Jack’s scenic tip
Older readers may remember a TV series called Michael Bentine’s It’s a Square World, which often featured models, including a memorable animated flea circus. It was in many respects a prelude to Monty Python. The model maker on that series was Jack Kine, a remarkable and somewhat eccentric character who latterly owned a shop in Surbiton, from which he sold scenic materials. Some of his materials and techniques were truly ground-breaking, and I first used them on the Egham club’s original ‘Fraser Canyon’ layout. This was in the mid-1970s, so long before Woodland Scenics or static grass, and in the era when ground cover was dyed sawdust and bushes were garish bits of lichen. Jack introduced me to making hills with webs of card strips covered in plaster bandage. He’d developed his own lightweight plaster coating, which was invaluable for ‘Fraser Canyon’, where we had umpteen square metres of mountainside to model. He was always worth listening to, not least because he shared Bentine’s zany sense of humour. One piece of his advice which I took to heart was to outline scenic areas with a brushing of brown paint along ditches, gutters, and where grass ended and hard surfaces began, because mud always washed down to such places. Recently, when I went walking in the village where I live, I couldn’t help noticing that nature had proven him right. Just look at this picture I took of a lane - it looks as if a giant hand wielding a giant paintbrush has done some 12in:1ft scenic modelling…