TheBaron

Most astute. Annoyingly. I forgot another bit this morning. I've seen the pictures. Thanks hendie - that clinches it. Goes to the top of the 'to view' list. I need a bit of Gothic now the sun's out. Basking in a new tool-fest judging by the 'What have you bought section'! Sorry to hear you're not getting much time to yourself Johnny. I wouldn't have been able to either when the lads were younger so send sympathetic vibes your way. Ain't it great being a patriarch? Nope. Well on the mend and off the painkillers. With Springwatch starting on the BBC next week I thought it time to get this thread in shape with a nature ramble first. A spider has taken up residence amongst the rock collection on the bathroom windowsill: he/she doesn't spin webs in the traditional sense but distributes a set of miniature cables across every surface in immaculate 1930s horror movie style: Mrs B found an abandoned wasp's nest by the compost heap yesterday too: The structures that creatures create are a constant source of fascination to me, I mean, look at the delicacy of this: We've an old wrens' nest in the kitchen that makes the finest of any human weaving look incredibly crude. Right. A slew of valedictory shots to start with as this is the last you'll see of such views from now on: The Act of Enclosure is upon us once more: From the array of clamps, pegs and tape you can see for yourself that this last step was not an easy one. With epoxy all over a range of flat and curved surfaces all at various angles to each other there was a (wholly predictable) tendency for the previous section to slip out of alignment whilst you were adjusting the current one: It took nearly an hour to get everything lined up in various dimensions and secured in place... ...paranoiacally checking for any sprung seams before stepping away and going nowhere near this blighter now for a full diurnal rotation of the home planet. With that closed-up we're entering a new phase of the build now, one that will be largely fixated upon getting outer appearances to a sufficient - though not slavish - likeness of the original. Surface detail to take care of first - a long job I suspect - including a look at scratch-building various antennae and actuators & etc., The fun never stops does it? Tony .

Transfixed recently listening to recordings of Puffin cries: deep organic waves of sound texture. Having got older I've come to appreciate more the detail and tonality in birdsong, and see now why Messiaen was so gripped by it.

Congratulations Martian. Nice one. I'll be over in Lyme the first week of July if you get disorientated out on a navigation exercise and need to put in to port for a restorative plate of oysters...

The thread is sure to calm down now that we're on to early Christmas promotions... I'm off for a loose-leaf morning pot of Campbell's Perfect Tea, teabags of course being Satan's Own Tweed Underwear for the holy brew.

Incoming transmission: 'Albatross: looking a sweeter aircraft with each successive settling. RYA course: hope it's going well - will this qualify you for Vogon craft as well?'

I wonder would Proops Bros. let me exchange those green shield stamps for some tools? Bit late possibly. You must be brave Simon! Don't let the plastic see that you fear it! I do - it's true! (But not until you finish your magnificent masterclass build so that I know what I'm going to be doing...) Sanity? Have you forgotten this is Britmodeller? A second-cousin Bill - it's a Skoda Octavia that's getting a bit long in the tooth nowadays so starting to develop all those niggly idiosyncracies that drive you mad. Luckily though we are blessed with a saint of a mechanic called Seamus who carries out mechanical exorcisms. Amen and thanks-be brother. It was you who introduced me to it - I just wouldn't look at anything except the 24-hour stuff now! The devils on here have already tried to tempt me to the introduction of electrical circuitry Cc.

This thread has been mis-titled I'm afraid, it should be: 'What has Ced bought that I find I now unexpectedly need as well.' The worst of it is I can think of positive reasons to acquire all of the above.... Best just buy the stuff Gorbs and have shot of the internal agonizing. Look what happened to yon Macbeth feller. Addenda: wonder would this work with MicroMesh? https://www.proopsbrothers.com/5-x-dremel-proxxon-replacement-sandpaper-holding-split-mandrels-235mm-332-shank--x8149-9729-p.asp

...for now. I strongly suspect that said item will become a staunch companion on the Baronial bench - to which end I got round to tidying up what passes for a stash on these premises in order to free up more shelf space: Not as impressive as most I've seen on here but at the pace I build enough to keep going until medical science permits my download into a crystal lattice... Moving those boxes around I found this stunning image slipped in between a couple of them: IIRC this aerial view of Edinburgh was reproduced in the Sunday Times or Oberver magazine (I can't remember which) nearly 20 years ago and has followed me round ever since. The caption reads 'Alfred Buckham, 1920' and after a quick dig on the Hinterwebs just now I'm pleased to note that you can get a digital print of this from the National Gallery of Scotland. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/shop/prints-posters/art-prints/aerial-view-edinburgh-alfred-buckham-art-print More of the esteemed Capt. Buckham's EPIC work can be seen here: http://alfredbuckham.co.uk/ Why on earth did I never look him up until now? In other news: 'Britmodeller in Britmodelling Missing Bit Blunder'. Look what I forgot to install before fixing the ceiling on yesterday: A few deep breaths and much delicate tweezering 'midst the entrails and I managed to get the jump seats installed forward on the port side: Some Rocket Max gel to hold them in place and: ...you'll not even know that they're there at the end of the day. Oh well...'completism' and all that. Before affixing the the spar box to the Box itself, there's the matter of the openings for the inboard flap actuators to attend to, which commoin sense dictates being done prior to gluing this large section to the aircraft. The best view of this region I found was in the flap test video James had punched up in this thread previously. Here's a freeze-frame from it with the relevant openings pencilled onto the kit: The kit moulding on the lowest part of that curve where the openings start is extremely thick, so required some thought as to the best way of cutting out such tall narrow openings without wrecking the work done previously to box this section in. In the end I hand-drilled the shape out - literally - by holding one of these drill bits between thumb and forefinger to gently drill an initial opening: Once this was done the same drill bit was >most gently< used as a tiny cylindrical file to increase the opening little by little. A finished example on the left above, work in progress to the right. Final rectangular shaping was done with one of these, inherited from my father-in-law: A most beautiful set of needle files that Mrs. B returned home with yesterday; herself and the brother are clearing out the old family homestead prior to sale and found them in a drawer, apparently never used until this morning. Alongside them were reams of these: Remember the taste of licking them and sticking them into the books? Not once can I recall us ever actually gettting anything with them. Weird. Ahem...Back to the present then and with that done on both sides, the way was clear to donk the roof on and glue it into place: The starboard side isn't glued on yet, but I found that I needed it in place in order to push the seam along the port wing root in enough for gluing, otherwise it tended to spring open too much: I've been deliberately generous with the epoxy there as I learned back on the Dornier that it makes an excellent hard filler as well, one that can be carved back nice and flat, thus killing two birds with one stone for a job of this nature. Up a t'rear, a precautionary cocktail stick was inserted to avoid the starboard side of the vacform getting glued on prematurely at this stage: Another 'leave this overnight' job. Tomorrow the starboard. Anyone watched The Terror yet? It looks a grippingly Gothic fictionalized account of the Franklin Expedition. In relation to the above, Francis Spufford's: is a magnificent survey of the sublime insanity that ice seem capable of producing in the mind. Right. Main task this evening is to get out the Gaffer tape and fix the car. Driving along earlier the driver's-side rear window dropped down into the door with an alarming 'did we just drive over a zombie?' Crunk and we have to wait until the part is in on Monday for it to be fixed. It won't stay up without some prime Britmodelling bodgery but at least the wind seems set fair for France at the moment so the rain should keep off. I'm rambling - must be the sudden increase in sunlight of late. Take care mes braves... Tony

The scifi vibe to that made me picture you guiding a small black hole around the garden, drawing weeds into its maw with those raging tidal forces.

Truly blown away by this last substantive update hendacious one - this photo of a real Wessex (presumably taken at a dump somewhere?): shows just how close to the actual thing your model is starting to look. I actually don't have hyperboles hyperbolic enough for work of this quality: the structures and colouration here are just visually 'so'. Made my morning looking through that. Bravo!

Verve, panache, je ne sais quoi. All them French words'll do nicely for that painting session: splendidly lustrous-looking results.

History tells us that where there are monks there is sure to be monkey business. First nuns and now Wrens. The man's insatiable.

Bow down to your Dremelian Overlord: (Beware that the mount only seems to fit Dremel rotary tools should you yield..)

Currently guffawing with laughter at a re-reading of Tom Clancy's Cardinal of the Kremlin. His technothriller side always holds up enormously well since they were first published but the book just reminded me how hilarious Clancy was at doing people and social interaction, little better than: Still. It made him rich and I'm re-reading him, so there must something about metaphorical weights falling on fictional horses mustn't there? That aside, he can really tell a gripping story.

Note to self: avoid carrying model past iron filings factory.... Thanks Chris! Cheers Ced. It was a cause of regret I wasn't left unattended in the small operating theatre long enough to conduct an inventory of useful items, though whatever the consultant was digging inside my shoulder with felt pretty useful. It had occurred to me to mask my fascination with the array of surgical tools by pretending to be a serial killer - thus avoiding the shame of admitting to being a modeller - but, well, you just know how judgmental people get about such things. Unable to drive to work for the day due to the newly-acquired patches of embroidery currently adorning the left shoulder (stitches oot in 10 days) settling down, a little more attention was showered upon the Iron Chicken. I'm taking the current slew of jobs putting the main fuselage structures together in a deliberately slow fashion to avoid any mistakes, so firstly I corrected the issues I'd discovered previously. The radio-op is now in the act of craning down and forward to look at through the windscreen: Not only did his previous stance clash with the roof of the cockpit but his eyeline would have been looking straight into the overhead panel as if he'd just spotted a particularly interesting switch there. His vacated chair has also been picked up off the floor and glued back into place behind him, so it no longer looks as if he's copped a strop at something: Test fitting of the starboard fuselage revealed that a little more clearance was needed to accommodate the side of the IP coaming on this side too, which a birr in the Dremel made short work of correcting: Then time for a test-fit of the internal ceiling (that pipe at the back on the starboard side is just there to brace the starboard side to keep the ceiling levelled during gluing): I'm glad I'd been methodical about this phase of the build as the rearmost of those bulkheads that I put in to reinforce the gap between the internal ceiling and (vacformed) outer skin of the aircraft threw up an issue I should have anticipated: Will that bulkhead conflict with the supporting blades (paradoxically designed to perform the same function) extending backwards from the rear of the spar box later on? Answer: Partly. Fine to port (in fact the interaction of those two elements helps raise the vacform to meet the outer surface of the kit part along the seam a lot more neatly), but the starboard downward-curve needs shaving. A small piece of shim on the centre blade also makes a useful addition at both sets of seam lines there, just where it needs a little tilt upwards to maintain the main contour of the aircraft in this region of the airframe: One final visual check was necessary to see if those blades were visible through the gap in the ceiling: No. Fine. Time to get the Araldite out. Epoxied, taped and clamped: The other reason for taking part this sloooooow is just the sheer number of fiddly bits of framing and crew members inside that tunnel that - may it continue - I've so far managed to avoid snapping off or bending: That can sit for 24 hours now for the glue to dry and then on with the spar box and wing stubs. Be careful going over to @CedBs current Spitfire thread. I went over unaccompanied by an adult this morning and ended up buying one of these: Courtesy of: Be careful. It could happen to you too... Tony