Tag: Decals
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Fiat BR.20 – Part Four – The One And Only
My Nationalist Chinese Air Force is growing like Top Tze. Another bomber to join the Martin B10. Talk about strategic command of the air… This Fiat BR.20 was originally sold to the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force as part of a couple of stopgap squadrons until a native-built bomber fleet could be completed. It saw…
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Decals of Death
We’ve all bought an old kit from a garage sale or a swap meet. It may have started out in perfect shape, but then so did Hannibal before he crossed the Alps. Some of the kits I’ve bought still have elephant poop in the crushed old boxes… And they have sad sheets of decals. Sheets…
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Science To The Rescue – Part One
Having recently made a batch of bad decals, I determined to investigate the problem before printing the next sheet. The surface of the previous ones was cracked and broken – and I reasoned that it was the brittle nature of the Tamiya Gloss Lacquer spray that did it. I looked out all the bottles of…
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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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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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Dewoitine D.510 – Part Three – The Jig
My pleasure at a Christmas present continues to grow. You’ve read my notes about the Slovakian plastic model jigs I received as a present this last Christmas. They are in daily use in the production of the 1:72 aircraft kits and I am learning to manage them better. I”m still not sure if the 5-minute…
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Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 – Part Two – Club Model
The discipline of building specific models in specific circumstances seems to be working out reasonably well – I keep two separate model kits for the two clubs I attend, and one kit a’building in my home workshop. Of course there are cross-overs when one comes to the painting stage – then I use my own…
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Handley Page Heyford – Part One – Come On March
I rarely urge the calendar to advance – I am at an age when I appreciate every day – indeed, being retired, I frequently mistake one for another. As long as I can remember scale model club morning and garbage night, the rest of the week can dissolve. But a special month was coming; Matchbox…
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The Rise Of The Decal
Once upon a 1950’s time, when all good boys deserved models, there were large airplanes with small sheets of decals. Then times changed and the proportions reversed. As a 1:72 builder I am dealing with the small end of the market…small as to individual size but large as an overall genre. It is ideal for…
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The No-Stick Decal
A close cousin to the folding decal and distantly related to the ones that explode when they contact water. They are not meant to decorate our scale models – they are a practical joke that the kit makers like to amuse themselves with. They sit there in the factory with a bag of these and…
The Little World 