200 posts - A "year" in review

Actually, this is post #201, but it feels like a good time to stop and reflect on the past year and a half, since I decided to pick up scale modelling again. The end of the year is always a good time to look back and see what we've done.

What have I learned, what have I accomplished and what are the milestones these past 18 months? It has been a year of many "firsts".

August 25th, 2012

My first model in over 10 years is Revell's 1/72 M60 A3 with bulldozer blade. I picked it off the shelf in the hobbyshop because it was cheap (€6) and had a camouflage scheme, something I would really want to learn with an airbrush. This was before I even HAD an airbrush.

It's now a year and a half later and the tank itself is finished, but I'm working on a small base to display it on. Work is currently on hold.

September 28th, 2012

One of my 10 year old unfinished kits is an Enterprise-C from the Star Trek universe. Reason it was never made? A big hole in the bottom of the saucer section.
This was the first time I tried making a mould with Latex and pouring plaster to replace the missing plastic. The result is far from perfect, but acceptable to me and a it was a very good experiment with a new technique.

October 20th, 2012

My first airbrush. I picked a Revell starter model, because the initial investment for a high-end airbrush and compressor seemed too steep.
I came to regret my overcautious approach in the months to come, but only learned how bad it actually was after I got my SECOND airbrush, a year later. (Keep reading)

November 3rd, 2012

My first 2 issues of FSM (FineScale Modeler) have arrived. I read a few digital versions of this magazine and really came to like it. Now it's one of the monthly things I look forward to receiving in the mail.

November 5th, 2013

First small airbrush-breakthrough. I discovered one of the things that was wrong with the airbrush, causing it to blow bubbles about half the time. Even after this, using it was far from a smooth ride.

November 18th, 2012

First time photo-etch. It was pretty simple and only a few pieces, though the propellor was a small challenge to get right. There are no do-overs with photo-etch. If you bend it more than once (sometimes you can bend it twice), it snaps off.

December 9th, 2012

First time masking with Silly putty was a fun experiment and rather successful right from the first try. My only mistake was making the paint too thin and spraying it on too heavily.

January 6th, 2013

My first finished model in over 10 years. It's just a practice model, but I'm proud of it nonetheless.

May 25th, 2013

The Abrams is done, although I'd like to do some weathering. I tried a couple of things, but always ended up having to remove it again.

June 2nd, 2013

The Puma is done. I'm happy with the camouflage, even if it taught me how NOT to apply it and I really like the AK mud wash to dirty the model up a bit.

June 14th, 2013

The submarine is done. After putting it on hold because of problems spraying the clearcoat, I struggled through it and ended up with a nice looking model.

July 23rd, 2013

I haphazardly came accross The Combat Workshop at exactly the start of Jon's new initiative : "The Sprue Cutters Union". Every week all the union members write a post on their blog about the same topic, picked by Jon. It's a good way to find something to write about, get to know each other and generate a little more traffic to our blogs by linking to eachother's posts.

September 20th, 2013

A new airbrush! Bought this while looking for a second-hand compressor. I ended up buying the compressor, this airbrush and 11 kits.
This new airbrush quickly taught me how airbrushing should really go and told me just how bad the Revell was behaving. I'm extremely happy with this tool.

October 5th, 2013

My first attempt at creating a base for a model. It's sort of finished, but I want to add ONE more thing before calling it complete.

October 12th, 2013

The Shelby is done, after some issues with the gloss coat. Can't say much about this. It's finished, was a nice diversion and I'll never build another car again.

November 2nd, 2013

First time trying to recreate mud on the M60 with AK pigments. I'm happy with how it turned out.

November 28th, 2013

The Enterprise is done.

That's it for this 2013 end-of-the-year review. I'm already looking forward to what next year's review will contain. Hopefully a lot of models will get finished and new techniques will be mastered (or at least attempted).