RobL

"how does one enjoy the hobby on a budget" -- With difficulty. There is little that is cheap about this hobby. It also depends on one's definition of "budget" - I see people talk about "doing things on a budget" and it turns out, because they are affluent, their idea of "doing things on a budget" is no where near as tight as mine is. Once you've found your "cheap" kit, you then have to buy paints+glue, which invariably end up costing you as much, if not more as the kit did!

Been hitting a bit of a block on aircraft models recently, I've got a 1/72 Italeri Harrier nearly finished, but just can't seem to get enthused about that final push to the finish line. So, I've turned to doing other things. One of which has been printing and binding an e-book that I recently bought. The book was originally printed in the mid-late 80s, isn't all that widely available, and can be quite expensive to buy second hand. So I thought I'd have a go at making my own "hard copy" as I don't have a decent enough tablet to make reading the e-book version easy - my sub £100 Tesco Hudl 2 is 5 years old, only 8" anyway and ageing badly! Tools used - HP inkjet colour printer. Hot glue gun. Two "planks" of wood and 2 G-clamps - to hold the pages together whilst putting hot glue on the spine. Spray Mount adhesive - to mount the cover art to the cover. 300gsm A3 sheet of card - for the cover. 600gsm A4 sheet of card - used to make the outer spine. A4 printer paper - for the internal pages and cover colour art pages. 1m x 45cm roll of "sticky back plastic" - to cover the cover. How very Blue Peter! Steel rule. Craft knife. Plastic chisel used for defrosting the fridge - I used that to "scribe" the bend point in the front/back part of the cover. That line you see in the 1st photo 5mm in from the spine. Professional book binders use something called a bone folder. Wish I had been able to afford to buy some US Letter size paper (also known as quatro size) as that's the actual size of the book, but it was prohibitively expensive. Also wish I could find a decent resolution version of the cover art, as it's supposed to be a wrap around cover, sadly I couldn't, so I just used the front/back pages of the e-book, and left the spine blank. Result, not bad considering it's my first ever attempt -

Spent a little while this afternoon doing some more of this. Added the rest of the timber framing. Filled some gaps with some "general purpose filler" my mother had lying around the house. I won't be using it in place of polyfilla for the exterior wall texture as it's "ready mixed" and very difficult to get out of the tube. A box of unmixed polyfilla will be much easier to water down and work with. I also attacked the timber framing with my dremel with a sanding drum attached, to tidy it up and to give it more of a old worn battered look to the timber. I'm going to give the timber a bit of a sand with a sanding stick, just to smooth out some of the filler. Also clad the chimney in the stone wall effect styrene. Need to tidy up the corners, do some filling and add the top "slab" on the top which overhangs a little along with coming up with some chimney pots. But hopefully once that's done and I've tiled the roof it'll look completely flush with the roof and sit IN the tiles. Photos - I actually managed to remember to put some models in this time, for a sense of scale. The models in this photo are my unpainted replacement WHQ 1995 models (I don't like the original plastics GW gave you in the core box) - I'm actually ready to put the exterior texture on the walls. But I need to venture into town to obtain polyfilla for that... Although I guess it would be wise if I cut the tower window out first - keep forgetting to do that! Also only have the corners on the ground floor section to add large styrene "slabs" to before I start painting that level of the Inn... Still need to make the roof for the back attic window!

Jeez, really!?! It was one of the first images I came across whilst looking for something that summed up that phrase. We all know the full quote.

80 years ago today, the Battle of France was over: the Battle of Britain had begun. Sadly we are down to 1 pilot from the Battle of Britain. Flying Officer John Hemingway. He will be 101 on July 17th.

I wouldn't worry. She can't tell you where the carpet monster keeps it's stash...

So, hot last week here in the UK... I couldn't sleep last night, so I thought I'd get back to doing this. The ground floor has been clad in it's "brickwork". This will have larger "slabs" made from plain styrene sheet on the corners to tidy things up a bit. The Chimney and rear attic window have been added. I need to do the roof for the rear attic window, what I originally made in template form turned out to be too small... The chimney will get clad in the same embossed styrene as the ground floor and will be flush-ish with the roof. The timber framing has been added. Although I haven't been able to finish it completely as I ran out of balsa wood. Somehow my calculation of about 1500mm turned out to be wrong, it's looking more like 4500mm will be needed!! I have more balsa on the way. I'm pretty sure that my corner pieces on the timber framing are all manner of wrong, but they are what they are. I'll be having a go at the timber framing with my dremel with a sanding drum, to shape it a bit, tidy it up in places and hopefully generally make it all look a little better. Photos - I need to work a safe way of cutting out the window in the tower... Had to add a patch on the roof around the tower... The tower witches hat roof got a circle of styrene sheet stuck inside it to improve it's stability whilst remaining a loose fit. The chimney is attached with 2 neodymium magnets. This is for the same reason as the tower roof is loose, so that I can remove them making storage slightly easier. More tidying up will be needed, I'm hoping the poly filla that I will use for the exterior texture will help cover up some of my crimes. I also have some "flock" from Woodland Scenics to use as moss to hide some crimes also.

I completed this back at the beginning of March, but I've just realised that I shared this everywhere but here... There's a bit of a green "glow" in places, that's not intentional, it's due to using a green background before I swapped the background out in Photoshop.

It's taken off amongst the miniature figure/tabletop gaming portion of the plastic modelling hobby. Reaper Miniatures for example have been quite successful with it. But like all kickstarters and other similar investment means, it seems to be somewhat the purview of those with the deepest pockets...

I wouldn't say that displaying/storing wheels up models is difficult. You just have to put in a teeny tiny bit more effort/planning. I try to do every aircraft I build as though it's in-flight. Although I don't take the prop blades off or use a clear thing, I leave them as is, as though the aircraft has been photographed in flight (with a high frame rate or something the prop blades will look as though they're static, as I understand it). I don't like extra holes in my models though, so I tend to stick a neodymium magnet in the belly of a prop driven aircraft and then attach the model to a rod with another neodymium magnet on it's top. It works better with jets, because I use a heat gun to bend acrylic rods which get stuffed up the tailpipes. Helps that my jets are only 1/72, the rods don't have to be too thick. After photographing the model I cut the rods down so they are short and straight vertically, and just display the model upright sitting on the rods. Helps keep them free of dust (ish), it's also easy to store/display them as they take up less horizontal space... I do find it frustrating that most model companies generally don't give you pilot figures though...

Photos of Wednesday's and today's progress, doesn't look like much but I've been wrestling with getting the roofs right, and the tower right. Will move on to doing the chimney and the attic window on the back side. Can't do much else as I'm waiting on more glue sticks for my hot glue gun... The tower is a little bit short on the bottom end, I can probably cut a part off the inside of the bottom end though and rotate that round to the outside. Also need to put the window in the tower... I have also resized the bay window, didn't like how wide it was initially. Nothing is fixed in place, apart from the main walls, all the levels still come apart, the tower comes off, all roofs are loose fit and the bay window just slots in. I'm not sure I can keep it all like that once I've started to texture and paint it. Getting a bit difficult to photograph this, my backdrop isn't tall enough! And I forgot, again, to put a model in for scale comparison!! Not sure I like how the witches hat roof on the tower sits, but it is what it is.

I usually choose my liveries when I buy a kit.

Thanks guys. I had a feeling yesterday when I built this that the pitch of the roof was too high. I've made the basics of a roof (no tiles yet) and put it on today and I was right. It looks to be about an inch, inch and a half too high! So, I've taken off the ends of the top level, adjusted the pitch angle, and redone the roof... ...lucky I'll be using polyfilla as a surface texture on the walls, it'll help to fill some gaps...

Been documenting my progress on this build on another forum, made some actual physical progress today so I thought I'd share it here. I've always been a fan of the aesthetic Games Workshop had during the mid to late 90s for their Warhammer Fantasy Battles scenery. "Back in the day" I copied a building made by a guy called Adrian Wild, a writer for Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazine during the 90s. My copy didn't survive even the first of two home moves, so I'm having another go at it. This is the building in question (the original by Andy Wild, not mine) - More references - Whilst my plan is to replicate this building (again), I won't be duplicating it right down to the last grain of mortar. Just a "looks like" build. For example my roof will hopefully look less ramshackle and my tower's roof will be a hexagonal "witches hat" style roof. This is where I'm at so far - The windows, these were cut out of the main walls, and I can understand why people use an x-acto scalpel now, I was using a Stanley craft knife! These will be covered with aluminium car body repair mesh, then squeezed back into the main walls. These are all numbered in correspondence with the holes in the walls they came out of- The ground floor, this will end up being clad in stone texture plasticard - The ground floor with the front door installed as a loose fit. The doorway (which is from the Wizkids Deepcuts range) isn't actually even on both ends of the "frame", so I'll have to do something with that. Also cut the pegs off the door that allow it to swing as that function won't be needed. - First floor section - Second floor section - Bay window section - And everything put together, loosely fitting as the glue is still drying. Each level above the ground floor has a layer of foamcore under it's floor so it will slot into the layer below it. - There's some tidying up to do, especially on the bay window section, although I may rebuild the bay window section as I'm not entirely sure it's straight. I think I'll go round the holes for the windows with a sanding stick to tidy them up if possible. The main walls are as square as I could get them, I wish I had a 1-2-3 block, that would have come in handy for making sure the walls are true. I did use a house brick though. I made a small balls up on the top floor front and back walls, they should have been attached between the side walls, not outside them. I'll remedy that by adding strips of foamcore to the triangular roof "beam" sections. So far so good though, they say plans never survive contact with the enemy but this one has so far. Can't really do much more to the ground floor level as I'm waiting on delivery of the embossed styrene sheet I ordered from Green Stuff World, it's coming from Spain so knowing my luck it'll be stuck in customs hell for a long while... I can make progress on the rest of this building in the meantime though.

An F-15C from Lakenheath has gone down in the North Sea off the coast of Yorkshire. BBC are reporting this, as are other outlets. No mention (at time of this post) of how the pilot is, hope they are OK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-53051055

I don't have models that are 20 years old, anything I did that long ago has been dumped during 4 home moves (2 out to my own places, 2 back to the family home). Some from about 4 years ago got retired though, because they generally aren't up to what I consider a decent standard. They're currently in a draw awaiting repurposing or disposal. Also have a 1/35 UH-1C that I need to take down from the ceiling and take bits off for a 2nd attempt at it - SWMBO (my mother) broke the entire main rotor and the tail rotor. Wasn't all that well done a model anyhow so needs a 2nd go at it. I am also in the "need to put up a shelf" situation.

Revell's 1/48 UH-1 Huey was tooled in 1959, still available, does that count?

Warhammer is the game. I think I've got it, something like below for a 6 sided roof, bend at the horizontal line, join the bottom sections first, then bend back the triangles till they join...

Thanks yeah geometry isn't my best subject either. I've tried just a triangle though. That would work if I don't want the flared bit on the bottom of the roof (I'm sure there's a technical term for it). Any template needs to be a triangle joined to a trapezoid (the flare on the bottom). It's working out the precise shape/size of any given side's trapezoid so that when I duplicate it 4-6 times, and cut them out, they will all join perfectly in a perfect 3d hex/squared shape, that I'm having a hard time getting my head around.

I've no guarantee the template will then work to form a properly joined up 3 dimensional shape. I could just end up drawing a thing that ends up full of gaps... To be honest I don't know all of the measurements anyhow. I only know for certain the bottom edge and circumference of the circle measurements. Don't even know how tall I want the tower roof yet. I think the method I described in my edit of the OP sounds about right to form the flared section, and should work (according to my logic anyway). so I'll give it a go. Only way I can think of doing it. The rest of the pyramid should then be easy to work out.

Hey all I'm building a building for a tabletop game that I play. The building has a tower, which requires a roof. I'd like to build a roof such as this (or actually peferably a six sided version) - I'm having a problem with getting my head around how to do it though. The actual tower is round. I have a circumference of 172.8mm to use. For a 4 sided roof, my maths says that would mean a bottom edge of 43.2mm. For a hex shaped roof my maths says that would mean the bottom edge is 28.8mm. I could brute force it, and cut out the trapezoidal shapes on the bottom flared portion, join them, and faff with it until it fits. But I'd like to achieve it more elegantly and with less hassle. I'd like to make a template, in photoshop lets say, so that I can get the shape cut out right first time with no hassles. I'm thinking architects and builders etc. must use some sort of geometric formula/process to build such a shape. Would anyone here be able to point me in the direction of that formula/process? EDIT - I'm guessing the (a) solution here is, for a 4 sided roof, use two squares, one for the bottom (43.2mm square), one for the top of the trapezoidal section (smaller), then lay them on top of each other, smaller square on top, and draw lines out from the corner points of the smaller square to the corner points of the larger square, this would then give me the side edges of the trapezoids. Same principle for the 6 sided roof only use a hexagon? Thanks in advance.

Yeah biggest ones I've hung so far is a 1/48 Tamiya Mossie and an AMT 1/43 X-Wing. I use 20mm hooks (around that size anyhow, not entirely 100% sure on that). Bigger the eye hook the better I would have thought.

This. Or just strong clear nylon. I use both (mostly because I can never find both examples of it at the same time, only one or the other). The only thing is I've found it a bit awkward keeping the nylon/fishing line attached to the hook, but I use screw in eye hooks, wrapping it around the thread and supergluing helps here. You can wrap it around a model so there's no need for any holes or anything to be made in your model. Although some aircraft don't really have any logical place to wrap the line round it, I imagine an Avro Vulcan would be hard to string up!

Yeah, it's just been reboxed over the years. Strangely the Jet Ranger, despite it being in very widespread use for 30+ years, hasn't had many kits made for it. And those that have been made are now like hens teeth. One of several Unicorn kits on my wishlist...