Eleven people attended. There's a group build at Japan Village (934 3rd Ave in Brooklyn) on Saturday, Nov 7, from 1-6pm.
Mark reported there were about 300 models at the Hudson Valley Scale Modelers show in Poughkeepsie last Saturday. A dozen BPMS members were there as well. It was good to see Gil, Mark, and Vaughan in person. Mark shared photos of the show; many more are on
the BPMS Facebook page.
We saw Vaughn's Bf-109 E, Michael C's RQ 4 Global Hawk, Simon's He-115 on floats, Frank C's starship C-57 D (from Forbidden Planet), and Angelo's "It's only a flesh wound" vignette (from Monty Python & the Holy Grail). Jimmy picked up a FA-18 F Super Hornet
and got the replacement for the ACV-P damaged in shipping.
The topic was tools, basic, special, and improvised. Vaughn, and others, use toothpicks for many things - applying glue or paint, positioning decals or small parts, holding parts for painting, cleaning up canopy framing. Many of us use clothespins and reversed
clothespins as clamps. Chuck uses a single edge razor blade to restore panel lines, and he likes a pin vice to gradually enlarge holes, rather than scraping them out with a blade. Regarding blades, Simon prefers surgical scalpels, #15, #10, and #11. They're
inexpensive and available online. Bard Parker is better than McKesson, in his opinion. Michael C showed us a silicone tipped brush for decal placement, a 3D printed block sander, a hand drill, a circle cutting compass and a thin diamond file that fits into
an X-acto type holder. Bobby is using a three-claw grabber instead of tweezers and Russ turned two expired membership cards into a hand vice for cleaning up photoetch. We also talked about masking. Vaughn likes Parafilm, although it can be finnicky to use,
and Angelo has used masking from Painters Mate Green. Or you could avoid masking altogether and get pre-painted kits from Border Models or Sebunas.
The next meeting is Tuesday, 11/3/26 at 7:30 pm, so there's plenty of time to vote. Invites to follow. Hope to see you there.
~Russ
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