The Little World

Get up and get back on.*

When you make an inadvertent floater in a kit build, finish it and start another as soon as possible. Find a kit that will require you to do the same procedure as before, but this time correctly. Remember the mistake you made and why it was wrong…and when you come to the same place do it differently.

If you do not know why the last result was bad, experiment until you discover it. Then continue the experiments until you can find out how to do it right. Haunt the YouTube videos to see what others do. Not all of them can be wrong!

Very occasionally you will be brought down by materials or equipment failure. You may even have a bad kit, with missing or malformed parts. The genuine bad batch of paint does exist, as does the mismatch and the wrong vehicle. Learn your paints and thinners.

If the kit is genuinely bad, contact the maker. They will very often supply missing parts. Or scratch-build your own. A successful job here will arm you against future disappointments and give you a lot of confidence.

Note: Develop a healthy modeller’s suspicion. Learn your makers and their abilities. Do not expect champagne kits from factories that turn out sour milk. Do not trust the strength or adhesion of eastern European decals – coat them with a lacquer.

* Or phone the glue works…