The Peter Buckingham Column Part 54
IN PURSUIT OF PERFECTION IN TWO PARTS
a) Another disaster – is it me? Yes I think it is!
b) Scale Model World, Telford, 2010
Let’s talk about the disaster first. When I had finished my last column, I was working on four projects, one of which was Marsh Models 1/32 resin kit of the 1927 Supermarine S6 Schneider Trophy seaplane racer and World Record breaker. A lovely, if expensive, kit which was going together very nicely - thank you very much.
Now I don’t know whether all resins are the same, but I wasn’t aware that this type of resin is brittle. The wings had fitted very well with just a tweak of correction to get one wing lined up as shown in the last column. They had ‘tongues’ that fitted into a slot in the fuselage and had locked together beautifully when superglued into position.
Having a very busy workbench, I had turned around to reach something and the S6 was knocked to the carpeted floor of my workroom. Disaster! The starboard wing had snapped off very cleanly at the fuselage root/wing join. Both tongues can be clearly seen in my photographs. I was more amazed at myself because not one oath passed my lips. It was more a case of ‘how am I going to get out of this one’ frame of mind.
It was back to what I call, ‘The Modeller’s Friend’ – good old Albion Alloys and their slide and fit modeller’s size of tube and rod. First I drew some centre lines along the chord of the wing root and fuselage root. Then, two measurements were made in appropriate places, holes were drilled and tube inserted. It wasn’t quite as quick as that, as I went back to these measurements two or three times to make sure it was ‘as near as dammit’. I decided to use tube instead of rod and it worked perfectly. The wing was married to the fuselage once more after another superglue session. Job done – time taken: 1 hour. A tad more filling and sanding and it wass back to normal.
Graham, your genial host of this site, now stocks Albion Alloys products – something that is well worth having on the bench, especially if you are as clumsy as me!
I have also been working on the 1/32 Paul Fisher T7 Hunter conversion – the modelling love of my life at the moment. I don’t know what it is – yes, I do actually - (I find that talking to myself as I type this certainly helps and sometimes I even get a decent reply) - it is the shape of that forward ‘side by side’ seating fuselage. It just looks absolutely gorgeous. I have spent about a month mating Paul’s resin forward fuselage to the Revell plastic kit’s rear fuselage and wings. It is a bit of a jiggle with much putting together and taking apart, fettling……………..you know the drill, but it just takes time and lots of patience and lots of filling and sanding to get smooth intake to fuselage fits. And then there is the re-scribing! However, things have progressed slowly, the complete airframe less tailplanes and ancillary bits has been primered, which, in turn, has thrown up a couple of joints that require attention. Par for the course.
And that is state of play as at 16th November 2010.
Now for Telford. This was a first for me, so I decided to make a real go of it and went up on the Friday. As an IPMS member I was able to witness the stands being slowly occupied on Friday afternoon and even managed to spend some ‘hard earned’ on a very old 1/24 metal kit of my favourite car of all time, a Bugatti Type 59. I was very enthused by this box of metal bits and pieces made by Wills Finecast back in the late 1960’s. A compliment slip inside the box was dated July, 1971! I only hope that everything is there although I did do a dummy run of the parts on my hotel bed in the small hours and it seemed to be OK.
Saturday was a very busy day, and if you were in the queue to get into the car parks you have my sympathy. It took one of our club members almost two hours to drive the short distance from the roundabout to the The International Centre – not good.
But what about the star(s) of the show! In my view, and also the view of many others, it was on the Revell stand and under glass. It was a 1/32 Arado 196 floatplane, built, we were assured, straight from the box, with opened engine hatches, detailed engine and folded wing(s). The cost? A princely sum of £19.99!! How do they do it? If the enthusiastic crowds that gathered round this model are anything to go by, this kit will be ‘flying’ (sorry) off the model shop shelves. I have already pre-ordered mine through Graham.
Also on view for the first time on the Milton Keynes club stand and courtesy of a modelling magazine, was the much publicised Zoukei-Mura kit of the Ta 152, their second model and which is eagerly awaited. Their first venture was the well received ‘Shinden’. The Ta 152 was a finished model, but the Bolton IPMS stand actually had one of the kits on display. The lads (can I actually say that?) on this stand said that interest in the kit was incredible as there were many modellers in attendance who had already pre-ordered this from Japan and were enquiring when it was going to arrive!
Most traders were doing very brisk business and for a short period of time I became a trader! I went to see Matthew John on the Albion Alloys stand. Matthew is a modeller so knows what ticks if you get my drift and therefore stocks all the useful stuff that modellers want, but don’t always know where to get it. The answer is ‘Albion Alloys’. Matthew was on his own and hadn’t been able to get around the show, so I stood in for him. If you were one of those who passed money over to me and wondered about the sanity of the person serving you, I apologise. Great interest was shown in his range of rod and tubing but also in his new range of Flexifiles and a peach of a small gauge tube bending machine. I couldn’t resist them. I was even in action when Graham arrived with my pre-ordered 1/48 Tamiya Swordfish which has just been re-released.
On the competition front, the ‘Best in Show’ was a scratch built Handley Page 0/400. Absolutely stunning and a worthy winner. My personal ‘star’ of the comp tables however, was a ‘crashed’ C130. Equally stunning in my view, but there were so many excellent models – my hat goes off to the judges, a very difficult task.
When I got home and walked through the door with my box of goodies, my wife said that it looked like Christmas had arrived. I think it had!
More soon.
Peter
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