Latest Acquisitions (2025)

[LeytonO]

A new pair of Glasses, on the face of it 😁 not a very exciting acquisition.
I wear varifocals and apart from some minor distortion get on very well with them for everyday use.
One problem though is that model making (amongst other things) is mainly at a middle distance
This is neither a reading or distance vision length and consequently not always that sharp.

My daughter is an Optician(she would correct me and say Optometrist) anyway I digress.
She suggested what they call occupational lenses, basically a pair of glasses for a specific focal length.
Measured my eye to usual working distance and made me up the pair shown below.
Nothing fancy, single vision in basic frames, no coatings, thinning etc so very reasonably priced.

Just the job and well pleased with them, apparently they are very popular with people for regular computer use.
Well worth considering and not something you would immediately think of.

[Geoffers]

Thanks Rich, I have the same problem so this is a great suggestion 😊

[adt70hk]

Ok chaps, so a few arrivals in recent days.

Remember the broken figure for my 88 crew? Well, Peddinghaus sent me another full set, not just the broken figure. All credit to them!

Next a bit of an experiment. I have a number of planes that need weight in the nose so I bought some Liquid gravity....fortunately I paid £5 less than the normal £14ish thanks to an Amazon voucher.

However, from my fishing days I know that (at least here in the UK), you can still buy lead shot below a certain size and down to a very small size and so was curious as to what the cost-to-weight comparison would be. So I visited the tackle shop that is a short walk from home.

FYI both the liquid gravity and lead balls are c. 1mm across.

The comparison** was about what I expected but I thought I would share it with you. Price:

• Lead shot - £5 got me 28g = 5.6g per £
• Liquid gravity - £14 got me 240g = 17g per £ (but thanks to my discount I got 27g per £)

However the weight, unsurprisingly went the other way - albeit not enough to overcome the price difference. Remember that when weighting a plane nose, you're restricted by the size of space you have to put the weight in and I mostly deal with 1/72. Results as follows:

• Liquid gravity - 4ml weighed 20g = 5g per ml
• Lead shot - 4ml weighed 28g = 7g per ml....so 40% more per ml

So in short, if you want to use this type of solution over big lumps of lead, Liquid Gravity is much cheaper and unless space is at premium

Fortunately, I think still have quite a lot of small lead shot still out in my shed, so I'll have to dig it out at some point. At the moment I have not been able to to find anyone who sell micro-lead shot in bulk quantities as you never need a lot for fishing but I'm working on it.****

ATB

Andrew


** just bear in mind that this was done with domestic scales, not scientific ones, so take the results with a modicum of care.

*** actually I might just have found someone selling it quantities that might make it work out.....but need to do the maths....will keep you posted.....

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