BlrwestSiR

To be honest, I was afraid to take the wall down not knowing what was behind it. Years ago, our architect wanted me to take a panel out and see what was behind it and I said no.

That Flanker looks like the one I sold off a few years ago. It had every single bit of AM in it including the mythical Zacto canopy. Carl

Getting closer to the finish line. Fitting all the AA guns was a bit of a pain.

I was going to try and 3D print the patch but I couldn't find a scanner big enough.

I usually put a movie on when I'm at my bench. It's generally something I've seen before so it's more of a white noise sort of thing. The house we lived in when I was around 8 years old was a couple hundreds metres from the highway as well as a fairly busy railroad corridor into the city so I got used to background noise. As a result I find silence a bit off putting. For music, I'm mostly rock, with some industrial and electronic thrown into the mix. Thanks to the opening of the trailer to the Battlefield video game, I've ended up with a soft spot for the Bonnie Tyler song "Total Eclipse of the Heart"

Started getting the new bench space ready. I finished removing the false walls and cleaned up the corner. Instead of dirt I found concrete. It looks like at some point, one of the previous owners poured a second slab of concrete 4" thick on top of the original floor. I stopped by one of our local hardware stores and was able to grab 6 bags of concrete mix. Man, that stuff is heavy. Mixes them up and poured the floor in to make it all level. Used up 5 bags so if anyone needs a 30kg bag of cement, let me know. Now to let it dry and hope I did it right.

That's a nice finish there Mark.

John, Peter, nice Mossies there from both of you. I did my bit too to support them. One thing is they can be real mojo killers. There's so much to do on them, even if you skip over the internal details and just do what can be seen externally. I had a one year break in my build. Oddly enough, that's what it sells for in Canada but in Loonies so it's about 30% less than SB. Most of the ZM kits in Canada are in that price range and seem to doing okay here. The Do335 is over $300 CAD. I suspect (hope actually) that we're in the low output part of Tamiya's 1/32 product cycle. They went quite a while between the F-16 and the Spitfire so maybe that's where we are now. Thankfully other manufacturers have taken an interest in 1/32 so at least we're not going begging. Have you seen the pics of the new GWH P-40B that's coming? Carl

Working away on the Yamato.

It's a beautiful kit. I have the same one in the stash.

Looks good John and I agree about leaving out the unnecessary bits. I've done that a few times on my Spitfires. Carl

I saw the kit built up in person at my LHS yesterday. It is a huge improvement over their 1/32 Phantoms. Hopefully Tamiya consider putting it in their enlargement Ray gun and do a 1/32 version. Carl

I've just ordered the Minibase Su-33 from xfree so I'm waiting to see how that works out. I've heard good things about dawngrocerystore but haven't tried them yet. Carl

Good luck with the new job Mark. Carl

Steve, it's everywhere here too. You can even pick your colour: black, white, orange or brown. Then add your selection of length: short, medium or long. And of course lastly gauge: fine or coarse. To be honest, I pretty much have to wipe down as I go and I also keep a small desktop vacuum on the bench. I'm looking forward to the new bench and finally having a dedicated paint bench. Carl

We'll, I'm making progress on the build. This guy is trying his best too.

Rog, I usually check reviews first as well before ordering. It took less than a month to get here- shipped March 18, arrived April 5. I ordered it from Auroramodelshop I've ordered from them in the past without any issues. Last year they stopped shipping to Canada for some months as they couldn't guarantee delivery in a reasonable timeframe. They started shipping here again so I ordered the Me163. Yanworld0082013 is another I've ordered from. They often have lower prices but it has taken longer for purchases to get to me. In fact I've got the Border Tiger 1 coming from them at the moment. Carl

Looks great there Tony. Carl

We knew there was some space back there but not how much. It's obvious that they closed it off as it was easier to build the wall straight across rather than make it fit. Thankfully there weren't any real surprises back there. Except for some scat from our cat who managed to sneak back there before we took it down.

Man, the squirrel is strong this year. I've been having a hard time focusing on a single build. Case in point: With it being a Bandai kit, I might actually get to the end of it. Knock on wood. On a separate note, we had to fix the faucet at the front of our house which meant we had to take down one of the false walls in the basement. Doing so, we found a bunch of extra space which has led to the decision to reorganize the basement. Which means my bench will be moving soon. The good news is I'll finally get a dedicated painting area. Here's the space in question. The wall used to go straight across. You can make out where I cut it at the top left. It's now on the right side of the pic. The space actually extends an additional two feet behind that so is a fair size. Moving everything around should hopefully open up some more space overall. Carl

Looks good so far Kev. I've got a Revell 1/32 Beaufighter that I plan to use for a Black Friday build too. Carl

The Quinta cockpit really does look impressive. And the paint on your Tomcat is even more so.

The brand is Sanxin. So far the only place I've found them is on eBay. Carl

The Tempest looks good Dennis. Carl

Yup, and today he just announced that schools won't reopen not one day after his minister of education said kids will be back in school as soon as possible. They need to get on the same page and stop contradicting each other.