Greetings from Alberta, Canada, , Britmodeller!

[starseeker]

I've been lurking at your site for a couple years now, marvelling at the crazy beautiful work that I see here, and thinking that someday I have to actually join so I can say something about the crazy beautiful work that I see here. What's been holding me up is mostly guilt. I have been a member at a couple American modelling forums for a decade or so now, still make a comment at one now and then, but the other, which was once a great site, became so toxic that it drove me away from the idea of forums. I was then and probably still am primarily a sf modeller and the sf discussions there reached the point where I actually became ashamed of being a sf modeller and actually gave up building altogether. But not only is Britmodller a lovely place to lurk (and I get to spell "modeller" properly again), the atmosphere here  really makes me want to start building and sharing again. I so miss the community. 

 

The other thing that's held me up is the demise of PhotoBucket. I had hundreds of pictures there of various stages of various builds, mostly scratch-builds or significant modifications of kits. Have to admit that it's be building of things that I enjoy the most, the learning of new skills, the problem-solving. If I do get something finished, it's mostly by accident. But now I have so much to finish, there's no room to move around in my model room anymore.  I have to really get motivated and get things going again. I'd really like to post photos. I see photos here all the time. What do members here recommend as the best photo sharing method these post-PB days? I'd also like to post larger scale images, as I had up a large collection of Fox blueprints of various Irwin Allen craft along with many years of collecting other references. 

 

Personally, I'm a aged choleric white male who can't believe that after 50 years after Apollo 8 humans still haven't walked on Mars but that instead somehow a giant Orange Mutant is trying to eat the world. Never saw that one coming. Still remember vividly watching the first episode of Doctor Who when it was first aired, and if that didn't warp me for life, Monty Python when I was in high school certainly did. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Jack Aubery/Steven Maturin saga are among my favorite books of all time. Build telescopes, grinding my first mirror at long last, still miss Patrick Moore, who was a lifelong constant. . My real area of modelling interest is real space but somehow for the last decade I've been almost entirely focused on sf. I love scratch-building. Draft my own decals. Do my own casting. Make my own etch. Need to learn Arduino. (All of which is perhaps why I never get anything finished.)  But for some reason I also keep buying kits of  current fighter jets, mostly 1/48, and their associated aftermarket sets, tho' 1/48 British (and Canadian) fighters and bombers are becoming more and more fascinating to me. Last kit I bought a couple months ago was the Revell 1/48 Tornado, after reading every thread about it here. Next one I want to get, despite having read every thread about it here, is a 1/48 Halifax. The queue is getting longer and longer.

 

So I'm here, really, to beg of you: Help! 

 

How can I get started again? Our too brief summer is almost over. Yard work and house painting and canning will be winding down over the next eight or ten weeks. Bonfire Night will be upon us (yes, some crazy Canadians celebrate that, too) and it will be time to move back inside and  into the warm and face the now quite daunting task of finding somewhere, somehow to start again. 

 

Thanks for having me. Hope I won't be an embarrassment.   

 

  

Edited August 3, 2018 by starseeker
Speeling

[dogsbody]

Greeting from another Albertan! I'm up in Fort Mac. Where might you be?

 

Yeah, just last night, at about 10:00pm, I noticed that is was getting darker. Winter is coming.

 

How could you be an embarrassment? I've been on here for over 10 years and I've only started my first kit!

 

If you've got a kit in mind or in store, start that. Ask questions as you need them. There are plenty of members who are willing to answer those questions.

 

This is a great place!

 

 

Chris

[Darby]

Welcome aboard old chap! 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Hello Starseeker ...  to Britmodeller from south of the border in Chicago. Please start building again. Whem you find a good photo hosting site please share. I do enjoy Sci-fi. as well as real space subjects. 

 

Dennis

[Sean_M]

Starseeker I sent you a PM. As for help well if I learned on thing it is there as many different approaches as there are subjects seek out what works for you, My biggest mistake was not finishing a model. Something magically happens when you stand back from a complete model. Up to that point you have been focused on a particular stage or section. This is where we often get lost and start a new kit, never finishing anything because something doesn't look right. Take what you have learned and move to the next kit. One of the well known modellers and "Gurus" wrote this. I was only when I stepped back and looked at the model in it completed state that I appreciated that the fading or weathering or whatever that had not looked right at the time now blended in all perfectly and in fact so much so that the project turned out better than expected. That same model then took some praise later on at a model show. It was a project I almost put away for "another day"

 

[starseeker]

Thanks, everyone! What fun! 

Sean_M, I used to finish things. Through the 80's and 90's I built pretty much every 1/48 scale aircraft that was available back then. Have about 200 of them, most hanging from the ceiling in the model room/workshop. Altho' getting pretty dusty. And a lot in boxes in storage that really deserve to come out again. It was in the 00's that I shifted focus almost completely to sf and got into a lot of scratch-building. Have finished a handful of things in the last couple of years and it felt darned good, but I'm needing that mojo back big time. Big plan for August/September is to cast some 24" Jupiter 2 and Invaders Saucer hulls from fiberglass, something I haven't worked with before before. The masters have been done for a few years. Just need to pour the plaster into the mold boxes and get glassing. Masters for a 1/24 Flying Sub and 1/24 or 1/32, depending on your take on it,  Spindrift need finishing. Have had the interiors for all of them ready to be painted for years. Must get my photo albums back up somehow somewhere. Nope, not even my PB homepage exists anymore. 

[Lomcevak]

Hello sir!. I hope you find an easy way to share what you’ve done with us. I’m always interested in learning from people brave enough to do a scratch build. 

 

 

 

 

[hammett98]

HI guys,

 

Lived in Edmonton (and Fort Sask) for a best part of a decade - remember there being a half decent model shop in WEM but lacked the confidence in those days to take the plunge.

 

Although Fort Mac?! Seriously cold....!

[dogsbody]

4 hours ago, hammett98 said:

HI guys,

 

Lived in Edmonton (and Fort Sask) for a best part of a decade - remember there being a half decent model shop in WEM but lacked the confidence in those days to take the plunge.

 

Although Fort Mac?! Seriously cold....!

No colder than Edmonton! ( well, not much colder ) The number and quality of hobby shops in Edmonton has dropped off in the last few years, in my opinion. The one you speak of at WEM has a sister shop at the Kingsway Mall. There used to be a good one on the Yellowhead, just west of the St. Albert Trail, but the old owner sold it and the new owners drove it into the ground in a couple years, then closed. Wholesale Hobby, on Gateway Boulevard and 63rd Ave, is quite nice. So is Great Hobbies on 75th Street, north of Whitemud Drive. There are a couple more around but they seem to cater more to the RC crowd rather than the plastic scale modeller. Wholesale and Great Hobbies both have a large amount of RC stuff, too, but do have a fair amount of styrene. I van usually find something to spend my pension on. ( did anyone else hear/feel my wife's eye roll? I did! ) 

 

 

Chris

[Mike]

out of the shadows Starseeker.

 

 

On 03/08/2018 at 15:47, starseeker said:

Hope I won't be an embarrassment. 

The only chance of you being an embarrassment is if you turn into one of the toxic ones you hate as much as the rest of us do, so there's little chance of that happening

[hammett98]

4 hours ago, Mike said:

out of the shadows Starseeker.

 

 

The only chance of you being an embarrassment is if you turn into one of the toxic ones you hate as much as the rest of us do, so there's little chance of that happening

The reason I joined here is because the "atmosphere" seems really positive and friendly - after all, we are all here to develop our skills and share our enjoyment of this hobby.

 

If I wanted someone to tell me I was a rubbish modeller and was never gonna improve, I could just stay home with my wife!!😄

[Mike]

8 minutes ago, hammett98 said:

I could just stay home with my wife!!😄

8 minutes ago, hammett98 said:

I joined here is because the "atmosphere" seems really positive and friendly

That makes me very happy to hear, as that's what we strive for Occasionally that makes us a target for some very unpleasant people, but it makes for a much nicer atmosphere on the forum.  It's telling that just a few "bad apples" can ruin the whole tone of a forum, probably on the basis that an empty vessel makes the most noise!

[dogsbody]

48 minutes ago, Mike said:

That makes me very happy to hear, as that's what we strive for Occasionally that makes us a target for some very unpleasant people, but it makes for a much nicer atmosphere on the forum.  It's telling that just a few "bad apples" can ruin the whole tone of a forum, probably on the basis that an empty vessel makes the most noise!

Mike does a fantastic job of protecting us from those rectal orifices and quickly banning them.

 

 

Chris

Edited August 5, 2018 by dogsbody

[JPuente54]

Hello and , starseeker to Britmodeller, it's a great place to be. Glad to see that you have stopped lurking. I look forward to your builds, comments, and questions.

Joe

[starseeker]

On 8/5/2018 at 4:26 AM, hammett98 said:

HI guys,

 

Lived in Edmonton (and Fort Sask) for a best part of a decade - remember there being a half decent model shop in WEM but lacked the confidence in those days to take the plunge.

 

Although Fort Mac?! Seriously cold....!

I think that was Kites and Delights at West Edmonton Mall They were one of the original stores at the place, but last time it came time to renegotiate the lease, WEM cranked up the rent exorbitantly, and they left. Closed their other store about 3 years ago. There was and is another "hobby" shop at WEM, and they once had great prices on Asian imports, but they're mostly out of the model end of things and into very expensive collectibles. Had a wonderful model shop here, Roundhouse, for about 40 years, but they finally closed their doors last year. It was my go-to source for all things scratch-building. Amazing collection of materials and tools, much of it out of production for decades, that they had squirreled away. I'm still heartsick at that loss. Now I get almost everything from either Asia, which has a good selection of kits at great prices, or the UK, which has a great selection of materials at great shipping. I'm lucky that I have a great stash of paints, as nobody sells much of any these days. Can't get Tenax cement any more. And the place I used to buy 4' x 8'sheet plastic and acrylic for virtually nothing now has a minimum $200 order. It's getting tough to be a modeller.   

 

And the queue is getting longer, thanks so much, Britmodeller! Found the GoodSmile 1/150 Soyuz in your threads and couldn't resist. A, I will never find the time to build it. B, I'll never find the space to put it any where. Now I'm second guessing signing up. You people all are really bad influences. 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2018 by starseeker

[hammett98]

13 hours ago, starseeker said:

There was and is another "hobby" shop at WEM, and they once had great prices on Asian imports, but they're mostly out of the model end of things

Thats right I remember that one! Downstairs near the entrance to Galaxyland. Got a beautiful DeLorean model from them

[dogsbody]

On ‎8‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 6:23 PM, starseeker said:

I think that was Kites and Delights at West Edmonton Mall They were one of the original stores at the place, but last time it came time to renegotiate the lease, WEM cranked up the rent exorbitantly, and they left. Closed their other store about 3 years ago. There was and is another "hobby" shop at WEM, and they once had great prices on Asian imports, but they're mostly out of the model end of things and into very expensive collectibles. Had a wonderful model shop here, Roundhouse, for about 40 years, but they finally closed their doors last year. It was my go-to source for all things scratch-building. Amazing collection of materials and tools, much of it out of production for decades, that they had squirreled away. I'm still heartsick at that loss. Now I get almost everything from either Asia, which has a good selection of kits at great prices, or the UK, which has a great selection of materials at great shipping. I'm lucky that I have a great stash of paints, as nobody sells much of any these days. Can't get Tenax cement any more. And the place I used to buy 4' x 8'sheet plastic and acrylic for virtually nothing now has a minimum $200 order. It's getting tough to be a modeller.   

 

And the queue is getting longer, thanks so much, Britmodeller! Found the GoodSmile 1/150 Soyuz in your threads and couldn't resist. A, I will never find the time to build it. B, I'll never find the space to put it any where. Now I'm second guessing signing up. You people all are really bad influences. 

 

 

 

I remember that one, too. A good place where I spent a goodly amount of money. The other one is Comex Hobby. It and it's sister in the Kingsway mall used to be pretty good but not so much now. I was just in the WEM store yesterday and not 1 Airfix kit and only a few 1/72 Revell kits. Wholesale Hobby didn't have any Airfix 1/72 Hurricanes so I guess my Hurc build is on hold until I order a couple on-line.

 

 

Chris

Edited August 11, 2018 by dogsbody

[HOUSTON]

Hello Starseeker.

 

nice to have you on board.

have fun.

 

 

[foresterab]

Hello starseeker,

 

I'm late to the party but welcome to the forum from the foothills.  I remember some of the shops you are mentioning from the youth but we hardly came to Edmonton as kids and if so, was for things not available up north like car parts.  Not quite the same for fueling the model maker. 

 

foresterab