The Little World

Well, Walter I am going to let you into a secret – I make mistakes in my Little Workshop. This one’s not the first one I’ve made when building my Little World. I suspect it won’t be the last.

The grey Spitfire model you see at the top of the page looks pretty well weathered – you can see the panel lines outlined in dark colour. Some modellers do this deliberately and it can look very realistic. In my case it is the result of that mistake I mentioned.

You see I wanted to make a paint finish that had three colours – light grey, dark grey, and dark green – so I spray painted the bottom with the light colour and let it set overnight. Then I carefully plastered the bottom of the airplane with sticky masking tape and sprayed the dark grey on top. All good so far- it sat in my drying cabinet for three hours.

Then the mistake.

I used some rubber masking solution to paint the top of the plane with the British camouflage pattern and put it in front of the air conditioner to dry. ( Note: this is Australia in winter – that air conditioner was set to blow warm air. Just before dinner I sprayed the dark green on it

What was the mistake?

One: I had not tested this particular rubber solution on this particular paint.

Two: The rubber solution was probably not completely set when I sprayed the green. I was impatient. Always a mistake for a model maker.

The green looked good, but when the rubber layer was peeled off, the dark grey was spoiled – it looked like it had reacted with the rubber. It was going to be the wreck of the model…

And here comes the moral of the tale, Walter. I realised I had made that mistake. So I didn’t hesitate to do what I could to correct it. I reached for the methylated spirit bottle and the paper towel pads and started to wipe off the entire paint finish. It took ten minutes of determined wiping and the result is what you see at the top of this page. Ugly, no?

Well, ugly, yes. But it is still a Spitfire, and I am still a model builder and I am going to paint that dark grey on again tomorrow morning when it gets warmer. I won’t be impatient this time – I’ll wait a day for the grey to cure before I think of the green. And I’ll use a different method of masking – tape and rolled-up pieces of Blutack putty. This has worked before with no spoilage.

That’s the secret of it all, Walter. Don’t be discouraged by a mistake but never let that mistake go on further than the point when you find it out. It never gets better by itself – you have to retrace your steps and do it differently. You’ll be proud of yourself in the end.