The Little World

This time we step up the pace a little with double the amount of money in our hand. Ten bucks is a big piece of change – if you add another dollar you can buy a pint of beer in a trendy hotel. So do not disrespect the tenner. It can also buy you a lot of fun in the scale workshop.

Let’s start by dismissing the clearance-bin model kits. They are real, and we should never let a bin pass by without having a dig in there to see if there is a gem, but we’ll imagine ourselves in a drought at present. The $ 10 needs to go somewhere else.

It needs to go to the newsagent or the art supply store. These can look very much like each other at certain times of the year but there is a fundamental difference: newsagencies are not staffed by bitter, twisted, failed artists. No-one is given withering glances and haughty sniffs in newsagencies.

But, as we say, they both sell cardboard, paper, glue, Blutack, and construction board. And that means that they have the ingredients of scale model buildings just everywhere. The builders of smaller scale Little Worlds in particular may find that they can make nearly all their structures from just these simple materials.

A moment’s reflection tells us that this is precisely what is in many of the card model kits that are pre-packaged for the OO-scale model railway world. Some designs of British urban housing can be perfectly represented in printed card, and the grubbier it is, the better. If you have a computer and an inkjet printer all you need to do is use the simplest of image-manipulation programs to turn out building sides, signs, and most other flat objects.

Lots of printers can cope with card up to 3mm in thickness. With a little balsa framIng you can build quite complex structures. There are a number of plans free in magazines.

Another way to have hobby fun far in excess of cost is the good old balsa wood glider kit. There are any number of dated but workable designs from the 50’s that peg out under a tenner, take a week of enthusiastic building, and can be played with in the park on a still day. Don’t expect any better performance with them than you had as a kid, but cherish the occasional sweet flights.

Ten dollars will also buy a couple of packages of dyed lichen. Add a few twigs picked up in the park and some thinned white glue and you have the ingredients for a lot of trees. No Little World ever has enough trees, and the prices of the ready-made examples in packets are horrendous. It just takes a knife, scissors, and a botanist’s eye to start your own forest.

Spend your ten on a modelling magazine – take your pick which one, but do put in a bit of research in the newsagency to see whether it really has anything save advertisements in it – and whether any of the advertisements apply to your location.

Buy TWO pots of paint and do an entire airplane with them.

Buy a miniature figure in one of the gaming shops and try to paint it. You’ll either get a lot of fun or a lot smarter. Your vocabulary will improve, if improve is really the word we want here. Perhaps it is better to say that it will expand.

Note that $ 10 will get you in trouble if you start buying accessory packs for regular kit building. Resin or photoetch kits will lead to frustration and dissatisfaction with either the finished result or all the rest of your collection. You know that darkened kitchen or cellar that you see in horror movies that beckons? When the music goes Wheep Wheep Wheep? It’s full of resin and photo etch…