There are many tools on the market, and Hasegawa offers a wide variety of those that many modelers have on their workbench. This review looks at two such items, Cutting Template A and Cutting Template B.
I have used many sprue cutters from a lot of different companies, all with different designs, for many years, and this is the first time I have tried this design. I was a little skeptical at first, but these have turned out to be quite nice.
The tweezer design is nice and easy to hold. The ergonomic design makes them very user-friendly. I love the way the head is shaped, the extension of the cutting head making it easy to fit into tight spots. The cutting heads are very sharp, so beware.
As for using, just put the head against the part you want to cut off and squeeze. You get a nice clean cut with very little cleanup afterwards. This works great for small parts. When it comes to the larger ones, you really have to squeeze, and I mean squeeze, hard. I had to resort to my other cutters for these.
The Blast-Away Sandblasting cabinet is also labeled as the Blast-A-Way Sandblasting cabinet. For the purposes of this review it will be labeled as the “Blast-Away” cabinet. That is the manner in which it is identified on the instruction booklet that accompanies the product.
The Blast-Away cabinet is made from corrugated plastic and arrives in a box roughly 40x 24x3. Within the review sample was the cabinet itself, the clear “window” items which will be attached to the cabinet, and the 10 page instruction booklet. Additional parts can be purchased – those being additional clear plastic lenses, a replacement liner, and an exhaust manifold.
JHmodels offers two different wooden stands, sometimes called “jigs,” that look similar to one another. A major difference, however, is that the item described in this review is for biplanes while the previously reviewed product, (No. 4801) is primarily used for monoplanes. There is an easy way to remember the difference….. No. 4801 is for a single wing and No. 4802 is for 2 wings. The other wooden stand, No. 4801, is reviewed at http://web.ipmsusa3.org/content/wooden-stand-building-painting-and-tran…
I have long seen the need for a stand or base that could be useful while painting a model, as well as for use in the construction of the model. I have tried to design and assemble such a base with some level of success, but recently I had the opportunity to try out a product by JHmodels. acquired through UMM-USA. This stand consists of a set of simple wooden parts, assembled with super glue, and including some metal nuts and bolts that allow for the parts to be adjusted to fit the model being built or painted.
Straight out of the package, the parts are held in a wooden fret that will remind one of PE frets that hold the parts in place with very small connecting tabs. These tabs can be cut with a hobby knife, popping the parts out of the wooden fret quickly and easily. Once the parts have been removed from the frets, one will need to do a little assembly. An instruction sheet illustrates those 7 steps
As many modelers know, Italeri has recently released their own line of model paints. These are not formulated by another company and packaged under the Italeri label. Since I was working on a review with the Trumpeter Russian ChTZ S-65 Tractor kit, it seemed like a nice fit.
The paint comes in plastic bottles that hold 20 ml of paint. The paint is very thick, almost like craft paint, so it brushes on well, but I was interested in how it would airbrush. I thinned it down with water to about the consistency of milk and, for the most part, it seemed to airbrush well and evenly, but each person will have to use their best judgment on how thin the paint should be.
When Steve Collins asked for volunteers to try Italeri’s new acrylic paints, I jumped right in there. I was doing a Monogram battleship as the USS Wisconsin, and I needed something to use as Deck Tan and Battleship Gray.
The paints come in 20milliliter bottles with a snap-open cap which allows you to take a small amount of paint from the top, which is great for doing fine work. You can also unscrew the lid and get a big dollop for painting a large area. The snap cap makes it very difficult to spill the paint, a plus when working with several colors at once.
For the past 50 or so years, I have built plastic models and painted them using various types of enamel paints. For the earlier wooden models, before plastic kits became popular, I used regular model airplane dope (actually, lacquer), sometimes laced with talcum powder to achieve a matte finish. I started airbrushing relatively early, still using enamels, and eventually settled on the Testors’ Model Master series, which I have found to be entirely satisfactory. The only problem with using enamels indoors is that my wife constantly complains that the odor is overpowering, although I don’t think that it is really that bad, certainly not as bad as the smell of onions cooking in a frying pan, which has to compete favorably with the Geneva Convention’s definition of “gas warfare”. But that aside, I requested several colors of Italeri’s new acrylic paint series for evaluation.
The paints are contained in 20 ml plastic poly bottles with flip caps. The clear gloss is contained in a 35 ml plastic bottle with a flip cap. The bottles are clearly labeled with simple instructions of “shake well” and “for airbrush dilute properly”.
My sample bottles tended to spit paint a bit when “flipping” the cap open, but that may be a simple consequence of opening them at 7500 ft where I live. The dropper in the cap and a squeezable bottle provide a nice controlled dispensing of the paints and clear coat.
Taken from the Iliad website, the description for this line of products reads, “Each set of pages provides ACTUAL PAINT CHIPS (not just printed reproductions) for the colours and schemes described! These have been carefully researched and produced to match the original factory production colours as closely as possible. Each Aircraft Colour Chart set also provides brief chronological descriptions of the various camouflage schemes as they evolved, and also one or more pages depicting typical camouflage patterns for the schemes covered. The heavy cardstock pages are drilled for insertion into either a 3-ring or an ISO binder, and the assembled collection will provide you with a superb colour reference.”
