Recent Purchases

This month, I picked up these two books, Model Airplanes of WW1 was bought from a charity shop in Stratford-on-Avon for just £1.25 and The Display Your Model guide was purchased via e-bay for less than £3.00.

Model Airplanes of World War 1 by Graham Goodchild is my type of book, full of illustrations and step-by-step tutorials with loads of useful tips for producing scratch-built model aircraft, at just £1.25, a real bargain and a book that I expect to be sitting on my workbench for some time. I reminds me of the earlier Harry Woodman book - Scale Model Aircraft in Plastic Card, another one of my favourite 'How-To' books.

Highly recommended.

Published in 1987 by B T Batsford Ltd

ISBN; 0-7134-489-2

The Osprey Modelling Guide - Displaying Your Model by Richard Windrow was spotted on the Internet earlier this month, at just £2.78 I thought it might be of interest, particularly when producing terrain models. However, I found it a little too simplistic or all-encompassing and with little that was new to me. As a bargain book, I believe that I have had my moneys worth, but it never quite fulfilled my expectations and this was a disappointment as I have other Osprey Modelling Guides and books written by Richard Windrow that I regularly read and refer to.

A nice book, but overall a little disappointing.

Published in 2009 by Osprey Publishing 

ISBN; 978-1-84603-416-9

Tony

Trolka Thug - part four

The model has been both gloss varnished (for strength) and matt varnished (for the look or finish) before I added a couple of static grass tufts over superglue.

As stated earlier, I think I could have done a better job on the painting, but I can see Giles being used in various gaming roles. I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley!

Tony

Trolka Thug - part three

The Trolka Thug fully painted. I just need to varnish and add some decoration to the base. I would freely admit, not one of my best, but I did enjoy both converting and painting this single figure.

I think I'll call him Giles.

Tony

RAF Cosford

Earlier this week Sue and I took our guests to RAF Cosford. It's the second time this year that I have visited but it was so much more fun with young guests who were visiting for the first time.

I took these images of 'What-If' Aircraft.

On the day we were visiting, there was a gathering of Ford Capris, I estimate there were between 40 and 50 cars on display. The Ford Capri (and particularly the Mk I) was The Iconic sports car of my teenage years.

Finally, we have me at the controls of the Jet Provost, once again I had to duck to get into the cockpit!

Tony

Trolka Thug - part two

The converted model was undercoated with both black and dark brown spray paints and the flesh areas built up from Snakebite Leather with Snakebite/Skull White highlights. The nose was given a very ruddy glow!

I choose a bottle green uniform with white facings.

The crumpled top hat was painted dark grey.

Tony

The Marshmallow Catapult - Evolution

For the last three days Sue's brother has been up visiting with his Grandchildren. I set up a Marshmallow Catapult Challenge that quickly developed into a major arms race. Here are just some of the models we built.....

Details of how to build your own can be found on the Internet - here is one link.

This final model was so powerful that we were squelching mini marshmallow on the Artex ceiling!

Sue banned us from using it.

I hope you enjoyed it Joe, Summer and Raffi.

Tony

Flintloque Trolka Thug

Taking a break from producing magazine articles and working on various model making commissions, I thought I would start work on this Flintloque Trolka model that was originally sculpted by Rob Alderman.

I believe it is a Trolka thug but am unable to find it in the Alternative Armies catalogue - any help would be appreciated.

As is the norm for my personal Flintloque figures, the basic sculpt has been modified with a larger top hat, turnbacks and various small detail.

I have mounted the large lump of lead on to a 2p coin and built up the groundwork with Milliput before adding additional texture with sand over uPVA glue.

I am still not certain what colour uniform I will choose, but promise to keep the Blog updated with developments.

Tony