Bogs: That's very kind and very much on keeping with your helpful pages on model building. We'll talk about that when I visit. However, we shouldn't hijack wizer's thread.

Back to his subject: I seem to daily oscillate between "I'd really like it to be aluminium, 'cos they look nice and they are better and...." and "I ought to learn on something cheaper where I can makes mistakes and have the tools to cope". About 70% of the time I am down for building it in MDF to start with, keeping in mind what I want at the end so that I can re-use components. I do quite like the philosophy of build one to build a better one, especially when it's going to be the mechanics that get me.

Despite getting some bad press, I find the BlackToe stuff really useful, especially to video build that he has done.