Ron Bell

That is a very nice model and handsomely presented. Well done.

Dick, Just wondering. Why is the show so early this year? R

I have heard that the Nimrod was a navalized version of the Hawker Fury. I have also heard that is not true and that it was a complete re-design. From what I have read, it seems they took a Fury, added a bunch of naval requirements that necessitated additional fuselage stowage that caused it to be longer, added a strengthend frame to withstand launches and landings and a greater wing span for more lift. The Mk II version also added a swept upper wing. Here we have a Matchbox 1/72 Hawker Fury Mk I. For it's day, it was a nice little kit and had a neat system for aligning the cabane struts so the top wing set correctly. Next is a Czechresin Hawker Nimrod. I think I got a pretty early release as mine was in a bag rather than a box. The fit is questionable and the struts pretty useless as they are covered in flash and mold seams and the resin is pretty brittle so cleaning all that off without trashing the parts would be difficult. To emphasize the two aircrafts' similarity, a donor Fury kit provided struts and the landing gear and it fit perfectly. The last picture shows the difference in the wing span. In any case, they are both sleek looking aircraft.

Nicely done. He looks a lot like the actor that portrayed him in the Alistair Sim film version.

Very nice job on the fire truck which has a pretty complicated paint scheme that you did very neatly. Lots of decals as well.

Paint is Tamiya Flat Aluminum for most of the a/c and good old Testers Silver for the polished metal parts.

I continue my journey through the realm of interwar British aircraft with this rendition of the rather elderly Airfix Hawker Demon. With care, it goes together pretty easily which is aided by its complete lack of any intricate detail parts. Even the decals worked well although the roundels on the top wing were slightly out of register. I used the S.B.S. pre-cut rigging wires and they worked a treat and they even include the ring sight for the rear gunner position. I've got a Matchbox Fury and Czechmodel resin Nimrod done and waiting for rigging so they will be up next.

I was lucky enough to get to visit three of Squadron's brick and mortar shops, D.C, Detroit and Chicago. I spent quite a while marveling at the completed models on display and then drooling over the seemingly endless selection of kits and 'stuff'. My first models were purchased in one of three places. In my home town, there was a pet store the owner of which must have been a modeler because amongst the bird feeders and pet supplies were several shelves of plastic models. Then there was a Kresge's 5 & Dime (Remember those? You could get anything in a 5 & Dime from hardware to fabric for a dress to a hamburger at the lunch counter.) in the next town that had a few models and best of all was a toy store in Westfield, N.J. named Tiny Tots. They had a large selection of kits and several display cases full of completed models to examine. I was also introduced to ROCO Minitanks there and they supported my Avalon Hill war game habit as well. Spent a bit of change in that store.

I have done something similar on a smaller scale on injection kits. It does work, but the key is, as you say, letting the glue completely set so the plastic is "hard" once again. Be careful that the plastic rod is not harder or softer than the stuff the vac is made of (and some have some pretty soft plastic to facilitate the vacu-forming) or you could sand more model away than rod stock or visa-versa.

When you've built a vacuform model, you know you've been "modeling" and not just gluing parts together. I know this is going to turn out great....as usual.

Thank you Mark. As to the color modulation, as you put it, I don't favor the current trend of pre/post shading. I think it just looks too, I don't know, "miniature" like. It's a personal preference. What I do is this. After the color coat is on and details such as molded in tools, etc. are painted, I gloss coat the whole model. I then apply any decals. You may want to gloss coat over these if you suspect any silvering to avoid the wash accumulating under the decal. Next, I mix up a wash of, usually, black water color pigment (although you can use other colors as the situation warrants), water and a drop or so of dish soap to break the surface tension. I then apply this wash liberally over the whole model, one face and/or side at a time and I keep that face horizontal until the wash is dry. The dish soap allows the wash to flow into crevices and corners. Don't worry about any bubbles, most will pop and we'll deal with the rest later. Then I move to another face, keeping it horizontal and wash it and so forth until I have covered all six sides, top, right, left, front, rear, bottom. Then I let it all really dry for a day. Next I get some clean water in a dish and a paper towel and a suitably sized older paintbrush. I wet the brush, dab excess water off on the paper towel and then proceed to scrub the wash off the model where I don't want it. Rinse the brush often and wipe it on the towel to keep it clean. Keep going until you have the level of wash left that you like. The wash will have 'stained' some areas, but that's ok because that's what provides the 'modulation' you spoke of. Then apply your final gloss/flat coat to seal it all up. The best thing about this method is that you really can't mess it up. Don't like the results? Just wash it all off with water and start again. One word of caution, use watercolor pigments, the type you get in little tubes in craft/art stores NOT acrylics. When acrylics dry they are set and stay where they are and you cannot work with them at that point. Another caution, don't do this over a flat finish as the wash will not come off. It takes a little practice, but its really pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Sometimes projects just get away from you. This was to be a simple conversion of the Matchbox Sherman Vc Firefly into a straight M4A4, but it got away from me. The model now has parts on it from at least five other kits plus a bit of scratch building. They all came out of the spares box so I don't even know from what kits they all came. It is interesting, though, how some parts from 1/72 and 1/76 scale kits are actually the same size. I know there are small scale kits of M4A4s out there, but what fun is that, eh?

Very nice. I'm surprised at the lack of those pesky surface ridges so often found on 3D printed models. They have kept me from purchasing several kits of rarer subjects that are out there but even in photos the ridges are very visible and almost impossible to eliminate and not take a lot of detail with them when you do. Painted the markings, eh? Very neatly done.

Its in the mail. I got mine. Bulk mail is unpredictable as to arrival time and can vary from place to place. It's the National Model Contest winners issue plus a few other articles.

NIce work, as usual. Has 1/32 supplanted your much loved 1/48th?

Tom's Model Works does the rails. https://www.tomsmodelworks.com/catalog/index.php For the guns, I would have suggested Shapeways but they went belly up recently. I checked Model Monkey and they have some stuff in 1/600 but not 3" guns. Maybe spend some time on Google looking for 3d printed parts or even on some ship modeling sites message forums.

There's also the possibility of using rub down numbers. You can find all sorts of shapes and sizes in craft/art stores or search on-line. If you are uneasy about "rubbing" anything onto your model, rub them down first onto clear decal sheet then clear coat them, cut as close to the number as possible and apply like a normal decal.

They and Monogram did models of ships of that era that no one else did. I/600 is a good scale as there are many after market accessories available. Here's an old Monogram ship kit of that era to show that they can be made up into nice models.

Haven't read the book, but saw the movie with Jeffrey Chandler as the captain. Good flick.

This is the latest addition to my "flat bottomed fleet", the 1956 vintage USS Montrose attack transport. It has all the hallmarks of Revell ship models of this era with the exception of the hull, which is done in one piece instead of the normal left/right halves. It's pretty detailed, even if that detail is simplified. The most work was spent getting the upper and lower halves of the sides of the ships housing to fit and eliminate the seams. The bottom half is molded as part of the lower deck and visa versa for the top so it makes getting at the seam difficult. In addition, every one of those landing craft had an ejection pin mark in the center of the floor ribbing that took some effort with several tools to eliminate them. Ditto for all the life rafts. I cut off the molded in railings and used PE ones. The ship is in 1/310 (?) scale and there is no PE in that scale or in 1/300 for that matter, so I had to use 1/350. At least it looks better than the molded on stuff. Some basic rigging and voila, it's 1956 all over again.

Great work, as usual. What scheme? NM? Bandai kits have always been rather good, tanks, planes whatever. They had some 1/30 scale armor kits back in the day that were better than the Tamiya ones available and covered some more obscure subjects and of course there are their 1/48 armor kits with interiors.

Monogram produced several kits in around this scale of modern US Navy ships in the early 70's. They were pretty basic kits, but had some nice molded in detail and a few "working" features, such as radar arrays that followed guns and/or missile launchers. One advantage they had over Revell's offerings was that they were full hull models and not part of the "flat bottomed fleet". This is the USS Ramsey, a Brooke Class guided missile destroyer escort, later re-designated a frigate. The fit of the kit is not very good so it took quite a bit of effort to eliminate gaping holes and seams, however the one piece hull definitely made assembly easier than Revell's two part ones. The nicest part of the kit is the HS-2 Seasprite Helo athough I had to replace the main rotors due to their scale thickness. I also removed all the molded in railings and replaced them with PE. Now, the kit is supposedly 1/310 and there are no PE railings in that scale or even 1/300, so the best I could do was 1/350. They are, indeed, out of scale, but surely look better than the molded in ones from the kit. Stretched sprue rigging and antennae finished her off. It's not the best model around, but fills a gap on my shelf of ships of this era.

CMK doesn't make many complete AFV kits and practically none in 1/72, but I picked this one up at the IPMS/USA nationals. It's a mainly resin casting with some 3D printed parts, a small PE fret and a tiny decal sheet. Clean up was minimal and fit was very good. The hull is a hollow casting and there's a basic interior provided. Mine is done as a Light Reconnaissance Car of the 12th Royal Lancers in France in 1939.

I may be wrong here, but isn't a logo supposed to represent/present your organization to the public? If that logo causes more confusion than providing information, I think it may not be serving its purpose. I think it needs a bit of tweaking yet.

Not as well as you had hoped? My gosh, man, what would you do have done better? It's excellent as is.