banana oil
hard balsa wood
jettex motors
fuel and fuses
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You can still find hard (C-grain) balsa if you don’t mind checking through a whole bin at Michael’s or Jo-Ann’s. I haven’t ordered from them in years, but there is a online balsa shop that will get you the hardness you ask for.
Jetex was on its way out when it came to my attention; I had a couple of the little motors but never built a model that successfully flew with them.
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There are a couple of good hobby shops near me. Tammy’s Hobbies in Beaverton OR, and Hillsboro Hobbies in my town’s downtown. Both seem to be doing OK and have all of the nifty stuff the video host points out, like brass and plastic stock and scenery decor.
A really great one down in the Bay Area, named something like San Antonio Hobbies, died shortly after I moved north. It was a huge place, with models of all sorts and a decent gaming section as well.
SIGH. I appreciate the depth of experience you can get from Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program, but the lack of hands-on material-handling and craftmanship kids get these days is dismaying.
P.S. My major model groove:
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Austin used to have Village Hobby that specialized in flying model airplanes. Yours truly spent many many hours and dollars there in the 80s and early 90s.
Chinese ARF kits - and the internet - and? sadly? bye bye local shop.
Now that I’m healing from the latest MC Mishap - I have a stack of balsa wood kits in storage, and will probably be starting on one soon.
Work with your hands - it satisfies your soul!!
avenue F house - probably 1993-ish?
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I used to go to Polk’s hobby shop, one block south of the Empire State Building (I think their ubiquitous bus ads actually stated it that way). Eventually, they had a Tandy Leather department, which I think turned into Radio Shack.
There are a couple of nice hobby shops in LA where I live now. Wonderful thing…
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True in my home town too. The big neighborhood model shop had a wall of chemicals, most of them dangerous enough by themselves but my friends and I managed to combine them in some pretty spectacular ways. Most of us who survived went on to productive careers in STEM fields.
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there were exceptions.
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Was Village Hobby across from Northcross Mall?
I lived a few blocks from your place, near 51st & Duval, around that same time. (EDIT: or not; Ave. F is longer than I remembered)
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One more time, why not?
That is some enterprising tree ascension. If you love something, rescue it! Reach for the skies!
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That’s what decals are for. There are a bunch of indy online places selling decals for all sorts of weird things.
I used this guy when I started making this set up:
For the nerdcore out there, it’s a complete^ 25-pr battery, based around George Blackburn’s unit.
And, of course, the perennial foe of the scale modeller: catzilla!
You can see some of the decals here
I found Dom really good to deal with.
The project is almost finished. I have just one troop (or a section? It might only be a section) of guns left to paint and it’s complete - the top photo above was taken when there was still all the guns and most of the tractors to paint. Unfortunately I kind of hit a motivational wall a while ago.
^ I’m not kidding. All the vehicles in a battery are there. It seemed like a good idea when I started …
Over the course of this project, all the shops where I bought the various models and materials have closed down 
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Totes remember this movie, first time ever i’ve seen someone reference this 
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My workplace is near there. Ave F & 56th
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Yep.
I confess, my models are 1/3 scale humans - ABJD. I still spend time and money at the last remnant near me, Hobbytown, and also the gaming store that sells miniatures and supplies (paints/matte varnish, fine brushes, hobby tools, materials for furniture builds), but I know I will never see even basic resin dolls or their internal hardware for sale there. The Hobbytown has a large model and game room they want people use, but when I tried to arrange to hold a doll meetup there (and we’re all in that store a couple times a month), it was like I was asking to bring Ebola Cooties into the building. (The game store has been totally supportive.)
Just sayin’ — the hobby still has some awful fucking gendered and misogynist territory to map.
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we used a washing line to try the jettex motor for a monorail (early boring)
I’m in the eu but will try the online offers…
some years ago I made an archilles balsa elastic banded powered plane that could take off on it’s own power…
but sent to cousins in africa in a dirigible type casing made from hard grained balsa and covered in net curtaining which was doped…
the post office notably did a double take
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Scale modeling in Japan continues to thrive, though enthusiasts’ median age is slowly creeping up as time passes. The hobby is also quite healthy in Spain, of all places.
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That definitely describes every dilettante that opens an antique store, too! The proprietor/proprietresses treat any potential customer as a chore to get rid of, quickly and with a minimum of effort.
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and the loss of radio shack!
I see a niche
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some people open hobby stores, others open hobby stores.
There was a coffee shop near where I used to live that helped me realize, one morning when they opened at 6, and they were just putting the coffee on, at 6:01, that lots of people open stores as a hobby, rather than a service.
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No references to The Station Agent ?
"Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage), a quiet, withdrawn, unmarried man with dwarfism, has a deep love of railroads. He works in a Hoboken model train hobby shop owned by his elderly and similarly taciturn friend Henry Styles (Paul Benjamin). Because he feels ostracized by a public that tends to view him as peculiar due to his size, Fin keeps to himself.
When Henry dies unexpectedly, Fin is told that the hobby shop is to be closed. However, he also learns that Henry’s will left him a piece of rural property with an abandoned train depot on it. He moves into the old building hoping for a life of solitude, but he quickly finds himself reluctantly becoming enmeshed in the lives of his neighbors."
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