The Little World

Or no build at all…

We see a number of memes pop through our social media feed that have descriptions of ” lawful  evil ” or ” neutral chaotic ”  or some such applied to life. It can be on subjects as minor as how you store your bread. Well, why not apply it to scale model building:

a. Good Kit – Good Build

The best set of circumstances and best outcome. The mind awakened and the soul refreshed. The kit may have been a very expensive one, or just a classic that had slipped through the reviewers for years. You approached it with pleasure and the dry fit, cemented assembly, and final finishing went precisely as you planned it. It looks great.

You deserve a pat on the back and a cocktail.

b. Bad Kit – Good Build

Well, it looked a bit ropey when you got the box open, but you were not discouraged by the flash, sink marks, and short shots. You trimmed, filled, and scratch-built until you got a workable basic model. Then you gave it as much care with the finish as you would have done for a top-quality kit…and the result has come out well. There’s no denying that it is not a sterling model, but you’e done all that could be done to make it look good. Display it with pride alongside the premium model and just ignore the slightly crude outline or parts.

c. Bad Kit – Bad Build

Hard to feel very good about this, but let’s face it – the warped parts in the mouldy box were always going to be a chore to deal with. If the seams look like the hide of a rhinoceros they at least remind you to do more filling and sanding next time. And you might turn down the air pressure on the brush next time…Oh. You didn’t use an airbrush? Well pick a cleaner broom for your final varnishing on the next model, eh?

d. Good Kit – Bad Build

You could have taken the $ 125 dollars you spent on this kit and gone to the bottle shop, you know. You could have bought 7 cartons of cheap goon wine and stayed drunk for a fortnight and sick for the rest of the month. And at the end you wouldn’t have this monstrosity sitting on the workbench shaming you forever.

Throw it away? At the price it cost you? Are you mad? No, you need to put this in the model display cabinet and look at it every time you get all prissy and proud. This is what you can end up with by rushing the build and not bothering to be clean with the cementing. This is what you get when you are impatient with the paint job. You can see it and so can everyone else.

Get another cocktail and feel ashamed for awhile. But only for awhile. There are other things in the stash and other days to build them. If this is rock bottom, you can only improve.