The Little World

To look at reality every so often. Be careful if reality wants to look at you…

As model builders we are engaged in reducing reality to a small space full of small objects. We get very good at this with our kits, aftermarket parts, paints, and weathering. We construct imaginative dioramas and sets. We focus upon contests and exhibitions. Yet we often lose sight of what it is we are actually doing.

Of course most of the things we are modelling we have never seen. This is the case with the ships, planes, and armoured vehicles that make up the bulk of our builds. We get kits with a picture on the box and a couple of colour call-outs. If we are keen we buy a book on our subject or spend hours trawling through the internet for images of the real thing. We know the folklore of the subject…but all this is secondary information. We’ve never actually touched HMS HOOD or an Me 163.

Well, we can do a bit better with cars. Old-car shows are held throughout the year and it’s still amazing to see how many new restorations come out each time. Yachts and sailboats are available any time for study and there are racing cars at our local track.

But we can do far more if we get a chance to see reality in the workshop. An hour spent looking carefully over a plane or car under maintenance or repair will pay dividends. We could all gain by seeing professional spray painters at work on a full-sized car. Or shipwrights building a boat. I would be delighted to watch an aero engine being serviced.

There is a real world out there that need not have a screen or a page interposed between it and our hands and eyes. Any chance we get to touch it – to see it and smell it, etc. should be taken. It might lay our carefully cherished concepts at naught, but eventually our models would be better.