Tag: Masking
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A7 Corsair II – Part Four – Two-Tone

I puzzled about the white horizontal stabiliser and trailing wing surfaces on this Corsair II when I saw the colour call-out. Of course I was bound to follow the diagram, and as it was the same for most of the variants I knew it was deliberate. Then it struck me – if you did not…
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Bass Ackward

The sequence in which we do things is critical – I learned that when shooting muzzle loading rifles. Only one way of loading really works. The same question applies when we are trying to get a soft edge to camouflage painting on an aircraft. The time-honoured method of the Blu-tac worm and masking tape does…
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Cessna Dragonfly – Part Two – Weighty Nose

You only have to forget once to weight the nose of a three-wheeled plane to impress it on your memory forever. And there is no effective way to excuse it when you are faced with the fact – other than accepting your fate, putting the wheels up, and the model on a flying stand. I…
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Savoia Marchetti SM.81 – Part Four – Stop Laughing

This is serious. That’s an Australian joke, for the overseas readers. For the locals, its a historic Australian cartoon. Go look it up. The Bulletin long ago. In my case the risible arose because I needed to occlude the window spaces of the Pipistrello before painting. I’d deliberately left out the bulls-eye plastic windows that…
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Lockheed Hercules – Part Six – Three Tones of Torture

It is difficult for me to express how much I detest the designer of this colour scheme. I know that he or she must exist, but did I have my way, they would shortly not. If I were a freehand camo sprayer all this would be simple. Three pots of Mr. Color and a pleasant…
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Short Sunderland – Part Four – More Masks Than The Italian Banditti

I am not a mask person. They make me nervous – whether they are the Venetian Carnival sort or the plain ones worn by train robbers. I spent 30 years wearing them in surgery and I was generally up to no good there either… So when I need to mask for spray painting, you can…
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Hillson Praga Air Baby – Part Two – The Human Dimension

Or perhaps that should be human dimensions. The small size of people reflected in the small size of aircraft. You wouldn’t think that with a lot of kits – the fighters, bombers, and transports of WW2 are a level bigger than their counterparts in the interwar period – and these again bigger than the WW1…
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Grumman Goblin I – Part Four – Ugly Bug Ball

There is a certain point in your wife’s beauty routine that you should not see. Lovers may never see it, if their lady is careful. Husbands will inevitably happen upon it at some stage of the game. The shock will be severe. It may lead the man to blurt out a cry of dismay. This…
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Bristol Bulldog – Part Four – Partial Masking

I cannot say that I look forward to masking all that much. But I recognise that it is an in-escapable part of aircraft painting in small scales. There are things you just cannot freehand with enough precision. This is hilarious considering some of the pictures I’ve seen of ground crew respraying aircraft in wartime with…
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Ol’ Stinky

In the social world of liquid masking agents, Humbrol’s Maskol is the one you rarely invite to the cocktail party. It is purple, stringy, and smelly. A lot like some people I know. I’ve tried it for masking camouflage patterns in 1:72 and found it to be problematical. It sticks, alright, but sometimes long after…
