Tag: mistakes
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Can You Give Useful Advice On A Scale Model Topic…

If you have no idea what you are talking about? Oddly enough…yes. I have watched a number of YouTube videos made by people with no experience, expertise, or ability to communicate…and gained valuable insights. It is not for everyone to be a Solon or an Arnold. Most of us are not teachers – and the…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Three -Guessing Game

Meetings in the design bureau of a scale model company must be interesting to attend. Are there knives? Do people disappear? Do they call in dancing girls and order pizza? I ask because some of the decisions that come from these meetings seem to be motivated by strange desires. Who would have split the fuselage…
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What Everyone Knows…

Can be absolute truth, malicious nonsense, or anything in between. When your scale model building intersects with public knowledge, you would do well to determine exactly which sort you have. I have built glaring mistakes, and made a good job of them, too, based upon what everyone knows. In most cases, even if everyone agrees,…
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Koolhoven Fk 58 – Part Three – When Disaster Strikes

Don’t roll over – Strike back. Firstly, don’t panic. Nothing that you can do to a plastic model kit will kill anyone or bankrupt you. You can lay the worst result down in the rubbish bin, walk away from it, and go with new knowledge that could not be got any other way. It’s like…
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Not Every Tool Is A Good Tool

But they won’t tell you that at the hobby shop or on the internet site. We all have more tools than we use…every toolbox I’ve ever seen has at least 10 – 20% excess in it that just gets shifted about when we look for the useful items. Yes, I’m guilty of this too. Every…
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Get Right Back On The Horse

The iron rule of horse riding is that, after a fall that has not killed you, you get right back on the horse. This has the effect of showing your moxie to the other riders, quelling your fears, and giving you a chance to show the horse that you mean to be the master or…
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Understanding The Language of Modelling

And listening to what it tells you about the rest of the world. Welcome to the classroom. Every time we approach a foreign land we look first at the language it speaks. If it is not our native tongue we either try to learn enough to get by or go all arrogant and demand that…
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Be Prepared To Be Wrong

Those of you who are married will find it a familiar feeling… But making mistakes in scale modelling is slightly different from the errors experienced during marital bliss. For one, they are quieter… And less permanent. You can paint something wrong, or badly, and realise it…and never do it again…without having to hear about it…
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Ready-Made Mistakes

Or, how to tread the primrose path in spite of the barriers. You cannot blame me, unless I am guilty. And I always am. Guilty of following orders, guilty of believing what other people tell me, guilty of valuing theatre over intellect. Not in real life, I hasten to add. When someone in vague authority…
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Com Pro Mise

Don’t turn away. And don’t make that noise in your throat. Compromise is not a filthy word. You’ll find this out soon enough when you are a scale model builder – particularly if you build from commercial kits. They have compromises on every sprue tree. You can also buy after-market brass approximations and resin-cast bad…
