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Happy 75 Birthday NATO 🇩🇰 It is probably true to say that there is no organization in the world that I admire more than NATO. I don't want to go into depth why since I might just get a bit 'political' and we cannot have that here, but I am prepared to say that - in my belief- if NATO had not existed for the last 75 years, the world would be a much more dangerous place and many fewer people would enjoy security and freedom.With this in mind I think I have no choice but to take part in this most excellent group build. I really like the idea of the flags! It's unique and intriguing and might just give an incentive to folks to model some of the smaller nations that might sometimes be overlooked. ‘My’ flag is The Netherlands; however, try as I might, I cannot find a Dutch subject that grips me quite as much as a Royal Danish Air Force F-100D! Yes, a Super Sabre complete with grotty, patchy, olive-green, livery! Admit it... you know the kind of filth I mean! Another reason to pick the Danish Air Force is that a friend of mine who collects models lives just 5km outside of Denmark and yet has not a single Danish item in his collection. (In the interests of transparency I should probably point out that I am referring to 'Denmark' the small coastal Western Australian township rather than 'Denmark' the Scandinavian constitutional monarchy - but you get the idea). I really like the F-100! It just looks so damned mean. It has to be the most shark-like looking aircraft ever made and its relatively simple geometry makes it a great subject for scratchbuilding. When I was a teenager I scratchbuilt one in roughly 1/100 scale and it came out OK, but it did not survive the various parental 'junk purges' that punctuated my many years living away from home and now - alas - it's in landfill someplace. Never mind, let's just make another one... a bigger one! Here are my references... some inspiration... and the raw materials! I'm hoping this will be a good chance for me to practice and improve on many of the methods that i used for the first time during my - still ongoing - Mirage IIIO build. This project I'm hoping will be relatively simple. Much of its success or failure will depend on the final painting and weathering as I'm hoping I can make this look like a jet as battered and worn as those in the pictures above. But let's start at the beginning. As usual I have selected Jarrah for the fuselage and have used cheap photographic spray adhesive to stick the relevant plans on the side. Here is the very first cut of the entire project. Shockingly that's not a bandsaw, but don't worry I will be using one very soon. OK - here it is, the first bandsaw cut! Let's call this the moment that the ‘project proper’ begins. To get to this shape does not take long. After some sanding and general tidying up we have this... Which is only the starboard half of the fuselage. I will be cutting out the port side tomorrow night. I have absolutely no hope whatsoever of finishing this project within the allocated four month timespan, especially since this new build must compete with the ongoing Mirage project which must be finished by August 2024. Nevertheless I do think that in the limited time available I can probably bash together sufficient shapes so that it is unmistakably an F-100. Following that I'll just transfer this thread back to the 'main pages' and carry on to the end. In the meantime I hope that this is of interest to you NATO enthusiasts and that you can all get some enjoyment out of watching my humble attempt to turn out a Danish Hun. Go Team NATO! Bandsaw Steve

Hi Modellers Well I've had a relaxing break away from the spares boxes and the glue, but I suddenly got the itch to make something. Unlike previous builds, this will be a short build as I have a window of a few weeks to crack on with it before other stuff gets in the way, so here we go. Basically, I have an old camera lens which is no good any more thanks to the dreaded fungus, so I decided to make something of it as I did with another old lens a few months back. I took it apart, cleaned off all the grease and then started playing with bits and pieces from the spares box to see if I had enough bits to quickly make a spaceship of some sort. Here are the lens pieces, reassembled into a different order and glued into place. And here it is with a tin can glued on the end. This will be a passenger compartment, or possibly a storage container (which is ironic considering that it's a tin can). This is a pile of bits which I think might end up glued to the spaceship eventually, not sure at the moment as I didn't bother making a sketch, I just wanted to wing it and see what happens (although I seem to remember telling myself a while back to not do that because it never works ). The white thing is a light bulb holder from an Ikea table lamp. The lamp was binned but I kept this bit because I thought it had an interesting shape - yes, this is how my brain works these days. Finally these last pictures shows a spaceship coming together - the pink thing on the end is a docking hatch which has some greeblies, including some staples and some bits of plastic sheet. The silver mudguards (made for a previous build but never used) will be glued around the hull and will probably be painted black to look like solar panels. The Ikea bulb holder will be the main engine and will probably be silver as I have a lot of silver paint to use up. Thanks for watching, another update will be along soon, either that or a bus replacement service. cheers all Monty

Here we go again. Are you sitting comfortably? back in October at the Lincoln model show, I was taking a slow march around the tables in the company of @general melchett. Under one of the tables I spied a Revell Rotodyne box, the reissue one, up for a tenner. I'd wanted one for some time, so... Of course this won't be built as intended. But then you knew that didn't you? In one of the Star Wars films a sort of flying bus lands and out steps Ewan Mc Gregor. Hmmm A couple of years ago at the car boot I picked up a display type pod racer for a quid. Hmmm The disassembled pod racer. I've wanted to use the engines on something since I bought it. But, I thought they may not be space going engines, hence the pod racer use. All I needed was a suitable fuselage... How to disguise the fuselage source? Well, I had this 1/32nd P-38 nose piece.. So I sawed off the Rotodyne nose. A bit. The nose cone was slightly too narrow, so I sanded down the fuselage halves at the front to fit. But it was then under strain. So it also got sawn behind the door and card inserted . Much better. You can see here the start of trial fitting fairings, The main rotor fairing had to go, of course. These two black bits are ex SR-71. This will not be a bus, but a fast planet bound freighter. Sort of a much much faster DAF 7 1/2 tonner. Here I'm starting to fill in the windows. There's a 1mm card backing plate glued inside them. Filler has since been used. The card inserts seen here save filler and mean that when sanded I should get a fairly smooth finish. The rivets are going too! The fuselage half locating pins were hopeless. I've added card tabs like on a vacform for strength. And, just to prove that I do like the Aircraft. This hangs in the manshed. Rescued from a Calendar almost 40 years ago! The original is signed Hardy and dated 1984. A lovely picture IMHO. Obviously more is to come. I hope you were able to follow my ramblings and will return sometime soon. If only to try and make more sense of what I'm trying to do here. Given the weather, there could be an outdoor bar by then. Who ordered the cheeseburgers from the barbie? Comments and a more exotic cheese in the burgers are always welcome. Cheers, Pete

Hi All, Here we are following on from the 1/32 Malta Gladiator by far my best build so far. With the next build, I've decided to do something more challenging, creating an almost extinct inter-war torpedo bomber in a scale never seen before... I give you the 1/32 Vickers Vildebeest, this aircraft was a design that first flew in the late 20s and managed to cling on until the early parts of WW2. It's a all metal structure bi-plane covered in fabric and from a CAD design point of view a head-scratcher... as very little info remained from that period hardly any drawings survived and only two fuselages both in NZ survived one Vildebeest and one Vincent. so I started designing the fuselage around 2 years ago mucking about with line drawings off Google and managed to get a basic representation of the shape i have now improved this into something I'm happy with, 3d printed resin is great for detail but can warp, it is very fin so that has been something i have had to design around. after already printing my original fuselage and not being happy with the results I redesigned the fuselage and got a 1/72 special hobby kit for reference and to check scales which to my surprize were pretty good!! this image shows the scale of the vildebeest very large for a single-engined aircraft CAD Model of the RH fuselage size prior to being sectioned for printing. Here are the prints of both halfs ready to have supports removed and assembled. first mockup with the engine (Bristol pegasus from Vector resin). First print of the floor. A lot of work is required yet I'm currently trying to get the interior and cockpit complete and fuselage glued before the exterior gets a lot of attention. The fuselage frame is constructed from styrene rod with 3d printed fixings. Some of my hall from Telford included airscale PE and decals which should make it all come together. small prints such as levers and bellcranks are visible from the side windows so I have modelled them this print wasn't perfect but the parts were useable. thanks to a generous member of my local model club (Thanks Simon) for lending me some images and info he had for this aircraft one of the most valuable items was a rare instrument panel drawing which I have modelled will be improved with the airscale goodies, the extra bit at the top is due to the different profile of my fuselage but this should be hidden once the model is complete. If anyone has any questions I'm always willing to try and answer them the best I can. Thanks James

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas! I’m only an occasional visitor here, from the mud ‘n rivets section and there’s been some truly inspirational work going on here recently – nice! I finished my latest vehicle scratchbuild a little while ago – a 1/16 Italian tankette… I’d planned from the outset to team this up with some figures, and due to the lack of 1/16 Italian tankette crew figures out there on the market, plus the fact I really want to scratchbuild the lot, I’m planning to sculpt a couple of chaps to keep their little tank company. The basic armatures are done, using “milli-green” (milliput + greenstuff 50/50 mix) on copper wire. I’m cheating a bit with heads, hands and feet. For my last sculpt (a pair of WW1 troops) I sculpted their faces, but I’ve a feeling that Shrek and his brother might undermine the realism next to the tankette for this one, so I got some nice 1/16 resin heads and hands. The boots were copied from a pair of Tamiya Germans, which I bought to practice paint as well as pinch body parts. So before I get stuck into the Fimo, I decided to do a bit of paint practice using these two. I’m happy that I can convey a reasonable sense of reality on vehicles using various, long-honed techniques – washes, dry-brushing, paint chipping, pastel mud and so on, but figures require a whole different set of skills that I simply don’t possess, or at least I’m not very good at. Figures always let the side down a bit for me, and that has to change. I painted the more aggressive of the pugilists with a variety of Vallejo model colour and model air paints, but as usual, he ended up looking a bit “plastic” (ironically?). The face isn’t too bad I guess, and it is a very old, basic kit, but despite a wet palette and some retarder, I really struggle with blending colours and this is most obvious on faces. After a bit of reading on Planet figure, I decided to give oils a crack. I use a black, brown and pale yellow oils a lot when weathering vehicles and I really like the way they handle; long drying time and almost infinitely thinnable. The debit card took a hammering, and I got this lot from Windsor and Newton. I’ve got a load of cheap oils, including a few from the Winton range, but I’ve found that there is a significant difference between these and the “artist” range, which explains the massive cost difference I guess. I also got some fine detail Liquin – a medium that reduces drying time, whilst also improving blending capabilities and translucency. I probably didn’t need all of these new colours; once on the palette (jam jar lid) and mixed, I reckon I probably only needed half of them – oh well; my plan is to take away all the excuses and see if I can improve my results. I’ve also got a small set of DaVinci brushes (very nice) to further this aim. The first thing to try was a subtle touch of oil washes on the first chap to see if this added a bit of depth and improved the acrylic face, and I think it helped a little. I also beefed up the clothing shadows and highlights using burnt umber and naples yellow respectively, and these have really helped to de-plastify him overall. And so onto man two. I prepared his face by undercoating him with Vallejo flesh, painting his eyes using the same acrylics, and adding basic shadow and highlights, again using acrylics. And finally, the oils. Blending is a joy – I can keep fiddling with it for ages. He’s got more than a touch of the “Christopher Lees” about him – a bit pale and cadaverous (and his duelling scar is a bit rakish), but he’s wearing winter garb, so I reckon a Mediterranean tan would be out of place anyway. There’s a far-away look in his eyes that I quite like. Next to fella one, I think he’s a big improvement, and although there’s a bit more practice needed, I’m really happy with the progress.

My workshop has temporarily limited operational capabilities: the paint shop is closed due to numerous equipment failures. I wrote a letter to Santa Claus, demonstrating beyond any doubt that I had been good all year long and deserved a brand new, shiny airbrush. My wife promised to deliver the letter to the addressee. Therefore, there is reason to believe that one of the hardware problems will be solved in the last days of December 😉. There is still the issue of compressor repair, which unfortunately is going worse. Anyway, I can't paint old things for now, so I started building new ones. A construction mech has been on my mind for a long time: an excavator or some sort of demolition machine from the near future, with legs instead of tracks. The thing is supposed to be in the mecha style: a robot with an operator inside. I'm not sure that mecha doesn't only apply to armed vehicles, but I don't feel like making another military thing. Make walls, not war 😉. Construction started about two weeks ago. This is the operator's cab "kit": plastic cosmetic jar and acrylic Christmas bauble. I have several such baubles. This is a semi-finished product for making your own decorations. It used to be perfectly transparent, but I dulled it with sandpaper. For now, I only want to use half of the bauble. I glued the HIPS floor inside. This can be seen, although somewhat blurred, in the photo below. Several rings of different shapes will form the control panel around the operator's seat. On the lower right is the front cockpit panel. I glued this to a piece of a photo etched part that used to be the tank's mud guard. The operator's seat is carved from 3mm thick HIPS. First steps to building the leg drive module. And the first steps in building the legs. I decided to connect the operator's cab and the drive module with neodymium magnets. On the one hand, it will facilitate further construction and painting, on the other: the cabin will be able to be rotated around its axis. From my experience, glue is not enough to properly attach the magnet. The most durable method is to attach it using Milliput, preferably in such a way that both magnets are separated by the plastic to which they are attached. This is what the cabin module, connected to the drive module, looks like at this stage. The jar made from polyethylene was sanded and covered with a HIPS strip. I want to avoid a mishap as when building a spaceship for Above Karman Line GB. There, I skipped the step of covering the polyethylene with polystyrene and ended up with peeling paint. Thanks for watching. Wiesiek.

Must be time to start another from the list of Sci fi scratchbuilds that are lined up in my head. Back to the Ma.k universe again for a meld of various plastic bits and pieces. In the foreground is this toy walker, 50p from the car boot sale. The idea was to combine it with a Helicopter fuselage. That would create a thin skin troop carrier. In the end I went in another direction. First I removed the 'shield' on the front and cut down it's supports. Last month @theplasticsurgeon donated an old Revell 1/32nd Lightning for an upcoming Kreiger Falke Scratchbuild. Very many thanks again, Tim. I mostly just need the booms for the Falke, so I had the central pod going spare. Hmmm, what to do? See those guns in the back there? they just might get fitted later. Oh look, a headless chicken (ish) It took a little cutting and shutting to get to this point. Weird, innit? Now the pod is upside down to do this. So, do I make a cockpit in what was the underside? Or go A.I. Robot killer? I think it may well end up A.I. Here I've trimmed the 'wingtips'. They'll be finished off with droptank halves. And I cut a slant in the nose. I do have the original clear nose but want to do something different. That's where it stands (ahem) at the moment. Taped up and balanced on the desk. Further progress depend on chores and the cold in the manshed. We shall see. If anyone can think of a better name than 'headless chicken' I'd be interested. A German word would be best. I want to greebly the legs a bit, make them less toylike. As always, Your comments are very welcome. Cheers for now, Pete

Well that didn't take long. Less than a month! To sum up, I had a gluebomb Stap & Droid bought cheap from the bay, and a box of 1/48th Italeri A-10 Warthog bits. I dismantled the Stap with TET and used the biggest part for the rear of this beastie. Obviously, the front end of the A-10 too. A previously unseen space going fighter from the Star wars universe. I've still not thought of a name for it or it's home Planet. Paints are Tamiya extra dark sea grey underneath & Model Master Braun Violet on top. There is lots of card and filler here. Panels had been cut out on the fuselage & I had to alter the Stap part. The pilot is ex spares box. Orange flight suit like the X wings. So probably a rebel. Laser cannons are repurposed machine cannons. I wanted some sort of insignia and came up with a white 20mm square and two blue stripes from a Matchbox Puma. Intakes, The slim one is ex F-16 tail. The round ones are a 1/32nd Airfix wheel and a jet exhaust from I know not where. Engines were cobbled together from various bits. Ships guns, Ju88 bomb clamps, copper wire etc. At the back we have this huge sensor fairing as on many modern Earth fighters. Playing 'dead ants!' Halves of drop tanks are obvious. As are the landing pads, Space 1999 Eagle. They'd retract straight in and seal the hole. I should have made the struts longer. It sits rather close to the ground. The paint finish came out a bit weird. I used Tamiya rattlecans underneath. The top was brush painted. The grey was okay but I think the cold got to the matt coat in the garage. It looks kind of worn now. Re-entry damge? Nose gear. (Obviously). The canards were in the spares box, but I don't know their origin. I've left most of the A-10 access panels in place and penciled in others. And the six inch ruler gives a clue to the size of this thing. Oh yes, there's another sensor fairing under the nose. The mottle was an experiment. Take a white primer rattlecan and a tumble drier scent sheet as a mask. Et Voila! Similar method to what they used to do on U.S. Custom cars with lace. Some sheets give a more random effect. It's probably rubbish as camouflage, but I think it gives an 'other worldly' effect. And another view. Most of the panel lines and scallops were already on the Stap part. A lot have been filled in. And that is your lot for another mad build. Thanks for looking and I look forward to your comments. The WIP is here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235131889-a-10-with-a-stap-garnish/

Long long ago, in a Universe far far away (Actually 12 miles North of Lincoln) another Star Wars ship is being created. Some time ago I gathered together unused parts from scrap Italeri and a Revell 1/48th A-10 Thunderbolts. Then recently I got hold of a gluebomb Star Wars Stap and Droid from the bay. I used witchcraft and TET to dismantle the Stap (The Droid is for another time) sat down and had a good long ponder. You probably know what an A-10 looks like. So here are the Stap bits that I'm mostly not going to use here. https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/4/0/1/135401-11104-pristine.jpg This is a link to a Scalemates picture of the Stap boxtop. The main part I'm using holds the guns. The part of the Stap that matters and part of the pre-butchered Aircraft. The previous owner had cut out various panels. It really is a patchwork job and card and filler will be used Profusely to make something decent (Hah!) from the wreckage. And here's a rough idea of where I'm heading. The ex Airfix 1/32nd scale car wheel in the foreground is next up. The wheel on the right has been chopped about and is snuggled up to a P-38 Lightning bit. And should sit something like this. An intake will be mated to the front of this assembly. And we should get something like this. There are various other bits to be added, obviously. But this is your basic interceptor. Next I need to get the cockpit sorted and the fuselage paneled up before joining the two main parts together. Thanks for looking, There may be another post at the weekend. Until then, stay safe & party on, Dudes!

Evening all, after roughly 2.5 years my carrier deck diorama is done - just in time for SMW! It's an F/A-18C CAG aircraft from VFA-113 'Stingers', with the carrier deck based loosely on CVN-76 USS Ronald Reagan, circa 2005. Carrier deck is scratchbuilt, utilising the Flightpath US Navy Carrier Deck Diorama set. The Hornet is the Academy kit with much aftermarket (see build thread linked below), figures from Reedoak (4) and Scale 3D (1). The decals are from Superscale (set no. 72-904). The A/S32A-32 'Spotting dolly' and Nitrogen Trolley are fantastic little resin kits from Brengun. The LED lights in the hangar roof are ready-wired sets from Small Scale Lights - really glad I included these as they lend a nice realistic ambience (IMHO). The build thread is here if you are after more details. The diorama is called 'Hornet's Nest' - thanks again to @AlxBNE for the inspiration! Final pics below, hope you like them.

My latest Sci Fi Scratchbuild involved the remains of two gluebomb Airfix Bristol Superfreighters, Plastic card and lots of greeblies. There is a work in progress thread in the appropriate place if you're interested to see how it was done. These would be Corellian freighters being used by the Empire to supply their ships in deep space. On the right is the top view. Left side inverted. Scale would be around 1/720 I think. A ship scale? From the bow on the right, The bit with three stripes was a Helicopter intake, I think. Gotta have a probe up front! At left are legoalike bricks to create the Bridge and quarters etc. Paint is simple grey primer. Midships. Various greeblies including (I think) an F-15 RADAR set up and a couple of tank barrels. Oh, and a googly eye. The yellow stripe? Well Red denotes a Diplomatic ship. So maybe yellow is for cargo vessels? It just seemed right. This is a repurposed Tank section plus various other small pieces including track and Aircraft parts. The aft structure, Another Tank bit with add ons. Probably the engine rooms. Solar sail at the bottom here. A better view of a solar panel. A Tank bit with added thin strips. Why do they have to be black? This is Alien tech after all. The green of the upper hull shows up nicely here too. It was brushpainted in streaks of thinned Tamiya acrylic. Engines. Small Tank wheels and a 1/72nd Airfix JU88 engine intake. Makes as much sense as the engines on the Falcon! Upper hull. Colours blasted by Solar rays and debris but mostly green. (or blue) I wanted to get a sort of insectoid feel. There was a (90's) Sci fi TV series (can't remember the name) that had that sort of craft. German/Canadian, the male actor was Brian someone. He had a companion robot head? Here they are mounted on my Star Destroyer section* in the mancave. See the red Diplomatic ship, top right. *There is a build and RFI for it somewhere on here. Just another view with a different freighter in the background. I don't really need two of these on display. So if anyone is really desperate, I could be persuaded to part with one. Very many thanks to those who followed the build and to you for looking in at this RFI. Comments are always welcome. Next build coming soon! Cheers, Pete

Hello all, I'm taking a little break from my other builds to start another. I'm mostly using it as a tooth sharpening exercise in 3D printing and learning how to print photoetch. I thought a 4 post lift would be quite a good one to do as I can use it to display cars in a fun way. I started out scouring the web for a 3D model of a 4 post lift to save some time which I found here: https://grabcad.com/library/4-post-lift-1 The model is fantastic, if a little different from it's renders. But as I say, it's a super piece of CAD work. I had originally thought to change it somewhat and block parts of in order 3D print the lot, since the wall thickness would only be 0.17mm at scale But then I figured that it'd be more fun to try to engineer it from 3D printed bits as well as photoetch. The first thing to change on the model, apart from scaling it, was to make a barley pattern on the ramps which I did by making one barley, laying out a single row of the pattern and then using the Flow command in Rhino to effectively distort and wrap the pattern around the component. Here are the 3D printed parts laid out, I drew custom supports for the micro parts and then used Chitubox to generate supports for the larger parts. I was going to try to print the ramps in one go, but I think on balance it's be better to chop them in half and print it that way as it'd be much faster. Here are some bits I printed already I'll be using rod and pipe quite a lot in this as it's strong and convenient. Above will be a test in PE for one of the upright posts. I'm basically trying to work out how wide the score lines need to be and how much to scale the part in order to get the accurate size and it'll need to interface with other components. I'm going to do everything in brass for the PE as it's easy to solder together. I'll try to up my photo game a bit as I'm aware they're pants! Anyway, thanks for looking. If it comes out nice I'll make the files available for remote printing or something. My next step is to get my hands on some etching chemicals! Cheers, J

Hi All This is my first group build - thanks to all for putting it together :). When I came up with this idea I got nervous that perhaps it might not qualify because it wasn't a spaceship/rocket etc, then I RTFM and calmed down a bit. Anyway, this is going to be a Martian Marine Corps APC, inspired by The Expanse tv show (again, as per the Freighter build). I don't actually remember seeing an MMC APC or anything similar on the show, and I watched every single episode because I am an anorak. If there was such a thing, feel free to let me know. I wanted to do it mainly because the MMC logo is very, very cool and I wanted to put it on something, also I had an urge to build something with wheels. Not having anything to copy I was forced to improvise a good deal, all the while trying to think how such a vehicle might look, bearing in mind the relatively low gravity and thin atmosphere on Mars. This is my sketch: I did a more detailed sketch which you can see in the pics, I also put the whole thing into LibreOffice Draw which turned out to be a smart move as I changed the design quite a lot: It has six wheels rather than tracks because I have 6 wheels in my stash which my brother had knocked up for me ages ago on his 3d printer. That project never happened, but I knew I would find a use for the wheels some day. I don't know whether to add a gun turret or not. That decision can wait for a while until more of it is built and I can see if it would work or not. This build will have lights, so I bought this: I'm not sure what's going on here. Something to do with maybe Lego and a VW Camper. I don't understand why anyone would want to combine those things. Anyway, it was fairly cheap and it does what I want. This is where I've got to. I've used square section drainpipe as the starting point for the hull. Onto that I glued some layers of 5mm plastic sheet to give me the rough outline which I will fill and sand into the correct shape. I'm using more 5mm sheet to make the cabin and engine compartment which go on top, they will also need a lot of filler and a lot of sanding, which I have started as you can see. Martin Bower said that the key to scratch building is being able to carve. Personally I think the key is the ability to put up with the dreary monotony of endless sanding. Hopefully this will all come together and end up looking like something that really could bounce over the rocks of Mars (and those Martian ruins in the Cydonia region which no one wants to talk about). cheers for now Monty

Well, the bench was empty and looked rather sad. So I thought I'd better do something... I'd acquired two gluebomb Airfix superfreighters. I had a vague idea that I could use one to build a Mandalorian style ship. But then I changed my mind. So a Corellian freighter was born. Well, actually two of them, why ever not? I'd dismantled the models ages ago, so they'll feel no pain during the next bit. I assembled my Dremilalike minidrill jobby and a circular cutter and then sliced the fuselage halves lengthwise. Then again to reduce the height before joining them together again. Their tails got lopped off too. Here, the glue is drying. There is black plastic card bridging the joint to add strength. This may look like I'm making small Aircraft Carriers, but please bear with me. I've added card spacers across the gap. And, two pieces of wood to aid in the eventual mounting (steady!) of the models. Here the one in the background has the white card fitted. Still waiting in the foreground. I was off making tea. I should explain that these things don't yet exist in the Star Wars universe so I'm making it up as I go along. As usual. The one in the foreground is the correct way up. The front to the right here. This is just a basic shell. It will need more card to shape it further, and lots of filler to lose the windows and any gaps. Then I can start to add lots of greeblies to make them look the part. Basically what ILM did all those years ago. Meantime, these are resting under the weight of my Star Wars reference book so the glue joints dry properly. As always, Your comments and questions are welcome`at the usual address. The next box down ⬇️

Skylab Hi Karman line team. As promised on the chat I'm switching my Skylab project, currently on the Science Fiction and Realspace forum, into this groupbuild. I'm well below the 25% threshold at least in terms of time to finish this project and @bianfuxia (who I understand is the boss around here) seems to think it's OK for me to pop across here for a bit, so here I am. This is my first group-build BTW so it's all very exciting! Anyhow, here's a link to the story so far... I have not achieved a huge amount just yet but that's mostly because my spare time was being sunk into finishing my PzH 2000 so hopefully being in this group might cause me to focus on Skylab a bit more. Here's something like what I want to make...(mine won’t have the big rocket-bit sticking out the back of the workshop because it was not there on the final deployed version). and here's where I'm up to. Doesn't look like much yet but hopefully it's on the right track. I'm very much looking forward to being a space groupie! Hopefully I'll make some progress over the next few months. See you all soon, Bandsaw Steve

I was wondering for a long time what to build in this GB. The problem was primarily an excess of ideas, so selection based on my own limitations was necessary. I love building models from scratch, mainly using polystyrene sheets. This material makes all rounded, arched and curved surfaces virtually beyond my reach which is why most of my SF models have very "classic" shapes. They are like 80's Volvos but in zero gravity 😝 So it will be this time. A spaceship full of sharp edges and angles. I also love spaceships that are vertical in shape, very tall, but short and narrow like a knife stuck in the ground. This one will be like that too, hence the name: Space Cutter. Such a little pun. And that's my "kit": Lots of polystyrene in sheets (restocking shipment just arrived). Engine module. The only rounded element for now. These are used filters for coffee machine emptied of carbon insert. Unfortunately, they are made of polyethylene, which IMO is a terrible material for modeling, because it is very difficult to glue and paint. But it has a nice shape. And this is the title phoenix rising from garbage. An incomplete 1:35 Jagdtiger I got as a bonus when buying modeling parts. Someone assembled it and painted years ago, which made it easier to separate the hull parts. I'm only going to use the top part. Maybe it's hard to imagine anything further from a spaceship than a German World War II tank but I will try to meet this challenge 😝 In the photo below is a sketch of the goal I want to achieve. The tank hull is just a shortcut. Instead of building frame for a deck in the middle of the ship, I'm going to use this element. I'll turn it 180 degrees and cover with HIPS panels and greebles to mask the characteristic shape, and I think it will be ok. A sketch is not a blueprint, but rather a general concept. At the end of this work, my spaceship will certainly look a little different. Or even more than a little. However, taking into account the proportions of the ship's elements and the size of the tank's hull, I estimate that the entire model will be about 60 centimeters high. Several boxes of greebles collected over the years will provide the necessary details. Maybe I'll use some parts of this as well (another bonus). I'm particularly tempted by the cannon's resemblance to a space telescope. All right. One more important thing. It will be a long and dangerous journey through the galaxy of my laziness. There is a high risk that it will never end. Or it will end up with nothing 😉 Cheers, Wiesiek.

I'm back with another adventure, a 1:48th scale model of the first ever destroyer in the Royal Navy, HMS Havock of 1983 Following the trials of HMS Lightning (torpedo boat No 1) navies around the world began constructing torpedo boats to launch the new Whitehead torpedoes. To counter the threat of these torpedo boats torpedo boat destroyers were commissioned, capable of fast speed (for the time) and with guns capable of eliminating the threat. This is nicely summaried in this video for those interested Yarrow and Thornycrofts were the first builders to enter the race to build the first TBD's with Yarrow launching the first of the new A class 27 knotter's, HMS Havock in 1893 The A class vessels were all different, some having bow torpedo tubes, some not, with varying boiler arrangements (that technology was changing very fast in the 1890's) and differing level of equipment and guns. HMS Havock was one of the early smaller vessels being 180 ft between perpendiculars and 185 ft overall length, displacing 275 tons fully loaded. She had 3 torpedo tubes and 1 12pdr 12 cwt QF plus 3 6pdr Hotchkiss QF deck guns Here she is as originally fitted with locomotive boilers And the builders model I've already posted, also @1:48th scale So, its a big model, 46.25 inch long but very narrow and not too tall. It will make a nice comparison to HMS Medea, the black painted M class destroyer I built 20 years ago. After my loft room sort-out, I now have the space to display it, so here goes.... As ever, I will be building the hull in wood plank on frame with aluminium plating and brass fittings. Where ever possible, wood for wood and metal for metal While the dolls house is developing, I will be working on the drawings and have enough information gathered now to start the thread, though it may be slow to begin with. The key decision to start recording the build came on Friday with a copy of the as-fitted drawing from the Maritime Museum archive. I'm not allowed to post it here but Lyon's great book on early destroyers has a copy and this is a scan This scan does not do the plan any justice, here is a sneak of a piece of the full 84mb file For those of you how have not had the opportunity to work from builders drawings, you are missing a great pleasure. Victorian builders drawings (in particular as-fitted ones) are a delight, they took the trouble to draw more or less everything, the drawing even lists the small arms carried in the captains locker... No model plan comes close To supplement this wonderful plan, here are a few other references I have to help me along the way So, the journey begins, more soon Cheers Steve

Hi folks…! I’ve been distracting myself with a series of kits – interwar stuff, 1/72, and even an hairyplane so it’s now high time for another armour scratchbuild. I’ve decided on something a bit different (although it’s still covered in rivets) and have plumped for a WW2 tankette. I saw Bovington's one recently and was charmed by it. The wealth of funky paint schemes is also a great incentive. It’s tiny, so I’ve made my mind up to jump to 1/16 scale for a fresh set of challenges. Unusually for my projects, there’s quite a lot of reference stuff online, including plenty of drawings, so I loaded one into CAD and modelled up the main panels. I then flattened these into 2D and added some details, ready for printing out and cutting the parts from 0.75mm plastic card. Despite working in CAD for over thirty years, I continue to resist the lure of 3D printing, so it’ll be a build of plastic card and nail caviar as usual. That said, I’ve no real idea how to tackle the tracks as yet – maybe I might dip my toe in the printing world after all…. I’d also like to do a figure for this but I’m not sure that an internet search for “1/16 Italian tankette driver” will pull up many results, so he might end up being another scratchbuilt element of the project. Wish me luck!

Time for me to start my GB contributions in earnest… So this is in the stash and I’m almost caught up on my other GB commits and both my Drakken and Vampire are very nearly finished. Now it always my suggestion to be Airco and DaHavilland, so I thought I’d scratch build a DH1 side by side with the DH2, upon which it was based. So I’m off scaling plans. My first surprise, the DH1 is 4 meters wider than the DH2.

Happy Anniversary Skylab 50 years ago today Skylab, America's first space station, was launched. I'm not going to discuss Skylab's history in detail right now, there will time for that later but suffice to say that this programme set numerous records for human occupancy in outer space, gathered an enormous amount of scientific data regarding both planet Earth and the Sun and was involved in a couple of episodes of aerospace drama that sometimes tested NASA’s ingenuity and determination to the limit. It was also - in its own way - rather beautiful. Skylab is well remembered here in Western Australia because on the evening of 11 July 1979 as it disintegrated in the Earth's upper atmosphere it scatteried debris over a large elliptical area to the North-East of the small W.A. town of Esperance. No one was hurt and no damage was caused. For a brief period the eyes of the world were on Western Australia and a flurry of activity followed as numerous folks went out in search of souvenirs. Surprisingly I have only ever seen one model of Skylab in W.A. It was given to the Shire of Esperance by NASA and is on display, along with various pieces of debris, in the Esperance community museum. I'm going to have a crack at building my own model and hopefully - despite this early start - will be able to join into @bianfuxia's upcoming 'Beyond the Karman Line' group build. Here are my main references. And the principal drawings that I will be working from. It turns out that 70mm PVC piping from Bunnings is freakishly - exactly - the correct diameter for the main orbital workshop. and that 25mm electrical conduit is also - exactly - the correct diameter for the multiple docking adaptor module. So, earlier tonight, on the evening of the 50th anniversary of the launch, I made the first cut in this project. Followed by marking up and cutting out two bulkheads from MDF. That sit snugly in the workshop like so... and then have a central hole cut in them so that the central 'axis' of the model (the aforementioned conduit) can slip through the centre of the orbital workshop . Leaving this... Which is a pretty good start I think. Unfortunately I now have four projects on the go, which is not ideal. Top priority stays with finishing the PZH-2000. I'm giving myself plenty of time for this one - about 6 years in fact - as I want it finished in time for the re-entry anniversary! 🙂 Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve

Time for another scratchbuild. Most de Havilland aficionados would be familiar with the DH104 Dove and DH114 Heron. Quoting Geoff Goodall: "At the end of World War Two, the Australian associate of the parent De Havilland company, De Havilland Aircraft Pty Ltd at Sydney NSW (referred to as DHA) was completing wartime RAAF Mosquito orders and looking for a new design to build for the post-war civil market. The general concept was a single-pilot utility transport for 8 passengers as a replacement for the many DH.84 Dragon biplanes in use in Australia. It was to be of simple rugged construction with fixed undercarriage suitable for Outback operations on rough airstrips, with low-powered 145hp DH Gipsy Major 10 Mk.2 engines, which were in plentiful supply. The new aircraft was the DHA-3 Drover....." (source: https://www.goodall.com.au/australian-aviation/drover/drover.htm for much much more....) Below is a photo (credit: Geoff Goodall) - which bears more than a passing similarity to the Dove, and is of a similar size - but with an extra engine. Actually the Drover had very little in common with the Dove other than stressed skin construction concept. Much more on this at the URL provided above... From a modelling perspective - whilst the Dove has been well served (certainly of late) in 1/72 - the Drover less so. There's a number of modelling articles where people have converted a Dove to a Drover, and older articles converting the Airfix Heron to a Drover (and the Airfix Heron to a Dove) - basically major cut and shut surgery. But I wanted a 1/48 model (my preferred scale) and so we turn to scratchbuilding. First problem was getting decent plans - the best I could find was some 'thumbnail plans' - not sure of source but might well be Jane's or similar. These don't respond well to enlargement (the pen lines scale out at about 6" thick), and there were aspects of these drawings just didn't look 'right'. I know Air Britain has a publication on the Drover with drawings from Juanita Franzi which are sure to be great - but it'll take me a while to source that locally (or pay o/s postage!!), and there's a model to be started! Luckily there's a number of airframes in Australia - including a mostly complete Drover, and a fuselage at Queensland Air Museum in Caloundra. So it was a museum visit, and out with a camera, tape measure, pen and paper. The scribblings below was the result of the visit - the drawing at left the enlarged thumbnail plans I was starting with.. Anyway - after translating all this lot to 1/48 - here's what the fuselage plan looks like - top view, side view and cross sections. This was my main concern with the thumbnail plans and there's certainly some differences... So - let's cut some plastic! The fuselage has compound curves all over the place - which is going to require vacforming. And vacforming means I need a 'buck' of the fuselage. My technique here is to first build up a skeleton of side view, top view and cross sections - which we'll later fill in with 'car bog'. You'll see this happen over subsequent posts. Below is the skeleton being built up. I've cut the side view as a single piece (0.75mm styrene) and am adding the cross-sections out of 0.5mm styrene - half on the port side, the other half on the starboard side - with a 0.75mm sliver removed to allow for thickness of the side view piece.... Little triangles of styrene help provide structure and keep things at right angles. And here's what it looks like with all the pieces of the skeleton in place. It'll need some time to dry before I fill it in. So let's move to the flying surfaces - a few hours work required to get the component parts as you see them below. - wing top surfaces (0.75mm styrene), bottom surfaces (1.0mm styrene) and the empennage pieces (all 0.75mm styrene). - All the trailing edges have had their inner surfaces sanded to a fine taper with wet & dry sandpaper. - I've also built up a tapered spar (basically an I-beam), and a tapered leading edge (laminated 1.5mm styrene) And in about 15 minutes - all the trailing edges are glued and clamped. Main spar is tacked in place, and temporary spars have been used for empennage. This now needs time to properly dry as the process of glueing the leading edge is going to put a bit of stress on this glue joint (done it before - it works fine). That'll do for the first post. Next steps. - start backfilling the vacform buck with car bog. - glue the leading edges of the flying surfaces.

This is probably my first model that I have completed since I joined Britmodeller almost two year ago . There are some of my things in RFI but done before. P.E.A.C.H. was pretty quick project by my standards: I finished it in three months. That's the combination of trashbash, kitbash and scratchbuild. The build log is here The base is ready too. It's basically a separaet model, a mini diorama, so I briefly considered putting its RFI in the diorama section. But PEACH and the base started together, so they will finish together. Thanks for accompanying me in this work. Regards Wiesiek

May I present LNER A4 Sir Nigel Gresley carved from parana pine with boxwood wheels, all hand carved. The drive wheels were the biggset challenge, having to carve 120 spokes with a scalpel in tough boxwood, I got through about 15 blades. Everything else was pretty straightforward. Theres no detail in the cab as at some point I plan to add a tender, which will obscure the view. Not made to any particular scale, its about 9" long as thats how big the plans were when printed out. Thanks for watching, all feedback gratefully received.

And it’s done! After just over a year, a lot of plastic card, a Costa’s-worth of coffee stirrers and millions of tiny rivet balls I’ve finally decided that my Mk 1 Gun carrier is finished. It was a great fun project and I learned a lot. Everything is scratchbuilt apart from most of the figures. The large chap with the leather jerkin was scratchbuilt (well, his legs, arms and torso were) but the others are cheap knock-off resin figures. I tried to replicate a photo of “Darlington” cresting a small ridge while the top brass look on. I’m happy that I’ve pretty much captured the look although I shied away from covering the whole vehicle with quite as much kit as is shown in the photo. Painting was done using mainly Tamiya paints, with weathering being mostly oil paints with a little clay wash and a dab of pastel dust. I constructed it so that the upper hull can be removed to show the interior off. Things I’d like to improve next time…. Figures; there’s always room for improvement there. I’m very slowly getting better, but there still seems to be miles to go. Groundwork; this was my first attempt at painting grass and earth on a black-primed base and I’m not 100% convinced that this is better than using coloured static grass. I might try a hybrid approach next time. Foliage; my little bush is a bit sad, and the (real) cow parsley I used to represent real cow parsley isn’t particularly convincing I don’t think. Thanks to everyone who followed and provided brilliant advice, feedback and support during this extended build. The (12 page) WIP can be found here….. Mk1 gun carrier scratchbuild - Work in Progress - Armour - Britmodeller.com

I don't have the enthusiasm to finish my current projects, but I'm tempted by the workbench (apparently I'm best at doing rather than finishing 😉). So I started another project. The intention is to build an armed low-wing hover/jet with a vertical profile (height greater than length). The shape on the front is supposed to roughly resemble an inverted T). It will be a combination of trashbash kitbash and scratchbuild, because I want to use scrap and spare parts, but to compose it well I also need a lot of styrene constructions. A few days ago I was cleaning my room and found two things. First was an old Dell PC mouse (which I kept because it has a great shape). Second was the Academy MiG-29 1:48 kit (scrap I got from a friend). It occurred to me to combine these two things. Or at least to use some parts from the MiG. The model is in bad condition: missing parts, no decals, poorly glued elements. I decided to use the wings pictured in the middle and a few other parts. At this stage, I also gave up using black mouse overlays (clicking element). The easiest way would be to glue the wings to the mouse but I don't think it would look good. So I needed connecting elements. As it is not easy to combine a rounded mouse to flat sheets of styrene, this "connector" is constantly growing and becoming more and more complicated This part is an extended wing attachment at the initial stage. It has a sandwich form to make it look better. The hole in the center is the landing gear section. The triangular structure on top is the lower fuselage element. The mouse will be angled approximately 30-40 degrees to the wings to add dynamism to the ship's outline. Here you can see the next stage of building the fuselage. I glued a styrene wheel to the lower section, and on it I started to build the middle section (where the mouse will be placed). The ribbed gray elements are the air outlets from MiG (only one is visible here). The styrene rods are matched to the screw holes in the mouse, which makes it easy to fit and remove. Other gray elements are parts of some plane or helicopter from my resources. I put the cable cover only for the photo, I will glue it after painting the cables. The Fulcrum's air outlets are clearly visible here. On the right: part of the fuselage of another unidentified plane. Attaching the engine nozzle caused me the most problems. First I had to make the bottom part of the mouse. It only worked the second time. I used another styrene wheel but the mouse is not completely flat so it didn't fit perfectly (there were gaps). I masked them with a narrow strip of styrene. Around the mouse there is a groove for attaching the lower part, which greatly facilitated the attachment of the strap. Then I glued a nozzle to the wheel. As you can see: it doesn't fit well either, but it's the only part of this nozzle I have, so I had to use styrene again. I decided that I could not make a cylinder of such a complex shape so I decided to go a different way. It took me about a week to build so far. The fuselage is basically ready for the applying details (kitbash phase). The two big tasks for the near future are landing gear and cockpit. Especially the cockpit can be problematic, because I would like it to be glazed. I have some canopies but it will be difficult to fit them to the mouse. Cheers. Wiesiek.