Huntsman’s Close

Thanks Grunhertz, I’ll add some to the shopping list!

As has been repeated above, keeping the rim/threads clean is the key. Unless it’s modern Humbrol of course and then it’s liable to become unusable gloop after the first use no matter what you do cleaning sealing surfaces or adding thinner. I still use a lot of Humbrol because I have a lot of it. The old Enamel and Super Enamel colours are still great, brush well, thin and spray well. I don’t pour from tins or jars. Plastic pipettes for me (yes, I appreciate that some may baulk at the environmental issues). I’m a recent Colourcoats convert: really impressed. I also use a fair few Xtracolors, so tinlets are fine by me. Love Tamiya for spraying too. The thing I never liked was glass jars with metal lids and paper seals. Perhaps my impatient younger self didn’t help.

Cheers RWG6... oh Scimitar! From Airfix magazines of 1974/5 I’ve gleaned the names of the 24 paints in the “new” Revell (GB) enamel range. The codes, and the magic mixing formula(!), elude me. The codes might, just might, cross reference Humbrol numbers. It’s supposed to all be in the 75/76 catalogue. Someone is currently offering one on eBay for £20: I’m not THAT desperate to know! These appear to have been short lived paints as some time in the early 1980s tins of enamel from the German range took over. Revell (GB) seem to have recommended Pactra paints up to then. I wonder if they made the enamels for them? Cheers HC

Thanks for looking into it Beowulf. The ‘75 catalogue is unfortunately the one with the golden information!

I don’t suppose anybody has a copy of the 1975 Revell GB catalogue to hand? Yours in hope....

Hi Steve, Not sure where it was imported from, but it made it to Hertfordshire! Thanks for the good idea, I will try them out. All the best HC

Friends, Does anyone have, or know where to find, a list of Revell enamel paints from the late 70s/early 80s? They came in square-sided glass bottles and then later on the familiar 14ml tinlets. Or were the numbers the same as now? Thanks for any help.

What sort of figures are you after? I’ve got quite a lot doing nothing but taking up space.

The Revell set is nice, they are well moulded, but... They are a bit on the big side. I managed to get a set for a non-extortionate amount when I was looking to populate a diorama and collected as many different ones from all the decent sources I could find. They come up big against all of the others and illustrate the issues of mixing HO, OO, 1/72 and 1/76. People are different shapes and sizes, but not that much. They would be great on their own though. I think the one that puzzled me was the radio operator: really nice, but even in a Lancaster you’d hardly see him.

I can only echo dozens of others before: if you built it, and if you like it, then it’s served it’s purpose and it’s a ‘good model’. Personally, I am everywhere on the scale. I can fuss over tiny ‘never to be seen again’ interior details and I can paint it all black and shut the canopy. I can just assemble a 1970s kit as it is or I can deconstruct it so it ends up being mostly plasticard and Milliput. It depends what I want out of it at the time. There is one particular subject niche that I know a lot about: probably as much as anyone for some quite good reasons. If I see someone make a model in that niche then I am always pleased to see it, am delighted to offer advice IF solicited but will otherwise try to hold my tongue unless someone is offering some dodgy ‘expertise’. I build for my pleasure alone. I don’t worry about perfection all the time because my skills won’t deliver it!

The Morris Minor Budget Tank Transporter?

May I chip in that I will take it as a personal slight that none of the new releases will cover my own niche interest of Algerian training aircraft of February 1953 and that the dearth of such kits is a glaring oversight as I would have bought at least two? I will conveniently ignore the sound commercial banker within the releases because I am a born contrarian and look down upon anyone who likes things others have heard of.