Step 3 Final goods needed

Hi guys

I'm back to go with you all through the last few bota that we need to start producing, we have so far covered the pliers to cut the plastic from the sprues, the tweezers and the clamps. So time now for the last bits, and at least one of them brings a great discussion to the modelling world.

First things first we start with the component that ensures that all your components stay secure in place once you remove the clamps, that's it you may have guessed by now, I'm talking about the glue.

There is a few brands and types available on the market as you can see on the picture.

You will have people saying that they are all the same but not quite, on my personal case, I use the Revell and the Humbrol with the thin needle for “big” jobs where we have more space to work and there isn't so much risk of the glue spill out and damage your model, some say that the adhesive power is greater as well on these ones. Then you have the Tamiya thin that is the one that I most commonly use, this glue comes with a tiny brush inside that allows you to have super control of the application, usually you place the parts together and then add the glue on the seem and the penetrating power of this glue weld the plastic together.

And there you go, the basis of the glue is covered, time to move another must have on your bench for starters, a couple of knives.

On the picture, you can see 2 types of knives, the chirurgical style and the traditional Xacto. There is plenty of blades available but once again in my personal case, I preferred the thing end ones as you can do most of the jobs with this ones. The main thing to get the best out of them is to keep them sharp so that they can look after you. Careful that sharp knives usually mean deeper cuts hahaha.

And finally, we find ourselves on one of the biggest controversies of the model scale beginners, paint brushes or airbrush???

Personally, I always say you should go for the airbrush, difficult to get started but once you get the hang of it you can manage to get awesome paint jobs.

On the picture, you can see 2 of my beauties. The double action badger with a fine tip and the Aztec. The Aztec has a particularly that is it can do either single action or double action on the same airbrush. At the moment you might be asking what means the double and the single action.

A single action airbrush, once you press the trigger, the air mixes with the paint straight away, and the more you press it down, the .ore air/paint you have. On the double action, when you press the trigger the air comes out, but the paint only starts mixing when you pull the trigger back, the more you pull back the more paint you get. So it's is really a matter of personal taste. Most of the people on the hobby reckons that the double action ones are the better. Personally, I like both so I'm suspect on the subject.

Do not forget that this does not invalidate the fact that we need some paint brushes, in order to paint the figure of the pilot on that 1/72 model or the small details on the cockpit on the aeroplane.

Now we are ready to start producing models, so on the next step We will be starting to build a spitfire at 1/72 were we are going into depth to all that we talked on this step and the other previous 2.

Hope you guys like it, Will try to keep it simple so that is easy to follow.

See you guys soon.

The second step.

Hi guys, 
I'm back again. After a brief introduction the the start on the art of building model kits, we are now moving on to the next steps, once you decided what you want to do, is time to start preparing your bench for the construction of your future model, for that you will need some key elements such as a good light, some essential tools and some consumables.
As for the light, I can advise this lamp (https://www.shesto.co.uk/lighting-magnification-1/lamps/lightcraft-triple-tube-professional-task-lamp/) as this is a daylight lamp and will give a great visibility for your build. You can always opt for other different lights but I would advise you guys to always choose the daylight type.

Now that we can see we need to focus on how we are going to build the model, and for that, you need some essential tools such as snippet pliers, tweezers sandpapers wet and dry and a knife. In order to obtain a great finish, you need a good preparation and that is why these tools are so important. On the picture I have placed the 2 types of pliers that you can get, the first one is a manicure one that you can buy in any shop that sells cosmetics or beauty products, the second one is a proper modelling one that you can get on any model shop for almost the same price as the first one and is a lot better.

So with the cutting sorted, we need something to hold the parts for placing them on to the model. For that we use tweezers.

On the picture on the left you can see the 5 types of tweezers that I use, from left to right we have the flat end(one) the spring tweezers(two) the curved thin(3) the straight thin(4) and another thin end which is narrowed on the end to fit in smaller places(5)

This is going to be your best friends during the construction as I said above to place the parts on the model to make a dry-fit or glue them. They are very useful as well if you need to paint some small part.

Another very important tool is some small clamps as shown in the picture.

These are useful when you need to hold parts in place during the time that the glue takes to dry. They are as they old and make pressure ensuring that you get a tight bound for your parts.

You can find these ones in a Poundland shop if you leave in the UK if you live outside the UK, you probably can easily find them at a euro shop.

With this we have almost all our essentials covered, on the next step I will try to present you the remaining ones that we need and by step 4 we will be starting a construction where you can see all of this action and better understand their function.

See you all soon.

Introduction to the world of plastic Modelling 

Hi all, in the first place would like to say a big hello to all of you following my blog. In second place let me guide you a little through the world of the plastic models. 

Through this blog I will try to guide the novice people through the fantastic world of model building, starting with essentials, theme, scale tools needed and once all this is covered I will advance for some tips. 

This is a hobby that requires a lot of patience in first place and a lot of persistence, don’t think that you gone start building a model and you will achieve great results straight away, but the beauty of this hobby is that with persistence and willing   you can achieve great results. 

When I started my journey through the build of plastic models, I didn't had a clue of what I was entering, I thought to myself, how hard cant his be, and let me tell you, it is bloody hard. 

In the first place you have to face the decision of what you gone build, Armour, airplanes and on this one you have a wide variety of themes and decades that you can concentrate yourself from WW2 to Vietnam, modern fighters and so on. You can go as well to the civil models such as cars or bikes, but I think that by this point you can see that it's not easy to choose a theme.  

Assuming that you have chosen your theme of choice, now comes another decision, the scale that you want to build. On this field you have to decide carefully, if you have unlimited space you can go with 1/24 or 1/35 scale if like me your space is limited you can go with 1/72 or 1/144. 

In my personal case, I have decided to build what have would please me. My main focus is the Portuguese Air Force but also have a go on all the other areas of modelling, having built already some ships, tanks and some cars.

Well after choosing theme and scale, comes the so much waited build, but till we start it we need to cover some more points, after all the essentials covered will start a build of an iconic spitfire so that we can go through all the steps together. On the next post I will try to cover all the tools that we need to begin our adventure. 

See you all next time and hope you enjoyed the reading.