Our Latest Acquisitions Since 2017

[Samphoto]

I don’t know if I’ll ever get into Warhammer miniatures myself, but I really like the idea behind what you’re doing here.

One of my biggest challenges with hobby time is that working on models in the evening means I’m off in another room instead of spending that time with my wife. That’s one reason I end up doing so much of my modeling late at night after she goes to bed.

Being able to bring something into the same room and work on it while we’re still spending the evening together actually sounds pretty appealing. I don’t think I’m going to be hauling a 1/48 aircraft, airbrush and compressor into the living room anytime soon, though.

[keavdog]

I’m fortunate in many ways. My wife does book nook/miniature house/rooms type stuff. A kit will take her over a month to complete as she does a LOT of customization. We have one room in the house dedicated to hobbies. We both have benches in the room and she’s starting to chew up shelf space

[pr154]

Very nice @keavdog! Couples that craft together stay together

I hear you on those challenges @Samphoto. My wife tolerated the sound of airbrushing and the occasional waft of thinners and glue, but once she was pregnant with our first child, it pretty much put a kybosh on anything she could smell so scale modeling has been relegated to a far corner of the house. But I did miss our pre-baby “crafternoons” and quite franky the evenings of mutually-agreeable TV have been feeling a bit flat as she concurrently creates with thread and wool while I disgrace myself by consuming/posting social media from my phone. So this brings me to the Warhammer stuff, where most of the work will be done by brush painting with water-based acrylics hence minimal (if any) smells and solvents once things are glued and primed back at the bench. I’m not that interested in collecting a Warhammer army or playing again, but I do like the miniatures and the lore to which they’re attached. I don’t know why, but it also feels a little less nerve-wracking than scale modeling, maybe because it’s a process or medium I’m more comfortable with while with scale modelling I still feel like I’m finding my groove…

[Samphoto]

“Crafternoons.” I like that.

My wife is an artist too, so we actually have a similar situation—except we’ve managed to divide the house between our hobbies. She’s pretty much taken over the living room for her painting, and I have one of the spare bedrooms as my hobby room. So we’ll often both be working on something at exactly the same time, just in completely different parts of the house.

That’s why the idea of having a hobby we could work on in the same room is appealing. Sometimes we’ll just work on a puzzle together, which at least gets us both at the same table.

[Samphoto]

This is going to be an unusually detailed “what I added to my stash” report, but there’s a bit of a story behind this haul that seemed worth sharing.

There’s always a certain amount of luck involved when you’re digging through used kits at a model show. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you don’t. Overall, I think I did pretty well with this haul.

The biggest win for me was the Kinetic S-2 Tracker. That one was already on my list of kits I wanted, this example is in perfect condition, and it came with five or six aftermarket detail sets as part of the deal. Between that and the A-37, EA-6A, Alouette II, Sea Harrier and Dauntless, I came home with six more 1/48 aircraft plus probably 10 or 12 aftermarket and detail sets altogether.

Then there’s the Dauntless. @fjs3 Freddie’s upcoming Battle of Midway Group Build has been in the back of my mind, so when I spotted a yellow-box Accurate Miniatures SBD-3 marked “USS Yorktown, Battle of Midway,” at the Sprue Brothers tables, I thought I’d found a perfect subject for it.

I actually researched the kit while I was standing there at the show and didn’t catch the red flag. It wasn’t until later that I discovered it’s apparently a known issue with some of these yellow-box kits—the box may say SBD-3, but the plastic inside can be the earlier SBD-1. Sure enough, mine is the same kit as the Academy SBD-1 I already have in the stash.

So instead of buying my Midway Group Build subject, apparently I bought my second SBD-1. Caveat emptor.

It looks like this one’s going straight into the “Bucket of Doom”—the big bin where kits wait for me to find them another home.

That’s part of the adventure of buying old kits at a show. Sometimes you find exactly what you were looking for, sometimes you stumble onto something you didn’t know you wanted, and occasionally you discover afterward that you just bought something you already have. Overall, though, the wins considerably outweighed the miss.

I’m also putting together a full report on the show itself, including photos from the contest, and I’ll post that separately.

[bobbaily]

Re: AM SBD-3 Midway version

I recall this issue from when the AM was still in business-here is a link from FSM that discusses it:

Accurate Miniatures Dauntless SBD-3 Midway Boxing, Buyer's Beware!

Hello, I figured I would try to save others who have interest in the Accurate Miniatures SBD-3 Midway boxing unnecessary aggravation . Do not buy this boxing of this kit (pictured). This is twice now (at least for me) that it’s been missing the correct parts for the SBD-3 version. I wrongfully assumed the first time was a fluke. Once again I got a Dash 3 forward fuselage with Dash 5 top piece (See Below). I think I understand why AM went out of business now, poor quality control. Buy at your own…

I think I have some info on paper from the AM site that is no longer available-I’ll try to find it tomorrow and share if I do.

[FlankMe]

Latest arrival from Amazon:

This may already be listed somewhere above in this monster thread, but I thought I’d post anyway since I wanted to express this is an example of why Tamiya was so successful - they know their customer. For about the same price I could have purchased a similar tool. Now I get a kit to build and a tool that will probably last me many years.

Plus, since this should make the work go quicker, I will hopefully stop sticking my supporting finger with 1mm drill bits, lol

[keavdog]

That looks like fun and useful. Wonder if you could enter it in a contest
Along the tool line I got this mini table saw - works great and very handy

I got it here for details

[FlankMe]

Oh my word, that looks to be an amazing multi-tool

[Samphoto]

Yep, this is the post I found that first clued me in that I bought a bad kit.

[stikpusher]

Yesterday at our AZ AMPS meeting I picked a few new items… first up, a guy was giving away this book, so I was the first one to jump and claim it

Then one of the guys who has an online business and eBay store had offered these items up for sale. I contacted him by email and he brought them in for me…

I had been looking for the Eagle Squadron decals and B-1B burner cans for quite a long time. The early 109 set was a new find of opportunity…
shameless plug here now for Avalon War Books and Hobbies. Have a look there to see what he carries… it’s primarily second hand stuff so you never know what you may find.

[Frozin]

Those burner cans look like they will be a real treat to put together. . Great score though.

[stikpusher]

@Frozin

Those burner cans look like they will be a real treat to put together. Great score though.

You are not kidding… they do look a bit intimidating at first glance. But the sections on the left an actually large single pieces that are rolled into tubes and then are fitted one over the other to overlap. It’s all the single pieces on the right side that look to be the real challenge

[Samphoto]

Those B-1B burner cans would have caught my attention immediately. I’ve got an old 1/48 B-1B that I started about 30 years ago and recently decided I’m finally going to finish, so I’ve been slowly collecting some aftermarket for it myself.

And your last comment pretty much sums up what I was just saying about digging through secondhand stuff—you never really know what you’re going to find. Half the fun is stumbling across something you’ve been looking for forever when you weren’t necessarily expecting to find it.

Nice haul. And a free book is pretty hard to argue with.

[veedubb67]

@FlankMe Those Tamiya Drills are a life-saver! The RPM is slow enough to drill through resin and styrene, but not fast enough to melt the plastic. I painted mine to look like a phaser pistol from Star Trek!

[Samphoto]

I had no idea Tamiya made a drill kit. I might have to get me one of those. It looks fun and functional.

Much more interesting than my latest kit to arrive!

[FlankMe]

So @keavdog was correct - It could be entered into a contest

[Tojo72]

Got these two for a good price,someone on Armorama was thinning their stash,these are the old Dragon kits with lotsa extras.

[pr154]

I haven’t quite crossed that bridge where I see cheap but highly-detailed kits as a spare parts opportunity, but I acknowledge the existence of the bridge

[Tojo72]

Were you referring to me about me buying kits for spares? Because that’s not what these are,for a while Dragon really included a lot of AM parts and these kits have a lot,I will build them eventually.