Sunday 20 April 2014

No' many people know dat.....

As Michael Caine would tell you when giving one of his bits of useless information, like "Did you know...it takes eight and one fird seconds to fall from de top of Big Ben to der grand".

But it's not generally known just how much can go into simply correcting certain models before you can even begin to build them.
Take this Spanish kit of a Citroen BX C4 rally car.  I was presented with it to build by a very good customer who collects slot Rally models. He has over 1500 models, all different.  I sometimes build kits that he hasn't time to deal with.
He sent me 5, all made in the same very odd way. Five different cars all mastered in what seems to be CNC cut thin plastic!  That means that every surface is completely free of crown (compound curves) and in fact, after being cast in resin were all suffering from convex surfaces that need to be filled, re-profiled and generally corrected before they could be made up into decent models of rally cars and fitted with running chassis.  In short, they are all appalling and I wonder how the manufacturers get away with foisting them on an unsuspecting public.
As you can see, this has Milliput all over it. Milli is my best modelmaking friend. It sticks to resin well and sets with a little applied warmth to a hard, fine, smooth surface.  Nothing else is as reliable for feather-edging and sharp corners.  This so called "kit" has needed 14 separate applications of Milliput to both correct and thicken a moulding that was paper thin in many areas and horribly wrong on the outside.  This shot shows how thin it still was after some using up of spare Milliput.
Always a good test of a "slush" moulding is to hold it up to the light.  Son Bazz, who both held this AND took the pic on his new DSLR knows this so took this shot as a matter of course.

The corners were all wrong too, so they needed to be loaded with Milliput and the roof, especially had to be given some shape, flat as the real ones look, but that then shows up the cock-eyed nature of the original window opening.  All yet to do.

Then there are the windows to make because none of any use come with the kit and finally the wheel inserts, also absent.
So, if I told you how much this is going to cost, you might not believe it.

"Nah, dare's no' many people know dat"


6 comments:

  1. What a delicate job and an awful lot of work, but I guess lucre is the ultimate sweetener! Looks like you have been typically subtle and light-handed with your work on this. Looking forward to seeing more, Martin.

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  2. I'll put the stages on as they get done, Iain. Thanks for the nice words. Must soon be time for another blog post from you?

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  3. Jolly good! Look forward to it.

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  4. The suprising thing Martin, is that the company didn't pick up on the faults on their first kit, but replicated them at least another 4 times! Surely it takes as much effort to get something right as it does to get it wrong. At least it keeps you busy!

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  5. Paul,the other 4 are 4 different models! All their products are as bad as this one!
    And my point exactly about doing it right rather than wrong! But so many do that and people stupidly buy them!
    As you say, it does keep me busy and employed.

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