7 January 2011
Welcome Back! And Happy New Year to you
The seasonal break has certainly seen some ‘interesting’ attempts at travel for many of us I’m sure and it’s now good to be back, albeit playing catch-up this week!
There’s a lot in the pipeline as I speak and so to all our regular subscribers and all of you who subscribed in the last couple of weeks I can promise plenty to look forward to in January.
Cover story
Tamiya IJN Battleship Yamato (1:350) by Les V… what a picture! You can hardly have missed Les’s awesome build of the Tamiya kit, plus of course lots of accessories that epitomise exactly what a Feature Article in SMN is supposed to be – take the kit and do whatever ‘extra’ you wish to create something special. All our Feature Articles are different to the in-depth Reviews we offer here in SMN – they are built as far as possible from the box with very objective comment and assessment of what’s on offer, so that the reviewer tries to get the best out of what the manufacturer is offering and offer fixes and solutions to help you.
For me, I can hardly describe myself as a ‘ship’ modeller (although years ago I did do an IJN destroyer – Nagara in 1:700 – blimey, better keep that quiet!). However, when you look at what Les has done with IJN Yamato just look at what we can ALL gain from reading it:
- How to apply etched brass
- How to create a realistic wooden (deck) surface
- How to shade and add depth to our model using different shades of paint
- How to weather using oils
- How to weather using pastels
- How to rig the ship and of course you can use exactly the same technique to add aerial wires to your aircraft
- And much more…
The reason to mention this is by way of example; to attempt to help you to see what I envisage for SMN – a huge resource where we can all learn and be inspired by reading and following not just our own, probably primary area of interest, but learn from others and try out new approaches and maybe a new area of modelling.
The Yamato contains 133 images, 4,018 words across 48 pages of A4 – almost a book! I challenge anyone to say they can’t pick up something useful from this build.
Look out for the Trumpeter U.S. Carrier CV-8 Hornet 1:350 scale – good for aircraft modellers too as we await our example of the Wingscale B-25 Mitchell!
