The Little World

Are you an inveterate gambler? Are they always hauling you out of casinos and racetracks and putting you on 12-step anti-addiction plans? Well cheer up – you can put the cards down, throw the dice away, and say farewell to the horses. I’ve got a new outlet for your mania and it’s all legit. Betcha 5 to 3 you’ll love it.

Just stroll into your local hobby shop and go along the row of model kits. You can choose your own game – cars, ships, tanks or planes. And then you pick up your kit, and without opening it, bet $ 5 to $ 250 that you will have one that will actually fit together. You can read the form sheet – otherwise known as a magazine or on-line review or you can listen to the touts – AKA forum members. But in the end you pays your money down and you takes your chances.

I have bought kits made by major makers that have been wonderful – every part a secure fit to every other and a perfect result in the end. I have also purchased kits from the same maker that have been warped, short-shot, covered in sinkholes and ejector pin marks, and with nothing but the vaguest touch to each fitting surface. They have both been packaged in wonderful cardboard boxes with glowing art on the front.

I have also purchased kits from tiny little backyard manufacturers that exhibit the exact same range of quality. The box art hasn’t been quite up to the R.A. standards of the big makers but the bet is just the same – and you don’t know until you knife the seal and open the box.

I do not begrudge the little maker some errors – I figure that the fact that they are making something that no-one else wants to mould counts a credit toward them. But there is a limit to the amount of error that any one kit can contain before it becomes a bad joke in styrene. I have compiled a list of things that I can do to hedge my bet:

1. Try every maker at least once – and in the same scale. As long as you are not spending $ 150 to have your nose punched you can endure the lesson. There have been pleasant surprises as well as nasty ones.
2. Try the same model from different makers. This is the sort of thing you can do when you build ME 109’s or FW 190’s…or the common Allied fighters. I saw this done by a model magazine with different maker’s evocations of the P-51 Mustang and each finished model was different. They all had a degree of success, though the magazine article didn’t mention how angry some of the modellers might have become.
3. Accept that a small-run kit will be harder to do to some extent and do not expect it to fall together as a shake and bake effort.
4. At the same time see the shake and bake for what it is and revel in the ease with which you can get to the decoration stage.
5. Separate what the moulders did in the factory from what the wholesalers or retailers might have done with the kit. This excuses the factory for crushed boxes and things torn open. If storage conditions are extremely bad, it can also affect the parts. You can generally figure out whether they took their time making the thing or not.
6. Realise that there are different mixes of plastic used by different makers – and that these have changed over the course of time in the hobby. Some makers have gone harder – some softer. If they have incorporated metal powders in the mix – for instance the silver plastics of the early Revell aircraft kits – they will be brittle. Clear styrene is always brittle. AIrfix plastic was harder once than it is now – but that may be no bad thing. Eastern European plastic can be hard or soft – just take your chances.
7. Different plastics react differently to the various cements that are on offer. You just suck it and see in most cases – if you find that you are just not getting adhesion with one, try another. Beware the cement that never seems to stop softening the plastic.
8. Reconcile yourself to the fact that not all parts of any one kit may come out of the mould with the same quality. The fuselage may fit well but the wings sit wonky. Be prepared to cut and sand and occasionally shim up and fill.  Many seemingly hopeless kits respond to a little Plasticard as stiffening or framework. Do not be afraid to saw and cut plastic to relieve stress on parts that cannot be induced to close.
9. Finally, as sad as it may seem, some kits will never make up into a decent-looking finished product. They may contain too many basic flaws or be missing too many parts. They may be over-engineered or under-designed. Go to the internet and search for pictures of the prototype and see if you can find one that has been in a crash or has been disassembled for transport or repair. Consider making the Ugly Duckling even uglier but more interesting in the process. What started out as a horror and disappointment can become a favourite model…though you probably won’t want to make two..