The Little World

A question for all of us – but in this case for the model builder who is puttying up their kit. When do you stop?

a. When all the seam lines are full.

b. When you run out of putty.

c. When you have lost the will to live.

If ( b. ) or ( c. ) come before ( a. ) you are in dead trouble. It is not so much that you have a bad kit on your hands, as a flawed set of criteria for the build. In short – if it is all wrong angles and cracks – all steps and sinkholes, you should fill nothing and just get on with the paint. The guilt and condemnation can then fall legitimately on the shoulders of the manufacturer instead of you. A half-corrected model throws the blame upon yourself.

There are indeed such kits, and I won’t accuse specifically. You’ll know them within a half hour of opening the box. That’s the time to decide whether to go hard or go home. All praise to you if you make a definite decision and stick to it at this point.

The heading image is a gift Heinkel getting its third layer of makeup. It’s already had gap-filling superglue, Vallejo acrylic putty in a squirt tube, and now it’s under Perfect Plastic Putty to see if the disparate plates can be brought into some agreement. This will be the last stop before undercoating as there is little resource left upon which to fall back.

And despite this I still have hopes for a rewarding plane.