The Little World

This is a fine philosophy, but I wouldn’t go overboard on it…

It is also good counsel for the people who make the moulds for plastic kits. I was dealing with an old Revell B-24 D kit from the late 70’s that had recessed panel lines and raised rivets. They were the size that would do duty on the firebox of a Great Northern steam freight locomotive. There were approximately five million of them on the aircraft’s surface.

This is probably one of the basic reasons that people put this kit down and started running. Yet I was attracted to the aircraft and to the version moulded. The price was free, and I hate waste. So what to do?

I had seen an internet post showing one of these kits with the entire rivet detail sanded off. The result was smooth, and the builder finished it well, but it just looked off. I wanted some surface detail. And the final finish would be matt. So…

Out with the light grey sanding sticks and the little piece of 650 wet-and-dry sandpaper that lives in my model box. These were just enough to knock the highest parts of the rivets down without obliterating them. I dealt with the fuselage using cyanoacrylate to avoid losing detail, but that was only one long seam.

I suspected that after the undercoat streamlined the areas, those rivets would be an asset – not a liability.