The Little World

The start of a build is either going to be heaven or hell. The choice of which is largely up to the builder, but it can be more attitude than anything that determines which destination you’re heading for.

In the case of a lot of short-run kits the removal of parts from the sprue tree can yield some pretty disheartening sights – parts that don’t fit or whose detail disappears into a shroud of flash. Yet inside each of these blobs is the shape that we want to have – it’s just a case of finding out where it is and carving down to it. Like a person making a walrus from a piece of soapstone. In our case the Walrus has floats and struts…

Okay, that’s the preparation for the wheels but nothing prepared me for the engine cowling. It was split in a place what had no correspondence on the prototype so the seam would need to disappear. But it had seams where there were blobs so they needed to come back. If you were ever going to learn how to re-scribe styrene it was with this engine cowling. I have two commercial scribers that are no fun to use – I shall continue my search for a better one.

The basic fuselage halves are not bad, with usable sidewall detail. The cockpit floor rail is possibly helpful. I’m going to bet that the ejector pins are not…and I’ll carve them off.

The engine, in contrast, is fine. Not enough of the pushrods to risk fracture but enough detail on the crankcase cover to reward a lighter paint colour. I do not ask for a 1:72 engine to have wiring and fuel lines under a full cowling – there are levels of silly to which even I do not sink.