Do you make MODELS ?

[Easy 10]

OK so I've made THIS little bad boy recently - a 1:72 scale model of a Hawk (Red Arrow), which will shortly be doomed to be dusted off the table by the wife and have all its wheels snapped of. But I'm getting quite INTO it. Next on the agenda is a Philppe Massa 2007 Ferrari F1 jobbie, which is a 1:24, so quite a big old intricate bastard compared with the Hawk.

I find it quite satisfying and theraputic sitting at the table for hours on end, painting and glueing miniscule pieces of plastic together. Or maybe its the fumes. Anyhoo, do YOU have any modular creations gathering dust ? Or is this just further evidence that I am descending irrevocably into sad old gits territory, along with my complete addiction to online Scrabble and the fact that I am posting this shite at twenty to two in the morning on a school night.

Holy hell.

 

[Easy 10]

Incidentally, those of you unfortunate enough to have stumbled across this tragic thread may have noticed from the picture that the front wheel is BLU-TACKED to the surface of my Sony 1:5 Surround Sound sub-woofer. This is because, despite meticuluosly following the instructions to the LETTER, and glueing all the wheels in the right place and the right way round, the aircraft (unlike its full-sized cousin) insists on tipping backwards when placed upon its tiny tyres. Had I known this when I was sticking the bastard together, I would have put some BALLAST in the frontal nose cone before permanently glueing it shut. But that horse has long since bolted with the barn door left ajar, hence my tacky compromise to balance the thing and keep the nose where it should be.

Airfix bastards.

 

[8ace]

I did when I was a youngster but used to get that polystyrene cement everywhere

 

[Mr Burns]

I did when I was a youngster but then I grew up

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

i did when i was a youngster but then i grew up

Burns!!!!!!

 

[W.C.]

Easy 10 threads just aren't as good as they used to be

 

[little al]

I used to as a kid, but used to make a hell of a mess. I have recently moved, and now I have more room, would like to give it another go.

 

[BRIGHT ON Q]

Got a bloody great battleship in the loft I started years ago,soooo many tiny bits on it put me off I think.

 

[magoo]

Yeah, i did too, when i was a KID!

 

[Brovion]

*Harrumph* For an adult making Airfix kits is not really model making. That's like doing painting-by-numbers and claiming you're an artist.

 

[Joey Jo Jo Jr. Shabadoo]

I used to build model cars, stuff by Ertl and Revell especially. They were mainly hot-rods, muscle cars that sort of thing 1/25th scale. A couple are still at my Mums gathering dust in a cabinet somewhere. There used to be a shop called The Cabin (i think thats what it was called) somewhere in London that sold some great kits you couldn't get from normal high street stockists, sadly the guy running it died many years ago.

Sadly there seem to be very few stockists out there now that have the kind of things I used to build.

There were some very good people out there making some fantastic stuff out of the basic kit form, certainly not "painting by numbers".

 

[Billy the Fish]

I've never understood people who do this.

I bet you could go and BUY ready made versions of any of these models and they wouldn't be so fragile that they fall apart when you breathe too close to them, because they're made by MACHINES and CHINESE KIDS, who are much better at building models than us.

 

[Ⓩ-Ⓐ-Ⓜ-Ⓞ-Ⓡ-Ⓐ]

As an architecture student I'm pretty much continuously making models of buildings and sites

 

[smeariestbat]

i used to make airplane models as a kid. however for some reason, last year i bought a copy of 'dreadfleet' its a pirate turn based game from games workshop, the people that made warhammer, so involves building and painting all the miniatures before you can play. Anyway, i bought this game, which cost about £80 quid, then spent a fortune on paints on brushes, built and painted all the miniatures then sold all the equipment on e bay and kept the game. Massive impulse buy, but it looks awesome. had it over a year now and cant find anyone my age willing to play it. sigh.

 

[Gullys Cats]

No!, I make love.

 

[JBizzle]

Never made model aeroplanes etc but I used to have many JBizzle-constructed Star Wars toys suspended precariously from my ceiling. I remember getting particularly excited to have an X-Wing, Y-Wing and A-Wing fighter all in formation with the infinately less challenging TIE fighters opposite and a surprisingly good Millennium Falcon.

I'll never forget the day I discovered the water-wash effect (brown paint in water) to give that worn dirty look that made the Falcon such an alluring specimen.

Oh, and I built a Titanic.

Those days are long since passed now though sadly although I am sorely tempted to pick it up again!

 

[Brovion]

I used to build model cars, stuff by Ertl and Revell especially. They were mainly hot-rods, muscle cars that sort of thing 1/25th scale. A couple are still at my Mums gathering dust in a cabinet somewhere. There used to be a shop called The Cabin (i think thats what it was called) somewhere in London that sold some great kits you couldn't get from normal high street stockists, sadly the guy running it died many years ago.

Sadly there seem to be very few stockists out there now that have the kind of things I used to build.

There were some very good people out there making some fantastic stuff out of the basic kit form, certainly not "painting by numbers".

But it is really isn't it? You're not actually making the model, you're just assembling a (mass-produced) kit that someone else has designed and made for you. Plus don't you get instructions telling you what bit goes where? If you gave me any Airfix kit, even the most complex one, I'd no doubt make a complete hash of it but at the end of the day I'd still end up with something that at least looked vaguely like HMS Victory or whatever. If you gave me a pile of balsa wood and string all I could make would be firewood. (The string would come in handy to hang myself with in frustration).

 

[Hatterlovesbrighton]

How's the trainspotting going [MENTION=21064]easy[/MENTION]10

 

[maltaseagull]

No, they usually turn me down.

 

[Joey Jo Jo Jr. Shabadoo]

But it is really isn't it? You're not actually making the model, you're just assembling a (mass-produced) kit that someone else has designed and made for you. Plus don't you get instructions telling you what bit goes where? If you gave me any Airfix kit, even the most complex one, I'd no doubt make a complete hash of it but at the end of the day I'd still end up with something that at least looked vaguely like HMS Victory or whatever. If you gave me a pile of balsa wood and string all I could make would be firewood. (The string would come in handy to hang myself with in frustration).

If you are only following the basic instructions then yes, but there are people out there, or there were anyway as it's been a long time since I made anything, that take that basic kit and customise it further. I've seen hot-rod cars where the basic kit comes with just an engine block and a few chrome bits be turned into full replicas with correct wiring kits, hoses etc all made from scratch, they would run brake lines fuel lines etc to make it look like a real model of a car and it would be a lot different from the basic kit they started with. Painting a kit is easy, painting the car body to actually have a finish that looks like a real car is a lot of hard work and a real skill.

It's easy to dismiss model making as childs play but its a bit insulting to those who do put real thought and effort into creating something more from their basic kit.