The Little World

A useful list of things not to do in the scale model hobby…

a. Do not build tired. Too late at night spoils paint jobs.

b. Do not build drunk. One more little one can’t hurt you, but five more can. Hobby knives can cut flesh as easily as styrene.

c. Do not build angry. Your emotion toward someone or something else can all too easily transform itself into anger against your model. Then no good ensues. And you still have the original anger unabated.

d. Do not build guilty. If you should have taken out the trash or vacuumed the house or done your taxes, avoiding it by building a model will not make you feel better – and that work is still there to be done.

e. Do not build unnecessarily. If you aren’t interested in it, don’t need it, and don’t like it, don’t build it.

f. Do not build pointlessly. If you are never going to finish the kit, and you know it, do not start it. Begin something with a foreseeable future.

g. Do not build to the detriment of your pocket. If the kit costs money that should go to a more vital task, it will never feel good or honest to build it. Cut your coat according to your cloth.

h. Do not build just to win the contest. Have something in the build that sings to you – not just to a judge.

i. Do not build badly – when you know that you could do better. Stop and wait until the urge to bodge passes.

j. Do not build the same model over and over again – introduce some variation. Even John Cage had more than one key on his piano.

k. Do not build apologetically. If you are doing your hobby to please yourself, you are doing it right. Bid defiance to detractors.

l. Do not despair if the decals are terrible. You can buy better ones.

m. Do not try new paints or thinners on the main model without testing them thoroughly on spare parts or dummy sections. Save horrible surprises for the cinema.

n. Do not decry other’s work. They may get better and you may get worse and you’ll recognise the criticism when it returns.

o. Do not listen to the anorak who tells you the paint colour is wrong based upon what they read in 1967 in an Airfix magazine. If you change the paint to their order, a second anorak will tell you it is wrong again.

p. Do not use old knife blades. When they are too dull to cut parts accurately, they will still be sharp enough to open your fingers.

q. Do not leave your airbrush until morning to clean it. Clean it now. Thoroughly.

r. Do not spray in the house without an open window and a cross draft or an adequate paint booth. Wear a mask.

s. Do not start too many models at once. 2 or 3 kits on the go can be sensible use of time, but 14 in various stages means no success at all.

t. Do not weather things haphazardly, nor too much. Some things not at all; a model of the Coronation Coach doesn’t need an oil wash and rust flecking. It is pretty clean most of the time…

u. Do not take the box art as rote. Look up the Aurora Yak 25 model story on the net…

v. Do not take the internet as rote, either. Examine any images for evidence of digital manipulation. There is more of it out there than you’d think.

w. Do not believe all you hear. Old service personnel are a good source of both truth and lies and often the two sides of the coin are entirely confused.

x. Do not be afraid to experiment past your skill level – but do it on test-bed subjects. When you make a mistake, find out what it was and why it was a mistake. If necessary, do it several times to be sure that you should not do it – then don’t do it after that.

y. Do not trust instruction sheets. They may be drawn up by people who do not understand the prototype, the model, or the language. They may be visually illiterate when it comes to constructing a diagram. Seek confirmation in a photo of the original.

z. Do not give up entirely. Shelve a model for a month and then re-assess it.