The psychology of scale modelling rarely makes it to the pages of academe.
Few papers and fewer theses are presented about the little worlds of the modeller. Monogram brought out a 1:12 scale kit of someone writing a sociology paper but it never sold all that well.
Be that as it may, there is a great deal to be said for saying a great deal. Scale modelling either bares the soul of the builder or buries it amongst the old kit boxes and bare sprue trees at the back of the shed. You can know all you need to know by looking at what is sprayed on the walls of the paint booth. In the saddest cases, some builders get a better finish there than on the actual models they paint.
Do people build to remember? Certainly I did so with several scale buildings and I’ve seen a railway layout that told the story of a man’s childhood.
Do they build to forget? Possibly – time at a workbench is time away from workplace or family. Time to forget big-world failures and concentrate on making little ones.
Is it done out of a sense of competition, arrogance, and pride? Before I tell you the answer to that let me show you my medals from the last show…
Is it just done to kill time? I sincerely hope not. Time is all we have and killing it should be done carefully, with a real result in the end.
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