The Little World

Or the tailplane, or the engine nacelle…

The aging of a model – or of a collection – can be graceful and unremarkable, or not. You will not notice the first circumstance but the second one will call itself to your eye every now and then. Something will break off.

When you stop and think of it, this is an analogy for most of our lives. Whether it is something as simple as a successful dive bomber strike on a Japanese carrier or as complex as dropping your ice cream from the cone in the movies, the secret of happiness is shared equally between figuring out how to prevent it, or how to fix it. Good damage control kept the USS HANCOCK afloat and insufficient control let IJNS AKAGI sink. But give up hope for the ice cream…

So what happens to damage the scale model? A number of things:

a. Impact.

Something hits the model unexpectedly, or the model falls onto a hard surface. This may be clumsiness, the failure of a shelving system, or the cat. Things break off; guns, masts, wings, wheels. Really severe impacts will split fuselages or hulls.

b. Heat.

The unnoticed rise of temperature in a collection room or the mistake of leaving a model where the sun will cook it means that the stresses inherent in the build may let go. The whole thing may warp and stay warped.

c. Lack of adhesion.

De-bonding, de-gluing – call it what you will, the fact that the parts are now apart again is due to the cement not doing what you thought it did. If you had relied upon thin cements because of their unnoticeable signature, it may be that they were not really welding anything together. Likewise you may have relied upon cyanoacrylates that later cracked through.

d. Cracked or flaked paint.

Often due to inadequate preparation or contamination of the model surface before painting, this can show as crazing, cracks, or frank flakes falling off.

e. Animal damage.

Insects and snails will eat paint, card, or paper sections of models. Ditto rats and mice.

f. Flaking decals.

Again inadequate preparation or contamination. To be fair, some decals are so poorly printed as to invite this failure no matter what you do to prep them. You can avoid much of it by glossing before application and glazing afterwards.

But what to do? Read tomorrow and find out.