Down Memory Lane 3: A New Beginning

Having looked at my early beginnings as a modeller in Part 1, then my teenage years in Part 2, I’m going to look back now at my late-20s, when I returned to modelling after a gap of almost ten years.

The Mercedes 540K roadster was my first step back into modelling.

 

Like many modellers, I started young, developed my skills into my teenage years and then life – or more accurately, my social life - took over from my old childhood hobbies. The world of work, and a 3-year stint at university, took over my life together with its attendant friendships and social activity. I probably also thought it was time to leave behind the things of my childhood, as is often the case at that time in your life. However, after leaving student life and getting stuck into full time work, it was only a couple of years before the mundanity of the 9-5 life and the inevitable toll it took on my former carefree, social lifestyle left me looking for something undemanding and rewarding to do in my spare time. Spotting a Mercedes 540K kit in a model shop on Burleigh Street in Cambridge, I assembled some paints and tools and took the kit home. I soon completed it, and found to my satisfaction that a) my basic skills had not suffered too much in my years away from modelling, and b) my more patient attitude as a working adult, now acclimatised to the frustrations and imperfections of daily life in the world of work, helped me to achieve a higher standard of finish simply because I was happy not to rush the project.

The German SdKfz was the first of many military kits I was to build.

 

More trips to the model shop yielded more kits, and I started getting more into military modelling, starting with a German SdKfz 232 radio car. I then took on more of a challenge, and built a diorama featuring a German King Tiger tank with its crew at rest at the roadside, which I gave to my brother as a Christmas present. Around this time I picked up the remnants of my old modelling tools from my parent’s place where I had left them, and I was still essentially using the same tools and techniques I had been using since my very early days.

The Aztek A-470, complete with changeable spray nozzles and paint cups.

 

In 2003 I moved to London for work, of course taking my model supplies with me, and that winter I began a new chapter in my modelling career with the purchase of an airbrush – an Aztec A-470. I had dabbled with a simple spray gun before, which was powered by compressed air from an aerosol can. My first attempts with my new airbrush also used an aerosol can but I soon found this to be very problematic: firstly, compressed air from a can cools dramatically when you discharge any amount of it, and on my first couple of projects I found the air became so cold that the airbrush nozzle froze. Secondly, as you use more air propellant from the can, the can becomes lighter and more inclined to keep toppling over. Thirdly, the cans eventually run out of air! So that winter I bought a nice air compressor from Machine Mart, with an electrically-powered compressor pump and a 6-litre ‘receiver’ or air tank to hold air compressed up to 110psi.

 

A Panzer II was one of my first airbrushed models.

 

After a few early failures, I soon managed to achieve a mediocre but useful standard of even spraying with the airbrush. The many fascinating techniques for fine detail spraying and airbrush weathering were still beyond my skill level, but I could lay down smooth coats on my models. That Christmas my brother received another diorama, this time a German Panzer II in a Parisian fighting scene, and with the tank and the road surface sprayed using my new airbrush.

 

Next time: Down Memory Lane comes right up to date, and sees the growth of a guilty secret - 'the stash'.....