Life in Plastic (Styrene, specifically)

Personally, I have zero sympathy...

...for modelers who want the result without doing the work.

I monitor a number of the modeling web sites. Why not. Occasionally someone posts a link of interest. For the most part though, I breeze through a lot of crap. Though I speak the same language as these folks, their purposes and mine are a little different. Their concerns and excitements are rarely my own. The other day though, someone was seeking advice. I read the post twice to confirm what was written there. It was very simple. This guy had a model in progress, and apparently he got to the canopy masking stage and there was no pre-cut commercial mask for this subject. (Subject wasn't mentioned.) What should he do? He admitted to being not very good at masking canopies on his own. What should he do?

Oh...I don't know. Develop a modeling skill?

Some guy literally could go no further without one of these make-life-easier crutches? Modeling has been dumbed down to this sort of thing? Part of me wants to weep. Another is not surprised.

Why learn to spell? There's spell-check. Arrggghhhhhhhhh.

When I look at a built model for the first time, what strikes me initially is the finish. If I like that I look harder. The very next place I look is the canopy. How convincing a job was done here? A simple fact: Achieving believable airplane clear parts in miniature is not easy. If one grows up believing what comes in plastic kits, viewing a real airplane canopy for the first time will hold a surprise or two. First, the material is amazingly thin compared to the polystyrene representations you get with a model. The other thing is that in the vast majority of cases, the plexiglass blends perfectly into the rest of the airplane. No ledges. No look like the canopy was bolted on last at the airplane factory. Same with leading edge landing lights. They look like a clear segment of the skin. Examine models at the next meeting or contest. See how rarely this fact is addressed.

The other aspect of nearly all canopies is some sort of framing to hold the clear sections in place. In the old plastic model days this framing was represented by quite exaggerated raised bars -- to make it easier for the modeler to paint? Certainly this was not found on the real airplane. Unfortunately for the modeler, actual canopy framing is not particularily raised, if at all, is quite thin, quite even, quite symmetrical and if it's anything short of these aspects on the model, it's quite noticable. In some cases, it's also quite extensive. How to replicate this framing headache? There are a number of ways, none of which could be termed "easy."

There's no magic touch involved. Either you can work with small items or you can't. Building models is all about working with small objects and masking canopies is part of the process. Like any other process, practice makes it understandable and less intimidating. You simply have to slow way down and focus hard on what you are doing, if you want to do a good job. One needs a steady hand and the ability to work precisely with cutting instruments. Any mistake, any deviation in straightness or width of a frame will jump out at the viewer if it's allowed to pass the inspector. Practice. Learn to do by doing. Pay your dues, if you will. This kind of diligent work takes time and usually isn't considered "fun." But a hobby's supposed to be FUN! What to do?

In an attempt to free the modeler from this part of his or her burden, pre-cut canopy masks were created and  marketed. Adhesive-backed pieces are supposed to be lifted off the backing sheet and placed over the various areas on the canopy to remain clear. Once in place, you paint the canopy, peel away the mask pieces and voila -- perfect framing paint job. They are designed to fit specific kits, or so they say. (I can imagine teams with masking tape and kit canopies and bright lights, optivisors, in a laboratory setting, masking, cutting, peeling and putting individual pieces on some flat surface to be copied and duplicated and mass-produced...how the hell do they create these things anyways?)

I was skeptical. I knew what it took to achieve precise painted frames on clear parts. I got to use a couple of these masking kits on jobs I did for a very fussy client. This gentleman was a modeler and a lawyer. He liked my work and would send a kit with just about all the aftermarket items available for it. One was a 1/48th Zero and another was a 1/48th Me.210. The Zero came with a True Details mask set; the '210 a Meteor Productions "Black Magic" set, I think they were called. In both cases I only got a couple masking pieces into the process. It was instantly evident I'd have to go back and fine-tune these things with my own masking tape. What I was supplied with was almost getting the job done, but not quite. Was I too fussy? What was certain was that I knew what I wanted to see, and someone else's idea of masking wasn't getting me there. Glad I didn't pay for these things. I'll do it my own "old-school" way, thank-you very much.

Regardless of my experience, these things have gotten quite popular. I hope they've gotten more precise in what they are supposed to do, but I have no plans to buy one and see. They've gotten so popular that at least one person has evidently become dependent on them. That's fine. If somebody wants to allow the models they build to be dictated by canopy masks available, that's their business. Seems pretty bizarre to me.

Wonder how the dude's spelling rates?

How to mask canopies: http://retailers.kalmbach.com/product.aspx?id=12440&sc_section=%7B2DF79998-C809-47E3-9D0F-7A586E41848D%7D

Pages 33-34.

Spitfire ballet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwjH3GgZUvI&feature=relmfu

If you don't want to applaud at the end...I dunno. Maybe you've got the wrong blog.

Detail dollar value

I put some resin cockpit detail sets on eBay. I've picked some of these items up in the past with ideas of incorporating them in fancy models for myself I guess. Or the price was right and I couldn't pass up a deal. I've also inherited a few in the passing of a master collector.

Of course I've had experience putting resin cockpits into models. They are great if seeing tiny distinct things in the front office of the model is important to you. The trade-off is they usually don't fit precisely and the parts are extremely brittle. The bottom line to me is that they are a pain to work with for minimal benefit. That's just me. Obviously there are builders out there who believe the additional trouble is well worth it. My own evolution in this realm has taken me to a place where open canopies are no longer a turn-on.

One of these resin cockpits I auctioned sold for an amazing price. Amazing to me, anyhow. It was for a single-seat prop fighter. Someone wanted a resin cockpit for it bad enough to pay close to three times the price of the plastic kit for it. Thank you sir!

It got me to thinking. Puzzling, really. I came to model airplanes from the time there were no aftermarket detail sets of any description. If you wanted a nice cockpit, you vacuformed your own canopy and with sheet styrene and wire and stretched sprue you created the rest. Such satisfaction that brought at the end of the day. From that approach, the hobby has evolved to forum threads asking what aftermarket items are available for a given kit; as if the lack or abundance of said items will decide if the modeler goes forward or not. Then there are the finished models displayed with aftermarket items used listed. What that says to me is: Here's the shopping list of my inability. I'm a talented kit assembler and shopper.

If a modeler takes pride in what detail or corrective measures he or she can buy, hooray, I guess. Very recently I saw the product announcement of "correct 1/48 Spitfire antenna masts." You're shittin' me, right? Somebody is going to buy something as simple as that? I just can't comprehend someone building models and so concerned with accuracy (and that's assuming the product is accurate) they'd buy an antenna mast? You can't make a correct antenna mast? Open your Spitfire book, have a peek at what the real thing looks like, shape a strip of styrene with blade and file and sandpaper to match what is seen in the photo. Admittedly there are things available now that I couldn't do as well as I could buy. Some of the gun barrels I've seen with flash suppressor cones...wow. How do they do that? I couldn't do that. How badly do I need that? Maybe it's part of new contest requirement standards?

I can make my own correct antenna masts. Is that too "old school?" It's called "modeling."  Does anyone aspire to that anymore? Sigh. That's OK. I've got some resin sets to sell.

hobby mags

Personally, hobby magazines have become largely uninteresting to me. A friend of mine occasionally sends me clipped articles from them - mostly British ones -  he thinks I may be interested in. This is about the only time I see what the Brit mags are up to. Mostly I'm not impressed. Sometimes I'm downright appalled. Last night was one of those appalling episodes.

The subject was a 72nd jet model. Having contributed articles to a modeling magazine myself, I'm probably a bit more critical than most readers. I found the text poorly edited (if edited at all) and the author meandered from the subject to his personal situations to what seemed to me a shameless plug for a brand of airbrush. The photos at times were at odds with the text. Thankfully they were not taken with one one of those distracting green cutting pads with bright yellow grid lines as background. Instead there was annoying product placement. The model wasn't anything special. Wasn't finished to my eyes, either. Navigation lights on this machine must've gotten painted over at the depot.Though panel lines got a wash treatment, a bit of detail that was pointed out in the assembly stage was rendered largely invisible without the same dab of wash. There was also a decal clearly gone crooked.

Knowing nothing about the author, I Googled him. Turns out he's someone with quite a track record in the magazine article department.

My verdict was, and is, poorly presented fluff. Do people really buy magazines to read these lightweight "how-I-built-my-model" stories? I have to assume the magazines strive to give the consumer what they want. Do they really want this weak entertainment? Not a single word on the actual airplane the model represented. Starting with a good kit and not altering it any, there was not much to describe in the assembly sequence. Some painting sequence is shown, but no mention of colors used. The all-important(?) weathering consisted of a wash of the panel lines. I assume kit decals were used? Not a word about the decals. As the article seems to be primarily one on painting and finishing with a slight kit review beforehand, how 'bout a word on decals? Pretty important part, after all. They look good - except for that crooked one.

I won't judge the magazine by what looks to me to be a rushed filler piece, but it makes me a little sad. This is what passes for good enough? Is a yawn too much response?

Just what the author of a modeling book loves to see.

http://cs.finescale.com/FSMCS/forums/t/128911.aspx

Who needs a book when you've got electricity and ink in your printer?

Get them while they're young.

Personally, I don't have much hope this plastic model airplane thing will ever thrive like I remember it when it was new to me. Many are the reasons. However, unbuilt plastic model kits are going to be around for a long time to come. If you have any doubt, vist eBay and see the number of old kits available still in their shrinkwrap. (I'd love to know what percentage of plastic kits are purchased only to be stored away until the original buyer dies and the family is left to deal with them?) If (big if) a kid gets hooked today, he will never want for stuff to work on. Shown here are a couple of great nephews who recently came to visit. Of course they wanted to see Uncle Pat's workshop and one thing led to another and they went home with souvenirs. Tamiya 1/100th souvenirs. With a little help from their dad, you see the results. Will this light a fire? We'll see...

Personally, I'm a bit confused by the term "Museum Quality Model."  What does that mean?  This model belongs in a museum!  On the surface it seems obvious: perfect execution, deserving of space in a museum, where all the world can appreciate it.  OK, what kind of museum?  A model museum?  Where does one find a model museum?  I've never been to one of those.  Does such a thing exist?  OK, if we're talking airplane museums, I've been to a few of those.  I've seen some models in cases in airplane museums.  The vast majority, to my eyes anyway, have been anything but impressive.  To be sure there are some great models in some museums, but these tend to be the exceptions.

Museums usually accept donations, and if there's any kind of quality screening process, I've never heard about it.  I haven't seen evidence of it.  I've wondered if most of the models I've seen in airplane museums have been there occupying space until better examples arrive.  If what I've seen in museums sets the standard for "Museum Quality," I'm not going to buy (or even take seriously) models with that tag attached.

I think a more telling description of a really good model may be "competition quality."  But then that immediately brings to my mind IPMS contests and winners by default, so what does that say about competition quality?  If you pay a registration fee you can enter anything, quality be damned.  So what does "competition quality" really mean?

I believe that if one needs to explain the level of quality one's model exhibits, one is almost certainly dealing with a skeptic or someone ignorant of the subject matter.  In either case, good luck.

Personally, nothing puzzles me more than this continuing trend, movement, fad, call it what you will, that results in model airplanes looking like cartoons of airplanes. "Weathering" is the culprit -- or at least the term popularly applied. Apparently the accepted thinking is that a model isn't correct without the panel lines being heavily noted in some way, shape or form, to where they are the focal point of the model. The excuse is making the model look representative of a used machine. The all too frequent result (if you know what real used airplanes look like) is some fantasy look that to me, says to other modelers, "See!  I can produce this look with the rest of you!  Am I in the club?"

Even before discovering the Squadron Shop display cases, I know I was very interested in what historic airplanes really looked like. I had no reference library. I had the public library and their school bookmobile to search for good pictures of as many of those cool planes as I could find. I had the occasional war movie on TV to catch glimpses of wartime footage of the real things. (Black and white of course, which was a bit frustrating.) Once a year I had an Open House at Selfridge AFB to gaze at the real things, but I think I got more entertainment out of that than serious study. Though I do remember the teardrop navigation lights on the T-33 and how the ones on the right that were called out as green in the Hawk kit, were as much blue as they were green on the real airplane. What a pretty color they were.

A major shift in my thinking about what I believed my models should look like came during a display at the local shopping mall by a flying model club. Some of the members were also plastics builders and they put a good number of their pieces on display. These were probably the very first "serious" plastic model planes I'd ever seen. The first glaring difference between these and my own was their flat finishes. Mine were painted with the standard hobby paint available -- Testors gloss enamels in the 1/4 ounce bottles. At a stroke, I realized my entire collection was flat (pun semi-intended) wrong.  Some of the models on display also looked, for lack of a better word, "streaky". And many looked like they were painted with a spray can...but what kind of spray can could do such small precise work?  Maybe it was this event that taught me of the existence of a tool called an airbrush. What I remember for sure was my dad's comment that, "Those guys are artists."

I wasn't sure if dad meant that when they weren't building models those guys were painting pictures, or if he thought their models were art. Hmmmm. What I did know, was that my models needed to improve considerably. Step one was to spend a painful $1.69 on a can of Testors Dullcoat, which was used to hose my entire collection. (Lesson No.1 -- don't Dullcoat the canopy.) My next big lesson came at my local hardware store that had a current Revell catalog on display. It was illustrated with finished models, not box art. There were those soft-edged flat camo jobs on 72nd models again (I wanna DO that!) and some of them had streaks leading away from exhaust stacks. A light went on in my young brain. Painting was only step one to "realism."

In my early 20s while hanging around with the "regulars" at the Squadron Shop, I learned to study pictures. Besides checking letters and numbers and insignia, what did that airplane finish exhibit to suggest it had been around the block a few times? How did other guys represent that on their own models? The ones I thought looked the best were the more subtle attempts. I still feel that way. I'm in the minority. So be it.

I've been interpreted as being anti-"weathering". Not true at all. I'm anti-"make it up as you go." Anti-"unquestioningly copying what the other guy does." I am pro-"finish the model as accurately as you build it."

I'm still looking for a photo that shows black streaks leading back from gun barrels sticking out of the wing leading edge. This is one of those fantasies that has been accepted as fact, and is copied over and over. It must look cool to many, many modelers. Does it look right? It ain't right! I've seen a Robert Taylor painting showing these goofy streaks. Where did he come up with that? Maybe the most outrageous example to me is a P-40 in a museum I've seen shots of with deliberately painted streaks trailing back from the guns on an otherwise pristine finish. HAD to be a plastic modeler on the advisory staff, no? Will they eventually darken the panel lines too? Make it look "realistic?" Talk about revisionist history, eh?

Personally, I like the shapes.  As wide and varied as airplane shapes come in, I like them all.  Some more than others, of course, but I can't think of a one that would make me turn my head away.  Some have a truly gripping effect on me.  Shapes of jets I saw as a kid at Selfridge, or those my dad built models of and hung in my bedroom, provide pleasure that's hard to describe or rationalize.  Some with long surfaces and curved edges and balanced proportions strike me (and others) as just so pretty.  Simply their black silhouettes at different angles brings an involuntary "Oooooohhh!" to the lips.

At the FineScale Modeler aircraft forum recently, somebody asked about the accuracy of a particular kit.  The subject is a stone classic sort of airplane that everybody is familiar with.  The kit that was questioned has a couple outline issues that are not glaring, but to someone who has poured over photos of the real thing on many, many occasions, and has had the lines branded into their brain, can see the model's not quite "right".  One guy typed in to say it was fine.  I said it wasn't quite.  Guy number one came back with a crack about "river counters" and how they spoil things for the rest of us.  I suspect I was the "rivet counter" in question.  I don't count rivets, but I can see shapes.  Years and years of looking at airplane books and magazines at bedtime (with too much beer or wine) has imprinted the correct shapes of many types in my head.  I love the correct shapes.  The incorrect shape is a little like a small pebble in my shoe.

Attraction to the shapes led to my in-flight jobs. (There was also the mistaken notion that building them that way would be a faster method to create a collection.)   Any airplane shape looks its best in the air.  Some look better on the ground than others, but in flight is where the shape is best observed.  That's just the way it is.  Thankfully, for my personal viewing pleasure if nothing else, this idea of showing models in flight seems to be gaining some popularity.

Detail once was my passion.  Drilling out 72nd gun barrels was important.  Full cockpits and plumbing in the wheel wells was what it was all about.  Today I couldn't care less.  Models of airplanes with covers off, panels open, radomes swung to the side, guts exposed, are interesting engineering feats, but a model of an airplane?  More a model of a machine being deconstructed.  What's been done to the  shape?  The shape is the soul, the raison d'etre.  Ruin that, and what's the point?  Build a model of an oil refinery if detail is the point.