blandishments of the instruction sheet. I’ve written before about what the…
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Mitsubishi Peggy – Part Five – Airframe Day
Well, the Peggy is closed up and winged. Airframe day passed successfully. I do not decry the Czech makers of short-run kits for their economies of production – at least I do not condemn them too much. I appreciate the fact that they bring me things I could otherwise never have. But I do miss…
The Little World 