The Little World

You’ll all remember the line from Apocalypse Now about napalm attacks. It harks back to my earliest modelling days when the smell of turpentine filled the house every time I painted.

Those were enamel days – Pactra, Testors, and Humbrol. There was a fair range of quasi-lacquers as well from Revell that had a distinctive odour but they were a sod to apply…they dried fast and streaky. If you were painting cars you could get small rattle cans that dried fast.

But there was no such thing as acrylic paint and no low-odour thinners either…at least not in the local shops I frequented. Real men smoked dung and real boys painted with enamel and turpentine and if you were unable to smell anything after the age of 14, that was just one of the prices you paid. No environmental protection agencies then…we were all too poor to have environments.

Time has passed and we modellers now have more new paints – both individually and as systems – than the real live machinery factories ever do. And less EPA interference with how we apply them. in fact I’m sure I probably violate a dozen laws every time I fire up the airbrush, but there is no-one to report it to the busybodies.

I do take the usual precautions of putting out my cigar before I pour lacquer thinner into a bucket and wearing a respirator while hosing it onto the model. No sense in blowing yourself up more than once a week.