Being Chief Cook & Bottle Washer I have to do all of the jobs associated with these little books and that includes writing them and then laying out the pages.
23rd February 2026
A busy day today that allowed me to accomplish all that I set out to do. Not entirely an unusual occurrence, but one that seems of late to be less than frequent!
I’d already decided on exactly what I needed to do today, so allocated time to each task and then ticked them off one by one. Despite working on my own and essentially for myself a lot of the time, I’ve always tried to have a plan of action for each working day. If I don’t have one, I find that I procrastinate way more than is acceptable and do very little as a result. By at least have something in mind, it keeps me on track…at least, that’s the plan!
I started off the day by completing assembly of my Tamiya Leopard 2A7. I’d hoped to get that done on Saturday, the simplicity of the kit needing little more than six or seven hours to complete. Best laid plans and all that forced a rethink as other jobs got in the way. The model still took that time to build, I just had to spread the hours over two sessions, instead of one!
Though I don’t want to go into detail about the kit here (it’s a build for work) I can say that it’s a really enjoyable model to put together. Being Tamiya, assembly really is child’s play with everything clicking into place. Sure, there are simplifications but that does little to dampen one’s enthusiasm, taking you seamlessly from box opening to painting and weathering, in one very easy, highly enjoyable step.
Having completed the Leopard, I returned back to the Revell Meteor F.8 (or FR.9 in my case…) to finish off the airframe. Much of it was already done, only a few seams needing to be finessed and then primed, to check if I needed to carry out any additional filling and sanding. That done, I could then fix in place all of the control surfaces and call it a day.
I have to say that I found the addition of these small flying surfaces a rather troubling step, my need to keep adhesive away from their joint lines whilst insuring each was firmly bonded in place, playing havoc with my emotional state. A mixture of superglue and a few swipes over with a brush loaded with Tamiya ‘white cap’ cement seemed to do the trick, each being held firmly place without evidence of any unwanted glue smears betwixt wings and control surfaces. Little victories eh? Little victories…
And so onto my new book…
With the demands of the day-job over, I could spend time work on my new Spitfire book. Being Chief Cook & Bottle Washer I have to do all of the jobs associated with these little books and that includes writing them and then laying out the pages. To fit this in and around my other work I try and complete four pages a day which keeps things ticking over nicely.
Today, I continued work on the cockpit chapter laying out all of the images and captions leading up to the painting of the ‘pit in my Spit’. So far, I’m happy with the way the book is looking, all of the information being clearly laid out as seen in previous titles. All I have to do now is complete the other 80% of this new modelling guide!
See you tomorrow.
SPENCER POLLARD'S KIT BOX 
Hi Spencer, Throw another shrimp (and Spitfire book) on the barbie for me, as I have several 1/32 Spitfire kits to build so this tome will have a direct effect on how I will approach such projects. I found a second Tamiya 1/32 Spit IX I didn’t know I had, and some Laminar Flow conversion bits, so who knows….. Looking forward to seeing this come to fruition.
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