After a hard day gardening I thought I would have a relaxing hour or so with the MiniArt Egyptian T34 tank kit. Nothing would be nicer to wind down after a day of toil under the watchful eye of Mrs. Woody then this! Look at plans. Decide that next part to fit are grab handles to the hull. Locate parts on the sprue. Look delicate so gently begin to cut off and snap! One of the perils of highly detailed kits is that the parts become so delicate that it is impossible to get them off the sprue without damage let alone clean up the joint where the part was attached to the sprue. Now at this point the swear jar could well have taken several donations from me but surprisingly I sat back and actually thought about the problem. I could try to glue the part together or use the spare one on the sprue. However the inevitable would be that I would face exactly the same problems again and that swear jar would actually become fuller!
In my late in life developed skill of working smarter and not harder I decided that the only sensible way to deal with the problem was to ignore the kit parts and make my own handles out of brass wire which, handily, I had in stock. A bit of careful bending using some small pliers and comparing with the intact kit part soon had some handles bent up and fitted. I used a piece of scrap plastic to hold the handles off the hull by the required amount whilst the super glue set.
I think it was actually quicker doing this then having to deal with the kit parts. It certainly is a lot more robust then the plastic part. After an hour I had three handles in place and the beginnings of the external fuel drum mountings attached and I was still calm!
No comments:
Post a Comment