Tag: kits
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Scale Model Puzzlement
And not the jig-saw kind. I mean the sense of uncertainty and curiosity that arises when you see certain aspects of our hobby. Here is a list of head-scratchers:
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The Really Good Kits
Go to someone else. We are left with the stuff that doesn’t sell. The wholesale trade has only a certain number of new releases each year and when these have been sent to the eastern state’s shops we get the dregs. And plastic dregs can be dreadful. I don’t think the makers started out to…
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The Kit That Doesn’t Teach You Anything
Is best left closed. Every scale model kit you undertake to build ( as opposed to just buy and store ) should teach you something. Some will do so by showing you a prototype that is new. Some will show you a new technique. Some will introduce a new manufacturer. Equally, some will alert you…
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The Noodles You Have In Your Bowl
Are all you need. Have you ever been to a fast food outlet that tried to sell you food by asking whether you wanted to ” up-size ” it? Did you agree or decline, thinking that a standard-size assault on your gall bladder was all you really needed? You felt you had just been hustled.…
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The Modellers Declaration Of Rights
A treatise for the times. And good luck to you defending these propositions in the scale modelling world. There are more dictators in the hobby than in all of Africa and South America combined, and they would all rule you if they could. From shape of kits, to equipment, to paint colour, to pattern, decals,…
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The Glaring Omissions
In hobby shops full of Messerspitstang kits and the space ships of the latest franchise movie, it is actually painful to stride the aisles looking for the missing links. I concentrate most effort on 1:72 scale aircraft and have long built the standards. I’ve built the semi-standards, and a fair few of the obscurities as…
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The Prefab Model
You might justifiably say that all plastic model kits are prefab. If something is moulded and needs no shaping it is the factory modelling – not you. But we all realise that there is a great deal of re-shaping in most kits before any assembly can be contemplated. The sprue tree – that basic component…
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It’s Fun To Be Ignorant…
Until something even more fun comes along. For years I have avoided building in scales other than 1/72 and 1/76. My model airfields were this size and I needed goods for them. I could shop in the OO model railway shelves and the plastic model shelves for a long time. Then shopping got harder as…
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The Dinner On The Workbench Idea
No, I’m not talking about a plate of stew in the middle of painting a new model. That will not end well. This is a post about prices. We pay varying amounts of money for our models – Some come free and are all the sweeter for that – some cost a lot. Unless we…
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The Medium Is The Message
As Marshal McLuhan said, and was misquoted ever after. He had a right to be mad – he’d ordered a large, instead of a medium. And he was too Canadian to complain. In the hobby world, and especially in the hobby shop, there are lots of mediums – paint mediums, medium brushes, and medium tank…
The Little World 