My wife very thoughtfully got me this recently for my birthday. I’ve oft talked of spending many happy hours as a lad in the 60s and 70s putting Airfix models together with my dear old dad, sadly now departed. I always, always, used way too much glue, of course. I still remember accidentally throwing away the tube of cement for the Heinkel 111 kit with the Christmas wrapping paper one year. I hadn’t seen it as I over excitedly ripped the paper open and screwed it up. Caused a bit of a delay when I went to make it, especially as in those days the shops shut earlier and that was it, you just had to wait (never an a easy ask for an impatient boy). Just read, though, that it’s famously a bugger to build, requiring much patience, not one of my strengths I freely confess. DAD! DAAAAAAADDDDD!!!!
Maybe you should buy a different and easier model to start with? You may find that the amount you spend on paint, glue, brushes, and all manner of other things far exceeds the costs of kits...
It's a good thing that this is not "Carry on ...." otherwise one would post a Sidney James dirty laugh and/or a Kenneth Williams classic camp remark!
yes mate just thinking to ease back into it keep it simple not sure I have the patience now ( not sure I had the patience then to be honest) but at least once completed I can blow them up and set fire to them at will without a parental eye on me
Yep, spent all that time making and painting and then reduced them to heaps of molten plastic in the back garden. Great wasn’t it.
I tied my planes with cotton to the washing line and let loose with my gat air pistol. Some of the results looked like realistic cannon rounds or flak damage. No mobile phones or game consoles when I was growing up. Regards Tom
I'd second the gentle reintroduction. We had a friend visit a couple of years ago and her lad had a 1/76 Stephenson's Rocket kit that they'd got off Ebay thinking it was a toy. I stupidly volunteered to assemble it after a 30 year hiatus. It would've been fiddly enough if I could've seen what I was doing.
My mate & I put Firebird exploding targets inside 1/25th tanks then shoot them with our air-rifles. We maybe in our 50s but we're just big teenagers.
Never thought of that one. Nice touch. We just stuck to the usual BB guns, flaming airplane cement and firecrackers. Although one ship model ended burning in a stream. I remember thinking it looked like the Graf Spee from the movie. Lots of dense black smoke.
Serial killers are often known to have tortured or killed small animals from an early age. Researchers have yet to determine what deviant personality disorders may be driving the boyhood behaviour of abusing and destroying scale models.
Wish I’d thought of some of these ideas at the time. Just lighter fuel and matches for me. The distinctive smell of that smoke...so evocative of a bygone age. And probably highly toxic too
I sort of agree & disagree. I found grown-up kits made me try a bit harder, and really basic kits didn't really teach me anything as an adult. At least with a 1/24 plane you end up with an impressively large end product, whether bodged & paint-smeared or not. You can always get the airgun out. There's also the lethal trap of thinking 'Oooh, cheap!' & buying something that was tooled in 1961 & is a massive pain in the arse to build even mildly well (I'm looking at you, Airfix 1/76 Churchill VII, you utter bastard!) Newer tooled kits (and I can't easily include the Airfix 1/24 planes in that - think there's some new parts, but its core goes back to the 1970 release date) cost a bit more than the really cheap 'classic' ones we remember, but the fit is mostly good, & with slide-moulding becoming relatively common the detail often remarkable. They're less likely to put a new or returning modeller off I reckon. Basically - check the tooling/original release date. Things have changed a lot on many newer kits.
I've read some reviews of the Revell P-38 kit and they universally complain about the amount of flash and poor fit. Turns out it is a new release of the Monogram kit and the tooling was made in 1964. I remember like it happened an hour ago when mom and my aunt brought it for me when it first came out. I just stared at the box when we were at the lunch counter in the dept store. Couldn't wait to get home and build it. The nose got broken off during a fight with my little sister but fortunately I had kept the spare parts and was able to salvage it as the photo recon version EDIT: She also busted my Iowa model.