Tag: Tools
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Lockdown Modelling

Put aside your politics, folks. I’m concerned with the practicalities of scale modelling when they call a lockdown in your area. If you’re at home to stay for a period of time, your best friends are not the TV or the cocktail cabinet. They are your library and your modelling stash. And possibly your computer,…
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One Tool To Rule Them All

And that is all I intend to borrow from Tolkien. I saw the movies years ago and that was all I needed. But the real topic here is that one tool. You know the one. The one that is there in your tool kit. It’s the one you had when you started model building. The…
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Are You Organised?

Are you organised enough? Or too much? Are people diving down side streets to avoid you when you ask them about organisation? Is it time for an intervention? I ask this in the wake of a day spent organising my modelling boxes. Note the plural there – it indicates that we are, as Kinky Friedman…
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Use the Dull Blade…

Said no modeller, ever. Yet we all do it. We use the blade until the tip breaks off and the edge has tram lines on it and we need to push it 300 times harder to get it to cut. And when it is just right; dull, nicked, and rusty, we push it over the…
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The Newbie – Part Two – All The Choices!

Discovering a new hobby shop makes you feel like Christopher Columbus. Every aisle is a new land to discover. There are wonders to see. And savage natives. Just kidding – when you have money to spend, the proprietors of the hobby shops are far from savage. They may seem grumpy but if you make the…
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When You Cannot Figure Out What It Is…

You’ll know this one. You go to the tool section of the hobby shop, possibly with a definite purpose. You have need of a tool and possess sufficient spare cash to be able to afford it. You rush to the place before the family demand money with menaces ( school shoes, food, medical attention…). As…
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Tool Time – Part Four – What Happened Next

Never glance. Glancing is dangerous. Either look deliberately or put your head down inside your shirt collar and see nothing. I know this because I glanced… To my left, as it happened, as I went to the till at Hobbytech to purchase the set of Ustar plastic nippers. I went past the rack that has…
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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…
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Tool Time – Part Two – The Positive Break

I thought it felt a bit odd. The nippers I keep in my travelling kit to separate plastic parts from sprue trees felt strange while biting into a kit. No-wonder – the coiled spring wire that separates the blades had fractured. Pretty good for a tool that was less than a year old, eh? It’s…
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Tool Time – Part One – Not All Tools Are Equal…

We all use tools, and if we are in the dating market occasionally they use us. Some tools are good – some bad. Some are expensive, and some cheap. If you go into the wrong bar you will get the latter types exclusively. Sometimes you’ll be in the same dilemma at your hobby shop or…
