russ

So I mostly gave up modelling a few years ago and sold most of my stuff to get into cycling, and partly because the solvent smell annoyed the hell out of my family, since then I have done some work every now and then on some Card models, but still always fancied doing more plastic again. So this week I am stuck in a hotel in the evenings on a work trip and found myself in the LHS at lunch time today. Needless to say I walked out with a new kit, bottle of extra thin cement and 4 bottles of vallejo paint. I have some supplies with me from the paper modelling side, scalpel, micro drill, sander etc etc and some water colour pencils and a couple of tubes of water colour. So the plan is to build the kit, OOB as I have no accessories with me/available, brush painted and weathered with what i have with me along with the 4 bottles of paint purchased today, so essentially right back to the basics with limited colours, with this in mind the kit I picked is Meng's 1/35 Pickup trucks, essentially Toyoya pickups in various marks, the kits are great little kits with plenty of detail but nice and small so can probably survive brush painting. Some photos below, Kit box, paint supplies I've got with me, and a couple of shots of the chassis, which has been tonight's progress. Russ

Bit more progress made over the last few days. 1st up I got th elower hull plates on, followed by the upper hull plates and the deck parts. This is the most stressful part for me as any inaccuracies in cutting or alignment, or preparation work in the hull formers really shows up in these parts. Forutnately there was only some slight misalingment on the lower hull, and 2 areas on the upper hull parts where additional or remidial work is required. I have also been round the whole hull and touched up the cut edges with watercolout paint, whilst this leaves a striped sensation on the lower hull, I am planning to use various tones of the water colour to try an create a patchy tonal effect on the hull, which will blend in the various parts and cut edges. Untitled by [/url], on Flickr Untitled by , on Flickr Untitled by , on Flickr In the last photo you can see the misaligned parts. Hopefully this will not end up too much a job as there is a seprate set of hull sides to enable you to model the ribbed effect, and this should cover the worst of this error. Finally I also managed to add a few more parts to the rear superstructure. Untitled by , on Flickr Next jobs are to add the ribbing effect to the hull sides with the duplicated parts, carry out the water colour weathering of the lower hull and fiish off adding the Ammo lockers to the superstructure. Thats all for now thanks for looking. Russ

Looking really good, I really like this scale gives a great feel to the size of the ships.

Nice work, the PE wrkis exceptionally clean and I look on with envy.

Have managed to make some progress over the last day or 2. I have continued to fill the spaces between the hull formers with corrugated card cut to rought shapes and glued in the spaces. After this fill and cover the entire hull with filler, for this I use a lighweight houshold filler, it fills well, sands well, dries fairly quickly and doesn't add a load of weight to the model. Here you can see how some the card was proud of the formers and will need trimming back again. This was then sanded back, all the high points were shaved off with a sharp knife and a new thinner coat of filler applied, which has been sanded back again So the hull now has just a few blemishes, which I will sand a bit more, but essentially is ready for laminating with the printed card elements Untitled by Russell Kellett, on Flickr Untitled by Russell Kellett, on Flickr Meanwhile I started on the rear superstructure. Heres a picture of the parts, the instructions and a few images of construction so far. The cut edges of the card and coloured with pencil, felt tip or paint and all parts have been glued with PVA. Untitled by Russell Kellett, on Flickr Untitled by Russell Kellett, on Flickr Untitled by Russell Kellett, on Flickr Untitled by Russell Kellett, on Flickr Untitled by Russell Kellett, on Flickr Thats about it for now. Thanks for looking. Russ

Hi Richard I' recently started building the Polish card models mainly ships in fact I've got my first build of one as a WIP here, HMS Lance, but I've never tried enlarging one yet or going down the RC route. There is a papermodelers forum which you can find through Google. Or try starting a WIP thread see if it gets you the motivation to complete a build. Russ

Hi Darby, this one was about £8 for the kit, and another £8 for the barrels and laser cut parts, then probably another £8 or so for postage. But you can go way up from there, some of the big kits which have lots of accesories you can blow £50 + on or the biggest like IJN Akagi you could probably spend £100 on depends how much you want to buy vs how much you want to build for yourself. It's only filling the gaps in the hull that needs the cardboard so I use amazon boxes etc, but thanks for the offer. Hi Kev there are some really impressive card models out there, as a beginner in the field I definitely would be happy with an acceptable card model or even a finished one at this stage. Bit more progress tonight, I have managed to fill most of the gaps between the formers with corrugated card, bit more trimming to ensure they don't poke over the ribs and a couple more pieces before doing the same thing on the other side. Then I can break out the filler. Thanks for watching Russ

On with a new build, this is 1/200 scale kit of the L Class Destroyer HMS LANCE as she was in 1942 just before being bombed in Dry dock in Malta which caused her to be written off and taken apart. The kit is a Paper Model rather than plastic, I have purchased laser cut frames for the hull formers and some of the upperdeck constructions, as well as set of turned barrels. The kit is produced by WAK one of the Polish companies which specialise in these types of kits and has some elements of english in the instructions which can be helpful. A few pictures of the kit below: This will be my 3rd attempt, the 1st being HMS Sheffield which tunred into an absolute disaster, but I learnt alot about hull construction and importance of alignment etc, so I tried again with HMS HESPERUS, which was nearly completed, but has a number of severe errors, however it proved the successful hull construction, and I will follow that approach with this build. Step 1 is to assemble all the laser cut parts using UHU or PVA glue ensuring they are aligned as well as possible, this is a good kit as the parts are separated to allow a waterline or full hull version to be built. Photos below show progress to date, first few are the waterline parts then with the full hull option added afterwards. This is all glued together and dring out, and provides a surprisingly strong construction. The photos have been taken on an A3 cutting mat which gives a good impression of the size, its about 54cm long 5.5cm in the beam and 5.5cm high at its highest point so far. Work will move onto fill up the gaps with scrap corrugated card ready for filling, I found on Hesperus that this provided a really solid base to work with for the hull side placement, and a lot of strength in the ship as a whole. More photos on progress to follow once complete. Thanks for looking in. Russ

Thanks everyone for your help. The fonts are really useful as well so thanks for those Work in Progress. That is very kind of you Max, I would love to take you up on that. If it doesn't work as planned though I have found a railway hobby site that prints ALPS DECALS so we could perhaps get a sheet to cover both of us. I like the picture there is another one from a distance but it's in internal press material I'll see if it can be used. I never knew this either so thanks for the update, I'm also assuming that MSG means it could possibly be home printed. I'll look into this as well. I've made a start on the kit now and got a few items on order so a wIp thread should start soon. Russ

Hi all, I've been a member for many years and posted on the odd occasion in the early days but gave up modelling about 4 years ago. This last year though my interest has been re-ignited. I have been working recently with Lloyds Bank and there has been a fair amount of internal press around the Spitfire that the bank employees funded, it was a Mk.IIa serial no P8148 and called the black horse. It reached it's demise in a training collision over Somerset and was recently dug up from a field in Draycott. As I have worked with Lloyds and live not far from where it was dug up and probably underneath where the accident was. It seemed like a great opportunity to build something again, especially when I saw the recent Revell IIa kit in 32nd scale. In this picture you can clearly see the name similar to the Armagh name in the revell kit. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00939/35787078-2747-11e5-_939583c.jpgand whilst I think I can cobble together the serial number etc I'm struggling to see how I can recreate this text. Does anyone have any ideas they could share or are there dry transfers/decals with this font already? Many thanks and a happy new year to all Russ

Very nice indeed Chris, sorry to have got there a smidge before you. I particularly like the weathering on the exhausts, may have to re-visit this area on mine, it adds a real nice touch. Excellent work indeed. Ta Russ

And the Sea Fury, Sea Mosquito etc. Russ

Thanks all for the comments Tizzy, F32 Sorry Graham, but really it's your own fault. If you hadn't answered my question, or told me it was grey I wouldn't of known any better and done that Anyway I'm off to find a different part of the space time continuum so you can't find me It really is the only option IMHO, it has to be one of the coolest mascots. Russ

Hi MM, White Ensign do a 1/350 resin kit of HMS Norfolk a Type 23, but it is £140+VAT, having said that there are many people who will testify to the quality of their products. Type 23 Linky They also do a 1/700 of Norfolk which is £46 + vat Russ

This being unemployed lark is doing wonders for the modelling throughput, not so hot for stress reduction or stash increasing opportunities but hey ho. Anyway after nothing for over a year, this is the 2nd completed in 5 weeks, 1st was the JV44 Dora in the critique corner. This one is Trumpeters 48th scale Wyvern, built entirely OOB, and I've just realised is my first completed build that isn't Tamiya. Just about everything that could of gone wrong did including knocking it off the desk as soon as it was finished; repainting areas 3 or 4 times; the wing falling off twice; and changing my mind on the stores resulting in the wrong number of holes being drilled in the under wing. Any other kit would have been shelved during any one of these but for some reason this one seems to be charmed and soldiered on to a completed state. A number of the errors are visible in the final thing hence not placing it in critique corner, but this model was more about a practice canvass for my new H&S airbrush, overall quite successful paint wise, but I've learned the paint now needs less thinning than previously. I am particularly pleased with the final satin finish which was a 50/50ish mix of Model Air Flat varnish and Klear, looks just about spot on in my mind, not too flat not to glossy, just a bit of sheen. Spinner was changed from red to blue after some discussion on this site. Unfortunately now it is an exact copy of GrahamT's Wyvern. Anyway on to the piccies. Thanks for looking, comments still welcome. Russ The holes in the wing are for the rockets, which are ready to be placced, I haven't made up my mind whether to add the rockets or fill the wholes.