The Little World

Yes, we can! We’re scale modellers and fussy is what we do. If you want lackadaisical go down the hall to the Morris Dancing Club – they drink and they don’t care.

Scale modellers, and their disreputable cousins, the Lego builders, do fuss a lot about little details. We want the model we build to have the correct dimensions; wingspan, chord, overall length, fuselage shape, tail shape, etc. We want our engine cowlings the right size and we want our oleo struts compressed just the right amount.

The surprising thing is, sometimes our desires do not seem to be shared by the kit makers. Or at least not entirely in any one factory. Thus you get comparative kit reviews on the internet that list up to five separate makers of any particular aircraft who get an annoying flaw in their product that disqualifies it from being best choice. The forums abound in people who are plucking wings from one box, a canopy from another, and then moaning that the really crisp dive brakes we got before the war seem to have disappeared.

Some of this also gets a bit snippy when people find that old moulds have been shipped to new countries and re-activated. They grump that they have been conned…but if you think about it, that is hardly the case. If the box has a MiG 18 Flatulent fighter plane on the front and  when you upend it a Flatulent drops out, that’s a win. If it is a 1959 Flatulent all the better…you might have to sand off the rivets and scribe lines, but what the heck. It might be the only Flatulent ever made – even the Soviets only built three of them for the 1959 May Day parade and flew them past Red Square 34 times…

Being fussy about things that can be carved off or glued on is also silly. That is why we have Xacto knives and Poly cement, Even the sometimes inevitable ejector mark or sink is not the end of the world. Putty is cheap and learning to use it is part of the basic training they give at Parris Island. At least I think it was puttying. It might have been field stripping machine guns. In any case, all you need to do is look at some pictures of whatever it is that you’re building and add or subtract accordingly. All the kit maker has to do is get you within knife or sandpaper distance of the target and the rest is up to you.

Beware, however, of letting other people be fussy for you. Forums, clubs, and other gatherings of modellers will also gather critics – much as a theatre lobby or public bar will. And the level of criticism will be much the same in every case – people will divide into different groups; The Mighta, Coulda, Shoulda, Oughta, and Gonna tribes will all have their say after the fact.

Learn tact. Learn calm. Learn to go deaf.

Note: Today is Australian Federation Day and they are giving away free Prime Ministers in Canberra. I still need three to have the whole set.