The Little World

Whenever some cartoonist wants to suggest that someone has no life – and way too much time to spend living it – they have the poor individual sorting out his or her sock drawer. It is meant to be hilarious and pitiful at the same time, like parliament in Ottawa. I think this is entirely the wrong attitude – who wants to wake up in a screaming hurry some morning and have to spend ten minutes trying to find a pair of matching socks. Far better to do the thing right in preparation.

Likewise, if you are a scale model builder who uses decals on your kits, you are likely to find that you accumulate a fair supply of extras and spares. Of course you do – you’d be a damn fool to throw out perfectly good decals. However, if they are just swilling about in a shoebox, you may be faced with far more than the ten minutes in the sock drawer when you want the correct roundels for a South African Blenheim. You know you have them because there is a sheet from Hannants that says you do…but if you have not organised your decal drawer, you’ll have a hell of a time finding them.

Thus I suggest that you go get a packet of B4 or C4 paper envelopes and start to divide up the stash. I’ve done just that and it wasn’t as ghastly as I thought it would be.

The main thing is to think through your divisions. If you make a lot of Italeri kits you’ll probably end up with piles of unused Italian Air Force stuff. You can lump in the WW2 as well into it. Make an envelope and label it clearly – who knows but what you might take a sudden fit to make Italian Air Force planes.

Likewise, German, Korean, Japanese, etc. You can lump together Scandinavia into one envelope and that’ll take care of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, etc all the way west to Norway. Likewise you can lump together all the South American nations as they are generally not well represented in the decal sheets anyway. Middle eastern nations can also share an envelope, though I would make a separate one for Israel…you must be politically correct.

Of course the divisions all depend upon your own tastes. But each time you correctly hive off a particular set of decals you are making your next build much easier. Even if all you ever do is complete a kit according to the box art, there are some kits that long for extra graphics. Look upon your wardrobe of decals as just as important as your stash of kits.

Note: You can also go the next stage in the OCD and make separate storage containers for the paint colours of any particular air force. I keep Chinese food containers labelled for the RAF, RAAF, RCAF, USAAF, IJN, VVS, and a number of smaller air forces. Some of the paints are custom mixes but the separate boxes mean it is a lot easier to get the correct shades for the correct force.

Hint: Keep the decals dry and cool.