The Little World

No, it’s not another D-Day memorial blog. You can wash the black and white stripes off your computer monitor…

It’s a post about which day in the build of a model is the easiest – which is the hardest – which the least enjoyable – and which is the one you like the best. As you’ll all have your own preferences out there, you can make your own lists. Here’s mine:

a. The easiest day in a build – wash the sprues in the sink. Then pat them dry on a towel and leave them in a warm place to dry. In Western Australia in summer this can include the inside of the refrigerator…In winter you just have to find a sunny day and hope for the best. With water-based paints I suppose a little residual moisture wouldn’t screw up the first coats too much, but if you’re spraying enamel or lacquer it could be sad.

b. The hardest day – decal day. Particularly if the decals sheet has too many tiny fizzy markings that you are expected to put on to win the microscopic blindness contest. The sequence of paint, soak, apply, re-apply, resoak, re-apply, blot, curse, resoak, re-apply, blot, solvent, wait, wait, wait….then do the same thing on the other side…is dreary.

Of course the model looks better with each successful application, but as each try uses up one more of the precious sheet…and each one can potentially be a complete failure…it is like trimming your toenails with a whipper snipper.

c. Least enjoyable day – I vote for sand the putty and then re apply more putty day. I stand amazed when I read of other modellers who apply five coats of putty and six coats of paint to get a fuselage seam perfect. I would not spend so much time on  brain surgery. By the time I reached the third putty application I would be looking at the nearest wall and calculating whether I could reach it with the model.

Of course, I view with equal awe the model engineers who spend a decade making the tools and jigs to produce the parts for some project – a steam engine or a mechanical woman, or whatever. I should never have their dedication, patience, or level of lunacy.

d. Most enjoyable day – right at the start. The sprues are washed, the instruction sheet is open, and the clippers are to hand. The parts can start to come off the runners and be butted up against each other. What was a form in abstract starts to become a concrete model. Even if it is just dry fit, it is a beginning. No mistakes yet. No frustrations. All the world to conquer. And at the end of the day there is an interior and a couple of engines or a pair of wings cemented together…

Now there is a longest day for the builder. It is the one when you mask the canopy and the rest of the model. Quite frankly it is never quite good enough until you get to the end of the allotted time and then anything is good enough. It is the supreme test of your character and patience. If you can sit there and tear the entire scheme of tape off and try again to get it better, you can conquer the world.

Note that at some stage of the game you will discover that you have an overspray on some part of the world and you’ll need to touch it up with a brush…