Torpedo away!

Monday 19th February 2024 

I see the last walk (away from home) I did was on 12th November from Barbon. Since then I have been nursing a wound on the rear of my ankle which ulcerated. I've been having weekly visits to my GP's nurse and at last it is now sorted. Breathlessness continues and more boring medical appointments have been attended and I reckon it is something I am just going to have to live with, so walks I suppose will be be modest, but at my age I can't complain, and I am hoping to get back to more walking on new ground, but I want a reasonably benign return combined with a decent weather window, so I wait...

...,meanwhile modelling continues:

The Bristol Beaufort is a WW2 torpedo bomber. I was attracted by the proliferation of  complex canopies including a rear gunner's turret. Canopies are perhaps the most difficult aspects to model with aircraft. The many panes have to be masked and there are several methods. This time I jibbed and bought an aftermarket masking set with the pieces already cut to size, but they still took more than a couple of hours to apply. Normal modelling glue melts plastic together to form a kind of weld, but with clear canopies that glue can also fog the plastic. The alternative is to use a PVA based glue which dries clear, but it doesn't stick well, so there is an ongoing debate with modellers on how to proceed. This time I have used the modellers glue waiting for any fumes to disperse before placing the part, and it has worked ok, so far, but that is quite risk. I hope the results will be ok when the masking is removed. That operation is one of the final procedures at the finishing of the model and it is a heart stopping moment to see if any fogging has occurred and if any wayward paint from the air gun has leached under the masking instead of remaining only on the canopy framework.

All this may well be taken as nerdy, but humans have progressed by solving challenges and that is innate with most of us. Anything to avoid sitting in a circle in a nursing home passing round an inflated plastic ball and singing It's a Long Way to Tipperary, and We'll Meet Again, and being spoken to in childese.

If you click to enlarge you may see that there are many more tiny parts on those sprues that are not apparent from the photo. But for a reason unknown when "click to enlarge" is applied it doesn't always work on the first photo - the mysteries of Blogger.