Tag: Painting
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The Rattle-Snake

The aerosol spray can…the rattler…has been with us for decades. I remember Pactra and Testors hobby cans in the 1960’s that finally brought the ability for a kid to paint a model car to a realistic finish. The realism was that of car lacquer colours and as garish as any hot rodder could have desired.…
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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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Yak 3 – Part Four _ Speed Is As Speed Does

When you are not bending up connecting rods from brass PE sheets for a 1/72 kit, it seems to go a lot faster in the construction. Not as liable to win Best-of-Show at the Anorak Expo, but you have to be realistic. And Hobby Boss are the most realistic moulders I know. The Yak 3…
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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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Morane-Saulnier MS 500 – Part Two – Le Criquet

If you started reading this build as a Fieseler Storch you can be forgiven for wondering what happened. The end of the war happened and the French and Czech aviation industries needed to get started – and there were plans and parts for ex-German aircraft galore. The French army and the Aeronavale needed small liaison…
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Problem Solvered

Advice offered in jest to a person in a modelling club has just lit up a lightbulb in my mind. I’ve a perfect solution to the problem of painting. Well, not to ALL the problems – but at least to the business of getting the right colour onto the models. We all spend hours…days…years…acquiring pots…
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The Non-Brush Brush-Off

There is a name for brushes; hairy sticks. Because that is what they are. And they do very basic hairy things… There is a current phrase – ” hairy stick ” – used to describe paint brushes – that is both humorous and accurate. Because that’s what the wretched things really are. Oh, there are…
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Gun Or Brush? That Is The Question

Whether ’tis nobler to load up the airbrush with two drops of paint or grasp a hairy stick and muddle over the part. To paint, perchance to drip. As a young model builder my choice was no choice. if I had paint and a brush, on it went. Enamel paint, never thinned. Brush cleaned out…
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Night Or Day? When To Spray…

The working modeller has a dilemma when it comes to doing their spray painting: Whether it’s better to do so in daylight or under the artificial lights at night. This may sound like a fatuous statement, but consider these factors: a. Most people’s colour vision is more accurate in daylight. It is not biased by…
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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…
