The Little World

Advice offered in jest to a person in a modelling club has just lit up a lightbulb in my mind. I’ve a perfect solution to the problem of painting.

Well, not to ALL the problems – but at least to the business of getting the right colour onto the models. We all spend hours…days…years…acquiring pots of paint for the various parts of our models. Every tiny glass jar is the price of a glass of beer and doesn’t taste nearly as good.

And there are so many of them that we need. A dedicated modeller who builds only one sort of plane or car or tank might get away with half a dozen colours – but they won’t. Even the most monomaniacal of modellers will have shades and weathering and variants that call for more colours. Pretty soon they have more paint pots than dollars.

It is a separate essay to note that none of those pots of paint is exactly right, nor will they stand the scrutiny of the club anoraks…but leave us not go there for now. The main thing is to reduce the ever-growing collection of paint bottles on the shelf.

Well, get one big bottle. Of you’ve got 75 little ones full of 10 ml of paint – or less – apiece, you can consolidate them in a 1-litre glass bottle by pouring them in with a funnel. Add a bit of your preferred thinner and you’ve got a litre of paint ready to spray.

It will be a uniform colour, of course – very likely a mid grey or brown. You must use this for your entire build in the future, spraying it on and around each model you build. You can even assemble cars, trucks, and aircraft with their clear canopies or windows in place before you spray. Just go right over ’em in a even coat. Note that the fact that you are spraying a uniform grey or brown or beige does not excuse you from doing the best coat you can- build up the layers slowly and do not flood the lines or make runs. Craftsmanship.

The result will be an entirely uniform set of models distinguished by shape, rather than colour. You may decide for yourself whether you want to put decals on or not. The effect will be the same as a set of recognition models. And people who see the collection will spend as much time puzzling out what they are seeing as they would have done admiring the most complex colour scheme.

You will either win a prize at the Big Local Modelling Exhibition or be thrown in the street – which is a prize in itself.