Points To Ponder

The UMM “Polisander” (a combination of a polisher and a sander) is another unique tool available to the modeling community by UMM. The tool is powered by two AA batteries that are placed into the handle. Batteries are not included in the product. Note that the batteries, as usual, are inserted with one (+) end up and the other (-) end down. There are some indicators molded into the handle showing which battery tray is positive and which is negative.

The product box is small and sturdy, approximately 2x2x7 inches. The contents are bagged in zip-locks baggies, with the handle in one bag and the attachment head in the other. In order to insert the batteries carefully remove the blue base using the two indentions molded into the rim of the base, pushing the base away from the handle, no twisting necessary.

The subtitle of this book is “American Airpower over the Pacific and the Far East, 1941–51”. But it covers much more than this.

This excellent book follows Douglas MacArthur from his education at West Point through his retirement. I really enjoyed some of the “side stories”, such as the fact that Arthur MacArthur, Douglas’ father was friends with Congressman John Mitchell. When Arthur was deployed, Mrs. MacArthur stayed in Milwaukee, where the Mitchells also lived. Douglas was friends with the son Bill, who was later famous as Billy Mitchell, the airpower advocate. The two served together on the Army General Staff. And Douglas MacArthur was on the board of Mitchell’s court martial.

John Vojtech, the genius behind UMM-USA, gave us a nice collection of tools at the Chattanooga National Convention this year. I have the privilege of reviewing a handful of them and here’s #1.

If you’ve never used a UMM product (and why not?), they are exquisitely manufactured. This particular tool is an extremely narrow (0.8mm/0.031 inch) chisel mounted in a sturdy, contoured plastic handle. The blade tip is a grooved, wedge shape.

What’s it good for? Removing minute amounts of material in a controlled fashion – ejector pins, molded on detail that’s to be replaced, flash removal, scribing detail into small parts, etc. I have been attempting to do this with an X-Acto knife all along, now that I have this tool I can actually maneuver the cutting surface into the immediate area rather than trying to cut at multiple angles and clean up the resulting carnage <g>.

I was intrigued by this model offered by Brengun that would be a great piece to add with your Japanese ground-based aircraft display base. My hopes are that I will eventually have an opportunity to try the 1/48 scale version of this accessory.

Typical with Brengun’s other releases, they provide the end user with some extremely nicely cast parts molded in a darkish grey resin. If there were any imperfections, they were not noticeable to my eye. I found the parts delicate buy not fragile. The resin was reasonably pliable making removal from the pour stubs easily achievable with a little patience. I can’t overstress to double, triple, and quadruple check the instructions before removing the parts. I had a small oops where I removed and discarded a small portion of the support frame. Thankfully I was able to recover my error with a scratch-built pump mount.

Opening the package of decals you will find two large sheets of beautifully printed markings for no less than nine Corsairs These aircraft include mostly F4U-1A’s with markings for two F4U-1D’s and one late war FG-1D. There is no instruction booklet included in the package. However going to the Fundekals website you can download the instruction booklet as a PDF file. I call this an instruction booklet as it is comprised of 24 pages of Color and B&W illustrations and photographs of each of the aircraft covered on the sheet. Also in the booklet are precise instructions pointing out the various differences in each of the covered aircraft. A detailed history of each covered aircraft and its pilot is included. A really nice touch was a page covering the various different antenna arrangements. Covering, as they say, “Some stuff you might not have known”. Another page explains “New research on insignia colors in the Solomons. 1943-1944”.