The Little World

Whenever something goes wrong we search for an explanation…that’s just human inability to accept fate.

Sometimes it turns out not to be our fault – though smart money always bets the other way. When it is genuinely not us, it can be the maker. The kit that is moulded wrongly. Or warped in the packaging. Or the paint batch that is full of contamination.

A few years ago I saw this played out by a friend. No amount of careful painting and rubbing back could make his model appear to have a realistic bare metal surface. Yet he had done many other models before this with the same material and to a very high standard.

Only a chance glance at an overseas internet post told him that others were experiencing the same problem, and that the makers of the paint had admitted that it was a bad batch. Little comfort when it was already on the outside of a kit that could not be replaced, and when an inordinate number of paint bottles had been expended.

Well, what cannot be cured must be endured, and the best we could do for him was to counsel him to be of good heart, change paints, and go onto another model once that one was finished. There are newer paints and easier processes.