noelsmith

Having looked at Artesania Latina's big wood Vasa kit on their website, they have free down loadable instructions and painting guides for their kit. Their rigging guide within their instructions is comprehensive so anyone building the Airfix of Revell kits could use this and down scale them to suit. The biggest bonus is Artesania's painting guide for the carvings and figure work on their kit that could be used as a guide for painting the plastic kits as well. They reference all the paints with their respective RAL numbers. Vasa modellers will find this painting guide probably the be

Looks like the old Revell 'Long Beach' tug kit if my memory serves me right. An old boat with a bit of character. Just shows what can be done with a kit that is showing its age. Pedro has done a good job on this ancient kit.

The UK second lockdown is still in place. We have just hit 100,000 deaths for such a smal! Island country and now have the highest death rate in Europe. The vaccinations are being rolled out fast in the UK but it is starting to become political now that we have left the EU. Apparently they are kicking off because we are so far ahead of them in vaccinating our population. Just shows that as an independent country a decision was made to just get on with it, whilst from what I can ascertain, there has been quite a bit of squabbling between EU countries about distribution within that has slowed th

OK. We have discussed the theories of relativity (not Einsteins!) comparing the 'old days' fondly remembered by many of us when kits were pocket money prices or not much more to today's prices. By and large our hobby is a lot less expensive than for example having a golf club membership with its relative green fees and frequent visits to the 19th hole. If any of us gets weeks of enjoyment out of building an 'expensive' kit it is cheaper in the long run than many other such activities. My interpretation of too expensive is only if I do not have enough disposable income to be able to

Seen a number of well known hobby business names come and go over the years. Companies in this fickle world of modelling are always at risk, whether it be hostile takeovers, inept business organisation, bean counters closing unprofitable lines or just not keeping up with trends and technology. Local hobby shops are a dying breed as well, let's face it. No good dwelling on it. Nostalgia is all very well but just move on. New companies and products will keep appearing and disappearing, mostly on line these days.I Buy what you can, when you can!

Sad to hear of Bill Matthews passing away. He was one of the founding fathers of the society back in 1963 and will be sadly missed by many of us 'old timers' in the society, not only here in the UK but world wide. Michael, Gil and Nick's tribute posts cannot really be added to, and pretty much sums up the esteem in which Bill was held by his peers inside and outside the society. Having been a member of the UK IPMS since 1974, he was a familiar face to me right from the old days when our Nationals were held on just one November Saturday afternoon each year in the Royal Air Force Museu

Maybe household filler products might be better or plaster of paris? Most of us have some domestic filler of some sort he experiment with, and it is cheap!

Dak's comment about a modeller building OOB building a modern kit and therefore winning contests without expense and effort. Whether building a kit straight or adding details takes effort to make a good finished model regardless. As for avoiding expense? So a modeller building the Tamiya Caterham 7 for example, straight out of the box avoids expense and effort? I don't think so!

Dave, you mentioned the Lancaster mock up that was yet another big and highly detailed kit project. And yes, probably going to be very expensive too! Not surprised that the remaining kits are probably being sold on eBay at ridiculous prices and some retailers jacking up prices as well to make a quick buck out of diminishing stock. Cannot blame them if people are desperate enough to shell out large sums of money on those kits. Market forces etc etc. A pity that Wingnuts bit the dust as the kits were exceptional, but catering for a very niche market depending on the well heeled modelle

Looking at this again upon reflection, when you consider the costs involved in developing, having moulds made, manufacturing and worldwide marketing larger scaled, highly detailed kits of mainly WW1 aircraft it was probably doomed in the long term. Before I get castigated by WW1 aircraft model enthusiasts, one must consider the target market was always going to be extremely limited. Enthusiastic sales at Telford and probably other prestigious modelling events like the IPMSUSA Nationals only served to give the impression of a company doing well. But in reality there was a very limited market wo

Looks like a very good product. Not seen it over here in England, but it looks a better bet than accurately mixing smelly resin together.

It does not appear to be load bearing, so replacing with a scratch built part may be the best option. The up side of this is that it will help develop extra skills, and the worst that can happen is wasting a few bits of material if you have to do any re makes. I do a fair bit of scratch building and getting bits wrong and having to re make them is just par for the course. Just do not be put off at having a go. Scratch building is not as daunting as it might first seen and is mainly a matter of getting your head around a particular part assembly that you are making, breaking it down into the in

Joe, the only thing I can suggest is get a small engineers spring tensioned pair of dividers. Set the very small gap between the two points you want using the adjusting screw. With this tool you should be able to scribe a line around various apertures. One point will be scribing and the other guiding along the aperture edge. It will take a bit of practice to get a feel for what you are doing and keep the scribed line a constant distance to the edge, so I would suggest that you practice on some scrap plastic. You could use a small spring bow compass instead by substituting the drawing lea

Phil, I had a look at Masterpiece Models website. Was pleasantly surprised to find that besides the Nautilus kits they make the H G Wells time machine from the movie starring Rod Taylor, and also, more surprisingly the Liberator and other vessels from the BBC Blake's 7 series.

Maybe a scratch build will be the way to go. I have plans and a lot of the surfaces are flat pieces when you look at it. The ram segments would be the most difficult parts to make.