Tag: Tamiya
-
Vought CorsairF4U-1 – Part Three – Thanks, Doc…
Thank you, Dr. Tamiya. I needed that. That slap in the face with a model kit: That fits together without sanding or filing. With an entire cockpit in 1:72 as a matter of course. With wing seams that need no putty. With the engine where all cylinders are part of the injection moulding and no…
-
Vought Corsair F4U-1 – Part Two – Which Came First?
Well, which came first; the chikin or the tamago? Did Tamiya get a good reputation by building precise model kits or did they build precise model kits because they had a good reputation? At what point did they say to themselves ” We must make excellent products above all…”. Did they have a modelling adolescence in which…
-
Vought Corsair F4U-1 – Part One – Birdcage
I wandered into Hobbytech for a bottle of paint. I came out with three bottles of paint and a Birdcage Corsair. This is why I’m not allowed in Bunnings or the beer shop unaccompanied. To be fair I was responding to an internet search session that showed the prototype XF4U-1 aircraft Vought showed to the…
-
Tool Time – Part Three – The Choices On The Racks
I’ll confess it – I’m at a loss when I go to many retail outlets and look at the variety of goods on offer. I might go there with some problem in mind, but I fall apart when I see that the shop has half-a-dozen different solutions to it and a further half-dozen brands of…
-
Eleven Shades Of Grey
Or is it gray? I can never be sure, and I’m sure I don’t care…but I do care about getting the right shade when I start to paint an aircraft. The colour I want right now is the paint that they sprayed on the underside of USAAF planes. The famous Neutral Grey. Creos GSI list it…
-
The Advantage Of Close Focus
Close focus is a subject that I take particular interest in with my photography columns – since I make scale models, I like to take pictures of them. I have special lenses for this, and lots of sneaky photographer’s tricks to make things look bigger than they really are. But it also applies even before…
-
Peas And Carrots – Part Two – The Colour Coats
Why peas and carrots? Because they are vegetables that always look better in the images on the cans than they do on your plate – and they are always greener or more orange in someone else’s dinner. My experiments are designed to improve their colour and flavour on mine. The colour paint coats that went…
-
De Havilland Mosquito Mk II – Part Eight – The Colour Lab
When I set myself the task of finding an effective workflow, I decided to make it as realistic as possible. So I cut 16 MDF board tablets to 2 x 3 inches and sprayed them with standard Tamiya primer. Some grey, some white, and some red oxide. The Tamiya product in a can has always…
-
De Havilland Mosquito Mk II – Part One – 12:35 In The Morning
6 July, 1944. Western France – near the Pas de Calais. One of HM aircraft on a Serrate mission was lost. It crashed with my wife’s uncle in it. His navigator was killed, he evaded capture, and was eventually delivered back to England by the French Resistance. He wasn’t allowed to fly over enemy territory…
-
We Need The Tiny Tin Can
I am looking at small and large cans of paint – spray paint, as it happens – and wondering at the rationale around it. The can contained a grey Tamiya primer. I’ve just sprayed the very last of it on a 1:72 aircraft and can feel satisfied – it completed the job just before it…
The Little World 