A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: DISCUSSIONS, DECISIONS AND AN AFTERNOON OF FRUSTRATION…

This process involved the Airfix kit exhausts that in turn act as brackets for their engines, which as you might expect, don’t fit the Eduard parts. Result? Blue air. A halt in proceedings and a decision to return to the fray in the morning…

12th February 2025

Today can be summed up in three words: interesting, productive and frustrating. That’s it, that’s my diary.

It started off well enough. I posted a short update on my Book of Faces, asking if modellers are put off my negative reviews of perfectly decent kits. I was intrigued by the idea that the Airfix Anson had been described on the Intertwebz as a “Putty Monster” when my experience was quite the opposite. So, I asked my followers on my page what they thought and the comments rolled in. If you would like to read those response you can check out the following link. You’ve no need to log in, the post being public so you should have little trouble accessing it and the discussion generated…

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1294546308402026&set=a.693474585175871

With conversation flowing I returned to the Anson, dealing with the glazing that I mentioned yesterday before my attention turned to painting and then the Eduard engines that I had bought for the project.

The glazing required a degree thought before I was happy to move on from construction to painting. Firstly, the windscreen needed to be blended in with the nose, a task made relatively easy thanks to superglue, accelerator and various sanding pads. The nose cone was a similarly painless task, though I was faced with a couple of tiny gaps that only made their presence felt once I’d oversprayed everything with interior green. The side panels though proved rather more problematic. Their delicacy and my very real fear that gluing them in place would inevitably lead to internal contaminants appearing with glee once painting had been completed and masking, removed, made me decide to keep the side panels separate. As such, I masked them off and fit them dry, each one acting as a fairly successful mask that would, it was hoped, protect the interior green shades, from the exterior’s silver lacquer.

Dry-fitting the side panels meant that I had to make them fit perfectly, because there would be no chance of filling and sanding once the paintwork had been completed. I’m happy to report – though instinctively  prepared to be corrected – that the panels do indeed fit neatly, so I plan to secure them when the time comes with little more than Johnson klear flowed between clear panels and silver airframe, which should hold them in place, without damaging either them, or the surrounding paintwork.

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Having dealt with the glazing, I could begin painting, or so I thought. That was curtailed by those errant gaps that I discovered around the nose (dealt with using Mr. Surfacer 500) and then that I had drilled holes in the upper port cowling as directed by Airfix (see inset picture) only to discover they weren’t needed for any of the options in the kit! As it stands I still have the holes to fill, so that rather put paid to any paintwork this afternoon.

And so onto my final frustration and the straw that broke the camel’s back of my enthusiasm.

You may recall that I bought some Eduard engines for this build, which were, or rather are, beautiful. I planned to use them on the model, one enclosed, the other fully in show. It was only after they were cleaned up, that I realise the kit needed extended exhausted pipes, Eduard’s engines only supplying the shortened version. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to get the parts to work with the extended pipes in the kit, nor could I locate the now cut-down Eduard engine within the enclosed cowling. This process involved the Airfix kit exhausts that in turn act as brackets for their engines, which as you might expect, don’t fit the Eduard parts. Result? Blue air. A halt in proceedings and a decision to return to the fray in the morning…

See you then.

TODAY’S MUSIC CHOICES…

Today has been an unashamed return back to the Ninties to listen to some of the bands and their albums that I loved during that mad decade of music! Here are today’s collections:

The Verve: A Northern Soul

Embrace: The Good Will Out

The Charlatans: Telling Stories

Magnum: Live at KK’s Steel Mill

• A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: WHY HAVE I NEVER BUILT A LIGHTNING?
• A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: A TRIP TO BRISTOL…
• A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: A RELAXING DAY…
• A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: HOW MANY MORE KITS DO I HAVE, HALF STARTED?!
• A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: 2025 ALL WRAPPED UP!

1. 

   Wow! I built a dozen back around 1980. Entered them as a collection at the IPMS USA Nationals. Didn’t win…

2. 

   Yes, stop procrastinating……build a Lightning🤣

3. 

   Who knows, you might even consider publishing another bookazine on building the BAC Lightning as well?

4. 

   I am glad that the man was talked down. It’s definitely hard to see without knowing the outcome, until later.…

5. 

   sadly(?), I’ve at least 15 models at various stages of completion. 2 I started back in the 80s, iirc I…