Bear Paw

Ha! I may not bin them. I was thinking of finding a range of Perspex box display cases for them. Does anyone know of a company that does them?

Model making and model storage are two opposite activities that do not sit well together with me. I am in agreement with Mr Bertie Psmith and frequently cull the dead wood. I am always impressed when people produce a sticky little Airfix kit they made when they were 8 but mine have all long gone. I recently put 23 completed kits in the bin, which was a strangely liberating thing to do. Consequently I am nervous about my Wingnut builds I have and I will not be able to store a 1/32 Lancaster any where even though I would like to build one. I often see people with gigantic work rooms on Facebook that has display cabinets but ultimately I would just become tired of them all.

WNW are not in business any more possibly because of the pricing policy where as Airfix and Tamiya have to make money. As for the question about how many Airfix 1/24 scale kits the Lancaster is worth that is a question only you can answer. Having built the Airfix 1/24 Typhoon and a few WNW kits I know what I think about that question. Other brands may try to ask for more money for their products on the back of this but do you think people will pay for for anything that is of inferior quality ?

Ha! I made the DH4 a while back on this thread and yes fiddly is not the word! I went straight to water with the old decals so I won't be doing that again. I will post my Storch up this weekend after I have applied the decals. Andrew.

Hello Tony, I have just popped back to this thread to get my hit of nostalgia and am pleased to see an original B26 Invader. That is the boxing I made back in time. Brush painted with humbrol silver of course. As I remember a difficult thing to do with the treacle like paint and a small stiff brush. I have recently bought a bagged series 1 Fiesler Storch for £6 and am making it as nostalgia build. I probably built it about 1969/1970 aged 11 or 12 priced 2/6d. The old me is finding the kit a surprisingly tricky little thing to build and I take my hat off to my younger self for doing it! So far I have had to clamp to warped fuselage halves together, sand out a massive step in the fuselage join, and replace the wing struts that were bent like bananas and were too brittle to react to hot water bending. The undercarriage legs and their supports have vague location points and attach directly on to the clear 3 part cockpit that has to support the not too insubstantial wings. I don't remember being phased by any of these problems before? I have paint on it now (airbrushed not brushed) but of course the 54 year old decals and shattered when dipped in water. I have sourced some more so it won't be in the original Airfix scheme but I will post it up here when complete. Regards, Andrew

It could like some one has mentioned previously be hung on a wall?

Yes well said Duncan. Yes Simon this thread on this subject does illustrate well just why the Australian call us ‘ whinging poms’ 😂

There are some colour schemes that have painted over the printed lozenge pattern.

Thank you all for the feed back and I have learnt a lot from this kit - have a more modern Dragon kit of the same vehicle so I will have a go at this when I have completed my Tamiya sdkfz 223. I am not too happy with the spare wheel on this as it too large. The stores and sandbags look a bit large too, so I may have a go at making my own. The tracks on this old kit are awful but I didn’t want to splash out on the metal set. I have now glued the tracks down on to the top of the road wheels to try and represent the characteristic sag.

Thank you John, it was a good opportunity to load up the vehicle with everything! Photos that I have seen show them with so much stuff on them. Here is a colour photo from the time with the crew giving their vehicle a posed wash down.

Thank you Swralph and Pete, I will make sure to post the 223 on here when built. Tbh there are a lot of these old Tamiya kits to go at! 👍🏻

Thank you Bush and Homer, I am new to building armoured vehicles but not modelling and so I have seen these kits around since I too was young. I bought this mail order for £20 including postage and so decided to have a go. It is a very simple kit and exactly what I was looking for to develop skills. It has been very enjoyable using all the weathering mate and techniques. I have enjoyed it so much I now have the Tamiya 1/35 Sdk.fz 223 armoured car to build. 👍🏻

It was the Tamiya Hanomag Sdkfz 251/1 1/35 item 35020*2200.

This is the third AFV model I have made. I have got to a sticky patch with the kit I am building at the moment and so have been distracted by this half track. As far as I can see this kit is a 45 year old kit and it is very simple. I have made it straight out of the box with stores. very enjoyable build

How does the cockpit area fit on this kit I have heard it is a bit awkward? Andrew.

I have found that micro set is good to use by adding it to the water for the decals. The lozenge decals only need to be immersed for a couple of minutes in this water. I then slide them off into the gloss painted wing with plenty of water on it. I have found that Micro sol does not help or work with the application of Wingnut decals. It reacts very quickly and makes the decals very soft straight away, this makes them impossible to position. When the lozenge decals are in place I then roll the water out of them with cotton wool buds. This gets rid of the air bubbles I then continue with this with a hairdryer. The heat helps stretch the decals in position. I have found if you don’t use the heat the decals do not bed into position and don’t stick.

Have you started decaling the fuselage with the lozenge decals yet Sanfran?

ok so lurching back onto the Airfix track....... I have been digging through the instructions that I have saved over the years of making kits. Unfortunately most of my very old ones got lost and thrown away but I do have a few of the Airfix bagged red stripe instructions left. I think I must have made most of this range from the late 60’s through to the mid 70’s. Below are some of the kits I made as a child using my 2s 6d pocket money. 😏

I agree and I need to try that too. I bought the Avitattic decals two years ago at Telford as I have always wanted to try them. I think in future I will use the pale blue as the base on which to put the streaking camouflage. The un doped linen is ok but I will try the alternative.

Hello Duncan, I have just completed the old Revell 1/48 scale Dr1 I used the Avitattic streaked camo decals for the Dr1 and they were excellent. I can wholeheartedly recommend them. Otto Esswein aircraft - May 1918.

That is good to hear Duncan, get stuck in and see what happens, that is my approach to kits. I have mine to start and will use the decals provided for the aircraft that are included in the Richthofen Wingnut kit of the Albatros DVa. Andrew.

I have heard there is an interesting red one that you may have seen? 😏

Two more points - the important point about the paint is that it must be gloss the colour doesn’t matter. I used white so I could see the gaps, which was a bit silly but for the best in the end. If you you look carefully at the decals Wingnuts have supplied you will see spare patches of he lozenge colours. I have used these to patch any small gaps that are left, using the idea that real aircraft would have had patches too😏 You would have to look very carefully to spot the patches.

Hello the white I have painted as a base is for the decals to adhere to as no setting solutions can be used. I painted the fuselage Tamiya white X-2 and applied the lozenge decals with water only. When in position then I used a hairdryer very carefully to fix the decals in place and it worked very well. The decals are completely opaque and so there is no problem with the white showing through. I started on the 3D jigsaw on the fuselage Here is the fuselage side with decals applied. You have to be careful with the hairdryer but it is the only way. Here you can see the fuselage completed and the bottom wing stubs. I am amazed how well the decals fit. I will now need to spray the surface with Tamiya smoke to represent the grey coat over the lozenge pattern. I have stalled on this build initially because I ran out of X-2 and secondly nerve! I am glad of your post as it will kick start my build as I now have the white paint! Regards, Andrew