The Little World

And I’m not referring to your nephews. This article is about needles.

Let’s start right out by admitting that few of us like being jabbed with needles. Of course some of the readers of this column may be addicts who regularly inject themselves with expensive stimulants. Indeed, nearly all plastic modellers can be put into this category if you consider the price of short-run Czech kits. As expensive substances they probably outrank French perfume and vintage wines.

Question, do the cockpits on French perfume bottles actually fit? But I digress.

Most of us have submitted to our life’s injections with trepidation and patience. Whether we were filing though a line in the army, the school, or the clinic with our sleeve rolled up and our eyes rolled back, we knew it was just a little prick and the benefit outweighed the discomfort. Our next encounter – the Covid jab – will be attended with more lunatic angst, but most of us will manage.

Spare a kindly thought for the diabetic or person who needs daily injections. They are brave and deserve all the good health that their administrations can produce.

Also spare a thought for the people who do the jabbing – not least the dentists who have to deal with the talking end of the species. We soon learned to do out job efficiently, and many of us managed to do it painlessly.

However…there is another place where needles are evident – the spray bench of the scale model workshop. I operate a very good set of air brushes – and one of them has a lethally-sharp needle in it to regulate paint flow. The person who never cleans their airbrush – and you can tell them by the models they turn out – may never bother with the needle. It clogs and clears as often as they flush through with solvents and even if their paints all start to look the same, they can pass it off as scale effect.

Those of us who paint more to the pristine or toy standard see that needle all the time – we take the things out after every deep flush to make sure that they are straight and clean. And we seat them back as part of reassembly. We’re told to be gentle with them, but some people slide them into the breech of the brush and then tap them to effect a seal on the nozzle seat.

Good idea, perhaps, but not if your finger is over the end of the nozzle at the time.

When your flow of language abates, you can consider that you are lucky if you cleaned the needle thoroughly before re-seating it. You are then going to get:

a. A good seal.

b. A moderate degree of pain.

c. Smarter.

You’re unlikely to get infected as the needle has been throughly flushed with alcohol or lacquer thinner and the bugs have died. If there is any paint left over on it you will get a small tattoo.

Note: You need to do this once in your hobby career but are only required to repeat the experience if you haven’t got the good sense God gave to a green duck.