Category: Miniature Philosophy
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When The Horse Balks And Throws You
Get up and get back on.* When you make an inadvertent floater in a kit build, finish it and start another as soon as possible. Find a kit that will require you to do the same procedure as before, but this time correctly. Remember the mistake you made and why it was wrong…and when you…
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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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If You Win Second Place
You resent the person who won first place. The third-place winner detests you both. And the further you get away from the winner’s podium, the deeper the level of hate becomes. That is the nature of contests and competition – you win dislike along with the trophy and the set of dishes. Sometimes winning second…
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Building One A Year
Building one model a year may sound like a limiting sort of hobby, but you have to consider what is meant by ” one “… One scale model railway layout, complete with track, landscape, and operational trains would be an ambitious project for any builder. Even a skilled railway modeller would be daunted. One scale…
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The Really Good Kits
Go to someone else. We are left with the stuff that doesn’t sell. The wholesale trade has only a certain number of new releases each year and when these have been sent to the eastern state’s shops we get the dregs. And plastic dregs can be dreadful. I don’t think the makers started out to…
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The Kit That Doesn’t Teach You Anything
Is best left closed. Every scale model kit you undertake to build ( as opposed to just buy and store ) should teach you something. Some will do so by showing you a prototype that is new. Some will show you a new technique. Some will introduce a new manufacturer. Equally, some will alert you…
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The Opened Box
And the started model. I find that I can slumber, bored, in most horror or adventure movies. They are predictable, and I know that there will be creepy music, several minor characters will die, and the hero will be saved in the end. Ho Hum. No such thing with the scale model kit that falls…
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The Political Model Kit
Surprisingly, these last few years of international war ( as opposed to the internal sort practised in Africa and South America ) have yielded few scale model controversies and political arguments. I did not expect this. Of course there are bound to be restrictions on the supply of kits from warring nations, but the ones…
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The Transient Model
Some modellers are lucky. They get to keep their models as long as they want…whether in kit form or built-up. They have display space and protection for their work. Others have to watch their results given away, trashed, or lost. Their only consolation is that it makes more space to build again. Yet the impermanence…
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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…
The Little World 