The Little World

A very long time ago I bought a plastic model kit for my daughter. This sounds like the standard modeller’s joke excuse, but I assure you that it was not that at all. My daughter and I had just flown in an Ansett Airways Boeing 767 – 200 to the eastern states for a holiday – it was her first flight – and a model of the very type of airliner we travelled on came up as a kit in Stanbridge’s Hobby Shop in the rather large scale of 1:100. It was a Japanese kit from a maker I had never heard of – Doyusha. I purchased it and gave it to her a big Christmas present.

She seemed very pleased and made a start on assembling it – painting as she went. Then life intervened and the kit was laid aside in the background. Well, it has come to the fore again. We’re going to finish it.

I say we, because she must do most of the work and she’ll have to do it in the Little Workshop after hours when the summer heat is gone.

In the initial rush to it, most things were done pretty well for an inexperienced modeller. There are no glue fingerprints evident. Unfortunately the tube glue of the time has not stood up to the test – the fuselage has split completely – the only thing that keeps the two halves together is the tip of the vertical stabilizer, and I reckon a thin kitchen knife run up there would yield two clean parts again. This is no bad thing, if my daughter wants to take her build to the next level and plan to paint the fuselage later. We could make sure of the interior glazing, mask the many windows, and make a proper job of the centre seam.But this is not my build – it is hers – and she’ll have to decide the level of sophistication she will go to.

I’ll bet there are many, many half-started kits in the cupboards of my readers. There might be a number of reasons why they never progressed – I think it would be very rewarding for people to admit to this, go and dig out the kits, and restart the process. Even if it did not lead to perfection, it would give closure…and possibly spark a new interest in the sort of kit it was. Goodness knows a lot of these things are historic and will never be seen again as kit offerings – who knows – you may have waited long enough to have a real gem on your hands.

That’s one serious desk stand there…I wish we got them with more model kits. It would encourage more in-flight building.