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Having completed a Metcalfe card model earlier in this GB, I have become fascinated with card modelling in general and so decided to try another. This is a weighbridge and coal office from Scalescenes. https://scalescenes.com/ Scalescenes kits are a little different from Metcalfe ones. With Metcalfe you get everything you need in the box (well... er... packet. ) The printed sections are already layered with the thick card and everything is cut ready for assembly. Scalescenes, on the other hand, do not provide a physical kit. All their kits are downloadable. You get a link to a PDF which you can then print out. All the card and other stuff needed has to be found from other sources. This may, or may not, make them slightly trickier to build. We shall see. Scalescenes have a "try before you buy" policy. A number of their kits are free! It's worth having a look at what they have. This coal office is one of the free ones. It is available in OO and N. Of course you can scale it up or down to suit other scales if you wish. There are also six choices of brickwork. I chose to go with ashlar dressed stone. There are lots of other choices as well; seven different door options, British Railways signage for six regions and three sign options if you wish to represent it as a coal merchants. Add to that a representatiion of a weighbridge and a set of coal staithes. It's obvious that Scalescenes have put a lot of thought into the design of this. When printed out, it fits on two A4 sheets.

What could be more peaceful than a rural village with a shop and cafe? This is a Metcalfe Models card kit. The grey sheet is slightly thicker card which will provide the floors and other structures which need to be robust.

I'll enter my first (maybe last) blitzbuild with something that, time wise should be easy... Brought on a whim for £2 to the Bure Valley Railway, with a view to the Because I'd never heard of them. Then it went back on the shelf, but I'll give it a go in this./ After all I've only got to cut it out and glue it together; what can possibly go wrong? It's thin card, closer to paper. Doesn't look very convincing so the big risk Is I decide to enhance it and run out of time- just like a standard GB!

I accept that I"m legally an adult responsible for my own actions, but the voices or at least a post by @Paul821 made me do it! It's our weekend to provide respite care for my father-in-law so only small models and no solvents can come with us, fortunately yesterday was the Aladins cave of Model Junction in Bury St Edmunds so I go this Very straightforward, I suspect writing them up will take longer than the making of them. 2 n gauge pill boxes in laser cut card to pass a few minutes Standard, exemplary Metcalfe instructions. I'm not sure about laser cutting card, but it seems to work and the scorch marks (for it is they that make me wonder if they ever burst into flames) give the card a ready-weathered look. Which is just as well as no pencils came on this trip for shading. Quicker than you can shout, 'Take cover', the main elements for the hexagonal one are done... They come with a door, which is tricky because the ones I'm familiar with don't seem to have doors but a blast deflecting opening. At least it save me modelling that bit, though I wish I'd brought something to colour the door as perhaps it's where Farmer Roy keeps his traps etc. I can also see that folding onto the hexagonal base is going to give very pronounced edges, which I think should be smoothed off. A bit of drying time and on we go...

Another day and and two (or three) builds to enter into this GB. In the chat I mentioned that in the 1950's and 60's my father built a large number of Micromodels, some of which I still have. I have now located the model that was missing when I made my original post. The Bull Inn at Long Melford the model has lost chimneys over the years. At the time we were living in North London and obviously had no way of knowing that in the year 2000 we would be moving to the area and come to know Long Melford well. However the village had already gained fame as it was one of the many locations used in the TV series Lovejoy, which had started in 1986. At the time it had a very large number of antique shops, sadly only one remains today. Although the original Micromodels went out of business many years ago the models are still produced so as a location local to me Exercise Meteor project I thought the Bell should be the local in the village of Hinckford Parva. The model arrived today due to copyright there can be no equivalent of the sprue shot. The plan is to scan this model and then upscale the plans to 1:76 scale, these will be used as a template for the building. The details will come from pictures of the actual building. Once scanned I will also build the Micromodel - thus the two builds.

The title for this build, my third entry GB, means what is says. I do not have a plan for the build. It does link the other two builds. My current project is to build a village in 1:148 scale be the centre of an N gauge railway. Usually each build takes a couple of days so putting this in the GB is just what I would have planned for today/tomorrow. More details later.

My first entry in the GB is non-glue and the second is non injection neither of my entries will exercise me much so I do have plans for another.

*Record scratch noise You may be thinking, "Hold it right there! This guy isn't a modeler of floaty things! That model doesn't look like its plastic! Hell, we're not even sure if he's a real Yank, or even a person!" And you would be mostly right. I don't typically build floaty things, this model is paper (gasp!) - which I also don't typically build. And I'm only a naturalized Yank with Eastern European roots, so paper modeling is in my blood, To date, I've started several dozen paper models, and finished exactly zero. I used to get Maly Modelarz issues from Poland when I was younger, but most were way too complex for me. In the last couple of years, I have dabbled occasionally in paper, but have always hit some kind of snag along the way. I recently found a paper sensei to help guide me along, and I very quickly learned that a lot of my problems were related to using the wrong adhesives and tools. She also helped me choose a kit that was simple, but would also keep my interest in the long term. You see, even the simplest of these kits are all long term projects because you're not only gluing parts together, you're also fashioning the parts to be glued. And so we come to JSC Paper Models' SS Atlantic Conveyor. The vessel was a container ship launched in 1970, and was relinquished to the Royal Navy during the Falklands War, at which point it was converted into an auxiliary aircraft carrier for harriers and helicopters. It was hit by two Exocet missiles and sank while being towed back to the UK. The JSC kit is a waterline model in 1/400 scale, and includes parts to build the Conveyor in either civilian or military configuration. It also comes with a squadron of harriers, and helicopters, as well as a nice model of the HMS Sheffield. I have a soft spot for merchant and work ships, so I chose to build the civilian version. I also don't find the prospect of folding and rolling itsie-bitsie pieces for a dozen 1/400 scale aircraft the least bit appealing, but that's neither here nor there. But here is the digest version of work from the last week or two. First, the skellington. JSC kits are a bit unique in that most don't have frame parts that need to be backed by heavy card stock to make the skeleton. Instead, they rely on geodetic shapes and the power of physics to give the structure rigidity. Here we are laying down the"keel". Well, it isn't really a keel, since this is a waterline model, but I wanted to sound all maritime right there as you can see, even at 1/400 scale, this model is going to be pretty large. Fast forward a few nights, and we have the nearly completed hull frame. And it looks like its been out drinking.... I was pretty concerned at this point, but was reassured that it was part of the kit design. Also note the "Shoo Gloo" I'm using. Turns out solvent based adhesives work much better on paper models than PVA. Water from the PVA soaks the paper and causes it to become really wavy. This is what ruined all of my previous attempts at paper modeling. Where was I? Oh yeah, the floppy frames are part of the kit design. The kit comes with two decks. The military and civilian versions. The design calls for you to use both, you just choose which one is the under-decking, and which goes on top, depending on the version you build. The underdecking stiffens the frame pretty nicely. Not perfectly, but some of that might be user error. A bit of rolling hills up there. but overall better than all of my previous efforts. Here is the front half of the second deck layer, just dry-fit for now. Evidently, if I do this right, it should come out looking straight. Stay tuned for more, as I learn more. Oh, and if you're interested in seeing the other cool stuff JSC has to offer - here is a link to their well stocked webshop. And Poland's post-office IS shipping out of country once again, so order with confidence. http://sklep.jsc.pl/index.php/

My second build for this GB is a card model. Superquick models have been around for probably fifty years or more. I first came across this kit at the tender age of eight. My friend Simon had one built by his grandad on his model railway layout and I was always very envious of it. Mind you, it was a case of swings and roundabouts because he was envious of the Kitmaster platform kiosks on my layout, which had been built by my grandad. So I thought it would be fun to build my own version of this kit, even though I don't currently have a layout on which to place it. [/url]