Category: Collecting
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I Plan To Ask For Asylum
In the Airfix factory. I know what my priorities are, and once I escape my enemies I will need amusement. 45 gallons of glue and the contents of the warehouse should about do it. Other fugitive world leaders are going to try to be banged up in Biarritz or Bermuda, but I leave them to…
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The Odd Model
Occasionally you encounter a scale model kit that has as its primary characteristic…oddity. It may be a remarkable rendition, well-moulded, with good instructions and a decent decal sheet, but the basic thing is so strange as to make you, and most of the buying public, shy away. It is the kit that sits on the…
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Vickers Viscount – Part One – A Dollar Bet
Ever the gambler, I decided that this one-of-a-kind Hong Kong kit was going to be built. It was one of a legacy stash, and totally unique. The firm that made it, Kader, seems to have started in 1970 with a range of British-prototype aircraft kits. Internet searching turns up a number of box-scale offerings and…
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The Ideal Stash
The ideal stash is just as easy to construct as the ideal house or the ideal marriage. All you need is about ten centuries of unremitting toil to buy, shelve, rearrange, sell, build, discard, and trade your scale model kits and eventually you will have it perfect. I should start now before the summer heat…
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The Unaccounted
Every so often I see things in the hobby shops for which I can find no explanation. These can be on alien shelves – the gundam and anime models – the motion picture and comic book models. I see things that bear no relation to my life whatsoever. They may be good kits, and they…
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The Drive-By Scale Dumping
Someone, somewhere, is dumping 1:12 scale old mattresses on the verge outside dollhouse maker’s workshops. And someone is dumping their old scale models at our clubrooms. We are slowly pulling them out of our display cabinets and subjecting them to scale scrutiny. It’s not the quality of the building that is suspect – it ‘s…
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All Over The Shop
A song to the tune of ” One Day At A Time “. This time the lyrics deal with scale modellers that build 10 models at a time. They start something, bog down, and go on to the next box in the stash to start again. Their minds shift the first kit to the back…
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Is It Organisation or Obsession?
I have spent an afternoon labelling boxes. The basic need was to identify the contents of cardboard grazing boxes that contain the larger model aircraft I build. These were too big for IKEA shelves and too difficult to dust – I needed to keep them covered, the boxes were a good solution, and both locally…
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The Burgeoning
It is like ” The Quickening ” only it takes longer. It also takes more money, time, and space. The Burgeoning is the process by which scale model kits get bigger and more complex. It steers the scale model hobby into new areas of expertise while it clutters up display cabinets worldwide. It’s not hard…
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I Can Quit Any Time I Want
But building model airplanes is a cultural activity. And good for the economy. And, and, and… Don’t go in there; that’s the stash room. If you open the door the sealed atmosphere will be contaminated. Where was I all day? In my workshop or at the club, of course. Clubs, actually. Uh, workshops, as well,…
The Little World 