The Little World

The people in the plastic kit companies who write out the instructions and draw the diagrams are to be admired. I would accord them all honour as I tied them to the stake and bid the firing squad take aim. Because they are very talented and artistic criminals.

Their chief crime, past the price they set on the kits, is one of luring the foolish into traps. They write their instructions in such a way that the unwary model builder is left naked and bleeding about 5/6ths of the way through the build.

I am speaking, of course, of the instruction sheets that would have you glue on the most fragile and frangible little components before you have the thing half-finished. And then expect you to curve your fingers around these pitot tubes, antennae, and handhold railings for the next two weeks as you struggle to paint and decal the beast.

Will you snap something off? Will you lose a vital part of the model by merely setting it down on the table ? Will a window fall into the fuselage? Does a fat dog fart?

Old, wizened, cynical modellers, covered in dried glue and Xacto knife cuts, will have seen through this long ago. They will either have set aside the hair-like antennae and the minute plastic aileron horns for separate painting and later gluing…or they will have thrown the rubbish away and made replacements out of piano wire and brass tubing. Even then, they will hang off attaching the smallest things until the whole paint job is shot and dried, and accept the need for minute touching-up later.

They will also watch the newbies faithfully following the cruel hoaxes printed in the instruction sheets – saving their mocking laughter for later. If they can lure the new modeller into working over a thick rug the results are even funnier. You can lose an entire 1:72 Heinkel 111 in a shag rug and never find it again.