Fagot Filling*

Fear not - it isn't what you think.  But a sorry tale nonetheless.  This elderly Eastern Bloc relic** was recently purchased for £2.50*** as it seemed fitting that a low budget Soviet-era antique should be built from a low budget Soviet-era kit.  Fitting.  Now there's a word I'll not be using much during this post.

The instructions.  Such as they are.

Initial impressions weren't too bad - but hang on - look at the shape of the rudder.  While carving off the flash I think that more plastic went in the bin than stayed on the kit...

Parts required a degree of persuasion to stay together.

When the glue dried there were gaps you could fire a Sidewinder through.  So it was out with the filler.

Sanding off the excess filler.  Its a horrid kit but for an old MiG that somehow feels right!

* The NATO codename for the MiG-15 is of course 'FAGOT'.  For further such hilarity see also this earlier post.
** The logo on the box is 'KP'.
*** It may not sound a lot but £2.50 represents around 5% of the 1979 GDP of the People's Democratic Republic of Forbodia.

The Lynx effect - part 2

My FROG Lynx is now ready for action.  I opted for a pretty basic British colour scheme and used (some of) the markings supplied with the kit.
Given its age, it's not a bad old thing and is worth picking up at a suitably low price. Which is lucky - as I bought two....

Cutting Edge!

Since the late 1970s I have used a Swann-Morton craft knife for much of my modelling and related bodging activities.  Other knives have come and gone but all - even the pair of madly expensive X-Acto knives I treated myself to some years ago have failed to supplant the trusty orange-handled wonders.
As it happens I now live in - well, near - Swann-Morton's home city. Sheffield, as many will know, is rightly famed for cutlery and high quality steels and Swann Morton's main business is surgical scalpel blades - while writing this I had a quick look at their website which is worth a look.
These days I tend to have two Swann-Morton knives  - as pictured above.  One with a newish blade (top) which gets used for slicing parts off sprue and detailed trimming.  The other has an older blade - covered in paint, glue, filler etc.  Eventually either the sharp blade breaks loses its tip at which point it becomes the scruffy knife an a new blade replaces it's filler-smeared chum.

Once in a while the handle breaks - caused I might add by my clumsiness rather than any fault of the material.  The fact that in 35+ years of use I have only written off three handles says it all!  This recently happened to my 'sharp' knife as above and so a trip to the model shop was called for!

Happily I was OK for blades - having some years ago stocked up with this box of 50 of my favourite curved No.2s.

 Marcway Models in Sheffield rose to the occasion - a new knife with two blades costs around £1.50.  I was planning to buy a few but my attention was drawn to...

 ...this new (to me anyway) brass handle for £3.  While this should be even more robust than the plastic version it will be interesting to see if it as comfortable to use.

The Lynx effect - part 1

In search of some cheap choppers for Little Cold Wars I chanced upon a pair of these FROG Lynx kits for a mere £3.99 each.  Although this is rather an old kit and clearly depicts a very early Lynx I took the plunge.  The only other Lynx I have ever built - aside from the 1/285 scale GHQ version - was the Airfix kit sometime in the late 1970s.  I recently noticed the TOW missile tubes from it in the spares box.

Anyway, back to the plot.  When a few weeks ago I finally cracked open one of the FROG kits I was fully expecting something pretty basic which might require a degree of filler and violence to assemble.

I needn't have worried.  Though showing it's age, the kit went together reasonable easily and swiftly built up into something that bears a reasonable resemblance to a Lynx.  Of course, that will all change when I paint it....