The Little World

And I don’t mean on the internet.

How far down does a scale modeller pursue the business – at what point does the quest for detail stop? How about weathering and appearance? Where does the line of diminishing returns cross that of fatigue?

I think it differs with the genre and scale of the models, and we can only really comment on the types we build. I’m a 1:72 aircraft builder so I’ll stick to my own rabbit hole.

The PE fret and the polyurethane resin casting have taken the detail business a lot further than it ever went with injection moulding. This is seen in cockpits – once the bare tub under a thick plastic canopy, and now a week’s worth of careful building and weathering before you can even look at the rest of the kit.

The line of demarkation here is at the brass throttle levers and brass rivets that need to be superglued to the inside of the fuselage. In many cases they are seen when the fuselage halves are apart but never thereafter. Like righteousness, they are an internal joy.

Their external counterparts are more visible and somewhat more excusable – I mean the control horns and counterbalances that actuate rudders, stabilisers, and ailerons. They can be brass and sometimes need to be folded in half to make enough bulk. Irksome, but a little less delicate than the same thing done in injected styrene.
Note that the aerials and pitot tubes that could logically be brass are often fragile plastic – I discard the worst and substitute fine brass wire or the tails cut off LED’s.

Guns can also be brass, but frequently aren’t. Just our bad luck that they stand out away from the extremities of most planes.