Axel's corner

Building a car Now that (almost) all the parts have been painted, it's about time to start assembling so that the jumble of parts I have lying around can finally start to look like a real car. After clearcoating the diffusor (again), the floor of the car was finally finished and ready to receive some parts. First up were the suspension parts. Where the glue had to be applied I scraped away the layer of paint to create the strongest bond possible. During curing of the glue I clamped the suspension parts to the floor. Next were the engine and driveshaft with rear differential. As a bit of practice object I gave these parts a slight wash made of oil-paints. I used black and brown oil paints. After the oil paints had dried for a few minutes, I used a Q-tip wetted with turpentine to soften the wash a bit. I'm actually quite happy with how the engine turned out and see a lot potential for future applications (yes, this was my first wash...). For the future I think I...

Back to normal? Taking a break from my regular scale modelling related posts I'd like to share a memorable moment with my audience. Yesterday evening I finally finished the PC game The Witcher: Enhanced Edition . image source : IGN I've been playing it on and off for several years and with the imminent release of the Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt , I finally was motived enough to finish the first game. As I'm not really into action games (actually, I more or less suck at action games) I regularly got stuck in the more action oriented sequences in this game. I was more interested in the story that unfolds during the game, but to experience the whole story I had to get past the action sequences. More than once I got stuck and the game was left lingering on my HDD without playing it for months or once even more than a year. But with the hype and expectations surrounding the third and final game in the Witcher series I finally got to grips with the first game. I h...

Last weekend I went to the Euro Model Expo event in Heiden, Germany. The event was spread over 2 days. I visited on the first day, Saturday March 28th. Just like last year the location was packed with stands occupied by a good mix of vendors and modelling clubs. The quality of the models on show, it being on the club stands or the competition area, was once again very high. During the day members of the Belgian modelling club KMK-Scaleworld were giving demonstrations of several modelling techniques. I decided to visit the demonstration of Jeroen Veen who showed the public several aircraft painting and weathering techniques. For me, as a n00b on aircraft, it was a very interesting and entertaining demonstration and I hope to apply some of the techniques I saw to my coming build of the 1/48 Tamiya Lancaster I got waiting. It was also a nice occassion to talk to some fellow modellers. Amongst others I had a nice chat with Sascha Müller who had a stunning diorama of a Le M...

Getting there The drama with the tires finally seems to have come to an end. My suspicion that the aggressive solvent-based clearcoat triggered some sort of reaction with either the water-based clearcoat and or the material of the tires appears to be true. My options were rather limited, so I decided to spray a new water-based clearcoat over the tires, hoping to cover the previous layer of clear and stop the reaction. For 3 of the 4 tires one layer of clear was enough. The rear tire with the most problems received 2 layers and that seems to do the trick. Even after more than a week of drying the clear stays flat. The clearcoat I used was my own Revell Aqua Color mix as used previously. But this time thinned with it's dedicated thinner and applied by airbrush. Although the image above does little to hide the imperfections I'm happy I finally am able to finish this chapter so I can divert my attention again towards the rest of the kit. Work has finally continued ...

Tired of tires And now for something special: Because of the challenge the tires have posed during this build I've decided to dedicate a seperate post to them. First a short recap from post no. 7 of the Corvette build: This whole particular story started with the fact that Revell (for copyright reasons) omitted the tire decals (Good Year in this case) from the decal sheet. I sourced some generic Good Year and Eagle decalsheets on the internet to tackle this first hurdle. Next I mounted the tires onto my Dremel tool to remove the moulding seam and give the tire a used appearance. After that I coated the sidewalls of the tires to be decalled with gloss clear coat to give the decals a nice smooth layer to adhere to. For this I used gloss clear from the Revell Aqua Color range, thinned for brushpainting with some water. After applying the decals (which went on with a few minor hiccups) the tires looked like this: So far so good you'd say. This is the point wher...

On Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 February of 2015 the modelling event "Interscale Stolberg" took place in the small town of Stolberg near Aachen in Germany. As it is only an hours drive from where I live, I decided to visit this event which was held for the first time this year. Modelling events in the near vicinity (Southeast part of the Netherlands) are few and far between, so this was a great opportunity for me. The event was held in the "Zinkhütter Hof", a small museum dedicated to the mining activities that once were a major source of income and work in the region. As this was the first time, the event was rather small. But that didn't take anything away from the quality on offer. All kinds of modelling were present; military, civil, sci-fi, etc. There was also a big group of paper/card modellers. The event was spread over 2 days. My visit was on Sunday morning. Although it wasn't crowded, people kept coming in to check out the models on show. ...