What If The Golden Age Of Modeling Makes You Freeze: Episode 161

Welcome And Spring Mojo

Welcome to Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to skill modeling as well as the news and events around the hobby. Let's join Mike in Kentucky Dave as they strive to be informative, entertaining, and help you to keep your modeling module alive.

All right, Kentucky Dave, it's episode 161. It is indeed. How are you doing tonight?

I'm doing good, man. You know, spring has sprung. You're coming off a great model trip. Got great model trips ahead. It's just spring is the best time of the year.

It's a season of renewal. It is. And uh hopefully there's some renewal in your model sphere. So what's up in the old model sphere, Dave?

Well, the model sphere is good. I've got March with some doldrums. I wasn't getting anything done. I went through a dry spell that was at least in part a lack of mojo. But there's nothing to get your mojo back, like going to a model contest, hanging out with friends for a couple of days, going to vendors, going to hobby shops. And I came home from HeritageCon just fired up, man. Blood, blood pumping, ready to go. And and this past weekend got modeling done. So my model sphere is high. How about yours?

HeritageCon Energy And Community

It is as well. And we were talking there before I started. There was something I meant to put in my model sphere that I forgot, and I just remembered it. So we're going to talk about that for a split second. It's been busy since we got back, man. I've been busy. Well, you've been launching stuff into space. You know, what the heck? Well, I guess I had it's trying to get my head around this week, the fact that something I actually fabricated with my own hands just went around the flipping moon.

There are not a whole lot of people on this planet that can say that.

Yeah, it's a small fraternity. Add them all up. There's probably a lot of people, but by the compared to everybody else in the world, probably not. You're right. Small fraternity. But hopefully I get some of those parts when they come back, which is going to be in a few days. So uh we're preparing for the return of Artemis and uh getting our getting our hardware back. So it's gonna be cool, man.

Yeah.

In addition to that, in the model sphere, this is a PSA going out to all the other podcasts, everybody with a YouTube channel or any kind of concrete content creator on the interwebs. Do not put AI in the title of anything you publish to the internet.

Why? Why do you say that? I agree.

Because every Tom Dick and Harry who's trying to get in on this current Cash Cal AI, either through some corporate training or wanting to be interviewed for the corporate training that they will provide or how to do workflows with AI in your industry or whatever, has sent me an email request to be on this podcast. And the irony is all their freaking form letters are AI generated.

You know, and that's something you and I have commented about offline. It is amazing that you can still tell very quickly about looking at content and determining whether it's a picture or text or whatever, and being able to determine very quickly whether it's been done with AI or not.

And they send you this formula like they listen to the podcast and you tell they haven't. Or when your first name is Kentucky.

Kentucky, yeah. That's right. Well, I'm sure that it's listened. The AI has listened to the podcast or at least read the transcript. It probably has, Kentucky.

After that, it's I'm with you, man. The mojo's been good after our Hamilton trip to HeritageCon. I think you know the show was great. It always is, seeing all the folks up there we know. And I forget how many we know up there. It's kind of interesting given the population disparity between Canada and the United States, you know, not to disparage them. But, you know, there's the population's smaller in Canada, even though it's a huge, huge place, right? Um, the number of folks who came by the table during the short duration of that show is just yes, it's wild.

It it's humbling, and I really appreciate everybody who stopped by the table and and that was I mean, I wasn't turning around without talking to somebody who either I'd met previously who was a listener, who I'd never met before, recognized me from the sound of the voice, although I was wearing the black and white check shirt, so it wasn't like I was hard to pick out. But yeah, I'm I'm like you. I was amazed at the number of people that we interacted with at the show due to the podcast.

Another thing that was interesting and a little disappointing, honestly, was that at least from the customer-facing side of things, we were the only pod represented there from a customer-facing standpoint. Um you know, we saw Donati from The Insanity and and we saw uh Jeff Highland from Scale Model Podcast, but uh they were there as kind of uh regular pedestrians on the floor.

So Well, and Stu, we we understand why Stu wasn't there. I mean We do, we do, yeah. And we used to always have, you know, f every time we've gone to Hamilton, we've had a table right next to to Stu and his crew.

Stu or whoever, and the geeks are usually there. Or I I won't say usually, they've been there in the past. It was uh, you know, we were the only ones there in that capacity, but uh uh the others were represented a little bit on the show floor. But uh, you know, I appreciate a little convo we had with Jeff Hyland there uh um regarding Stu and uh his situation and uh was glad to hear those updates.

Our thoughts go out to Stu and his wife.

Well, other than that, Hamilton part of it, not that's like a lot of it, but you know, the Hamilton Joe Dojo was a lot of fun this year, man. It was, it was. We were a little unsure because our our travel party has grown to the point where we it's just getting virtually impossible to get a single place for that many people and not have to rent it all week. And the the checkout day that we always want is is not congruent to the normal rent cycle for one of those places, so that makes it hard. And then this time, even though it was like a stinking three-bedroom, almost a full-blown house basement Airbnb, it was owner-occupied upstairs, so we kind of had to keep it inbounds, but oh, I think we did.

We got a the the owner gave us a good review, so that'll that'll help us rent in the future.

Yeah, so uh well, you know, it worked out.

It did. It did.

The AI Email Spam Problem

But we if it's somebody else next time, we need to be mindful and and I don't know. At some point we might just need to tell them what's going on. Uh but uh but at the dojo, the the best part, man, I don't think we've we've done this in a long time, at least outside of our our own club, the MMCL out of Louisville. You and I got into a bunch of storytelling about all the crap that's gone on in our club for the last pushing for me 30 plus years. Man, some of those stories are hilarious. I just I really enjoyed that. And I think our guests enjoyed some of those stories. I think they do. Uh we we won't get into them here because nobody wants to hear the inside story stuff. But uh really had a good time at Hambledon. So, folks, uh, if you're up that way, you can make it next year. You want to check that one out. So that's my dojo, man. Just lots of stuff going on.

Weeding through AI emails. You know what you need to do? You need to have your you need to have an AI bot set up to go through your AI emails. It's called fighting fire with fire.

Or I could troll them back, that'd be good.

So, Mike, we're recording again. This is a regular episode, so that means it's modeling fluid time. What do you got?

Well, we polished off the weller at the dojo in Hamilton to everybody's satisfaction, I think.

Yes. The weller was unsurprisingly very popular.

So none of that. And we had enough people imbibing that uh nobody got nobody crossed the line. Let's just say that.

Yep.

So no weller tonight. I won't say I'm too fisting, but I started with something that I'm not quite done with, and I'm on to something else that I kind of just started. So the one I just started, I'm not gonna talk about. The other one is my big pint can of Molson Canadian.

Oh, okay.

So that's what I got. So a little vibe on that, and we'll get to that at the end to talk about the uh the origins of that. But uh, what about you, man? What do you got?

Well, I have Flying Monkey Craft Brewery Juicy A double S IPA. Was brought to us by listeners Steve Johnson from Fuzzy's Ghosts Models on Facebook, and he brought you and my I each three three beers. Yep. And this is the first one I've opened, so we'll see how it goes.

I got some sitting around too in the fridge, sitting on them. Yep, yep.

Well, how how's the first taste? Is it good? That's good. Yeah, it's IPA, but it's not offensive IPA, and it has some citrus spot to it, so yeah, that's gonna be real drinkable. That'll get me through the episode.

Well, that's good because even though we're out of town for a while, listener mail didn't stop. Good. So we got a few.

Yeah.

We got some we got some repeat offenders, but they've they've come back with some good questions, man. There's man, there's a couple of come to Jesus ones in here. Uh all right. This first was not for us anyway. It might be for uh the sender. Frank Blanton, our friend out of Richmond, Virginia.

Yeah.

With regards to CA glues, he seems to be having an allergic reaction shortly after using them. And uh typically manifests itself in the form of block sinuses and that old miserable feeling like you've had a head cold, and this can last two to three days for him. And he's wanted to know if any other modelers have had a similar reaction. And a follow-on, is there any alternatives other than CA and soldering? He avoids PA whenever possible, but as he says we know and we do, it's not always an option.

So I've never experienced it, but it doesn't surprise me.

That stuff Yeah, you you can have sensitivities to things. Right. You can develop you can develop sensitivities over time, too. That's another thing.

Yep.

Have you ever had any hazmat training?

That's true. Uh the the one thing that I would think of off the top of my head to try out would be a really good filter mask with cartridges. You know, not not just like a paper mask or or something like that, but an actual respirator type mask with the separate cart cartridges. Because you would think that it almost has to be, given his symptoms, the inhaled off off-gases of the fumes or whatever.

Right. Yeah. So I looked into it a little bit. Probably the the largest reaction folks have to this is like a contact dermatitis.

Yes.

Which makes sense. It's just a skin irritant. But this is real interesting. And I'm not a doctor, and I don't play one on TV, and I don't play one on a podcast. But for my general allergies, these steroidal-based uh anti-inflammatories that block histamine reactions in your sinus is like the brand name's Flonase.

Yeah.

But it's over the counter now, and you can go to a supermarket and get their brand, same stuff. Uh I don't know if you're using those, Frank, but for me, they they are a game changer for general seasonal allergies, particularly in the spring right now and fall when the the leaf dust and dust mold gets kicked up. I don't know if it'd work for this or not, or if you've already tried it, but uh if not, and you don't want to wear a big clunky respirator while you're using CA, ask your doctor, man. I I don't know. Uh I've never heard of this. I'd I'd be curious if anyone else out there in the model sphere is having this kind of uh head sinus reaction to uh cyanoacrylated adhesives. That's a really unfortunate but interesting thing. Yep. If with with no better other better way to say it. As far as alternatives go to CA and soldering, I guess PE to PE, I think you're kind of stuck. Yeah. PE to the model, there's uh hard tack kind of uh PVA glues like Gator Grip and Eileen's craft glue that are gonna probably be okay. Uh I don't know that there's gonna be much else.

And there's sometimes that super glue is the only thing that will that that gives you that combination of hard, fast attachment, you know, and and near near quick dry, near immediate quick dry.

That's right. So that's unfortunate, man, because uh, you know, he's a big armor guy, and a lot of his armor kits now come with quite a bit sometimes.

Well, play around with the respirator mask, play around with the flow naze. Flow nays and get back to us. And anybody else who's had that reaction, please reach out and let us know, because I suspect it can't just be one person.

I I just had another idea. Maybe you port your PE work over to your your spray booth.

Oh, that's a good idea.

And use it like a chemical fume hood.

That is an excellent idea.

And I would even pull the filter if you can easily to get the get the uh air exchange rate up higher. Yeah. And give that a shot. That'd be one thing you could try.

No, that's a great uh that's a great idea.

I hope it works out because uh like I like we've just said, I don't I don't know there's many other options between CA and soldering for for photos. Yeah for for for brass to brass. Yeah. Particularly. Yeah. Kind of stuck there. Well, one of Frank's friends has written in. All right. Now he used to be in Richmond, Virginia. Now he's in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Wait a minute.

I refuse to believe Frank has French.

Well, we know he's got at least one Ben Pluth. I know.

I'm kidding.

If if Ben Pluth's your friend, you can't be too bad a guy.

No, that's right. I'm having fun. Go ahead.

Wayne Stopka from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He knew Frank because he used to be in Richmond. IPMS Richmond about 30 years ago. He's been out of the hobby about 30 years and jumped headfirst back into it. Yay. Which is great. Now, Wayne is the person who submitted the topic for our main feature tonight.

Okay.

So I just want to acknowledge Wayne being one of Frank's old friends. And we'll get to more of what Wayne had to say when we get to our special segment. You got it. Well, folks maybe remember last episode, David Enders had written in about other modelers who had done this AI to figure 3D print thing.

Yeah.

And he mentioned some threads on like large scale planes.

Mm-hmm.

And I had asked him if he wouldn't mind to aggregate those links to the exact threads within that forum because that would be a lot easier for people to find. And he's actually done that at large-scale planes and large scale modeler, both those forums.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm going to make sure these get into the show notes. So if folks want to continue down that path that we started with Jake McKee in that episode about uh AI and its use in uh figure generation, uh check these, check these threads out because these are all like large-scale aircraft and he's he's making uh figures for these. So interesting stuff. Well, on the theme of 3D printing, John McAvoy is written in again. You hear a lot from John. But uh he's had some experience with 3D printed tracks. He's been using some of the ones that Jeff Hearn used to do. I think these are probably squadron products now.

Mm-hmm.

If I'm not mistaken. Yeah. I think they are. And a tow cable that he did in one piece from his own design that's got everything, including the the eye fittings to to and the hold down bracket for the to the hole of the tank. So he's done that. And he's done a gun barrel for a US four and a half inch howitzer to convert the uh 155mm Bronco kit to uh a four and a half inch gun. I I guess this distills down to saying he he he chose these methods because they were the most effective method to get the end product he wanted, but he thinks styrene will always be king uh for reasons of mass production, assembly, and fabrication, resin printing and cat or just other hammers in the toolbox. That's a good take.

Yeah, I think that's generally true. But I would not be surprised to see kits evolve to having only the largest parts in styrene and many of the things that we get as small parts on sprues in styrene in future getting those as 3D parts.

Yeah, that's interesting. I I could I don't know. I'm not gonna say that's not what may happen, but the converse of that might also be true because those those large plastic parts are the ones that are most expensive to tool because True enough. The uh the the tool base is bigger and the machine times more. So we could we could see the detail parts being injection molded and and and the and the big clunky parts being the 3D print parts. Could be. I don't know. Um I think you're probably right and I'm probably wrong, but uh I can my engineering mind says the uh converse of what you said might also be uh a plausible situation.

We live in interesting times, man. I mean, the the changes we've seen in the last five years are amazing, and I'm betting the next five years are gonna make the last five years look like it was moving in slow motion.

Decal Rescue And Pay It Forward

You're probably right, my friend. Oh, you're gonna like this one, Dave. Okay. Leo Posner from the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yep. He's a one to 144th scale commercial airline modeler.

Okay.

And a while back he picked up Mini Craft's Boeing 757-200 in the American Airlines Retro livery.

Mm-hmm.

And not too long ago, well, a long time after purchase, but not too long ago before the email, he finally opened it up uh to start the build and quickly realized the kit had seen better days.

Uh-oh.

Parts off the sprue. That's common.

Yeah.

Uh no instructions. That sucks, but hopefully they're on scale mates. Yeah. Worst of all, the decals were missing.

Well, there are plenty of alternative decals out there.

Well, he didn't want alternative decals. He wanted the American Airlines retro scheme for the 757-200. I get it. So if there's a retro scheme on a 737, you're screwed because the stripes aren't going to be long enough among other things. But he uh searched around with some decal printers and no luck there, no luck getting a replacement set printed. So reluctantly he posted to the airliner modeling forum on Facebook and asked if anyone might have these decals. And lo and behold, several people, not just one, but several people, he says, replied saying they had the sheet and would send it to him. He offered to pay for it, but nobody would have any of that. And five days later, he's got decals in his mailbox so he can get started on his 757 in his Retro American livery.

This does not surprise me for a number of reasons. A, same things happened to me numerous times. Modelers are great people, and they really are willing to give you the shirt off their back. And this is common. In fact, you and I've experienced a version of this with the Pod Father recently, where you and I both have some decals that he's he's covetous of. So we are going to, when he comes to my house this year, supply him with those sheets. Yes, it was.

Well, I I guess the obvious lesson here is that something we've always said that he probably long suspected, but had never seen it play out in his favor that the community is great.

Yep.

And maybe next time don't be so reluctant to post in one of those forums because I can understand you might feel like a mooch or something if you're doing that all the time. Right. You know, just trying to get free stuff or whatever. I don't know. But I don't think this is the case. And I think uh I know, I know I've done this before. Hey, has anybody got in sure, I'm glad to pay for it like anybody else.

But and my experience has been that everybody declines to accept something for it. And most of the time. What I do, and I do this a lot where I'm not put out if they if they don't do that.

No, neither are they. If they want something to compensation, that's fine, because maybe they're cabbaging a kit to give me something.

Exactly. But I will tell you what I tell every time I've done this, I've been on the supplying end of this. And every time I've done this, what I've told the person I've sent it to is pay it forward. Just sometime some modeler's gonna need something that you've got and you can afford to give up. Just do that. And that's all all I want to see happen. And like I said, modelers are great guys. They really are. Great guys and gals. I'm sorry, ladies.

Next, Dave, is Roderick Kunz. Mm-hmm. And he sent me an eB eBay link. He said, Mike, just saw this and I wanted to share the link with you. We saw these guys somewhere. Nautilus models. Uh-huh. Where do we see them? It wasn't Las Vegas. It was the one after that. Omaha. Omaha, maybe. Maybe it was Vegas. I can't remember at this point. We're getting old. Getting a backlog of nationals myself at this point. Oh, you poor baby. 48 scale Nautilus Models, U.S. Navy P6 catapult display base. Now, this is the turntable and the the firing section of the catapult only. I I remember this, and I remember it's in other scales too, because 48th is not going to interest me.

Right.

Um, just it's just not it's not the scale I'm doing this stuff in. And I just wondered if they're ever gonna do the whole thing in 48th scale.

That's a good question. But then again, with 3D printing, you could or 70 second scale. You could extend it out yourself. I could.

I mean, especially giving- or somebody else could do all the hard work and I could just buy it from them.

All right. Now that's good. I like that.

Which sometimes is the better way.

Yes, it is. Because they're usually better than me at it.

Brandon J has been trying to reach out to IPMS Reno High Rollers a few times now, and he's getting no response. He knows you have said something about having connections with IPMS. Well, that's an understatement.

Well, maybe yes, maybe no. If you send me the info, I'll flip an e board. Yeah, I know. If you send me the info, I'll get him hooked up with the Reno guys.

Well, let's let's carry on here a little bit. All right. Uh he won't know if it's bad etiquette just to show up at a meeting uninvited. Gosh no. And I'm and I'm gonna say gosh no, because this this IPMS chapter, Reno, if you're listening, you've put this stuff out on the website saying when your meeting is, what night and where to go. So that means anybody can show up. And and that's how I'm gonna let uh Brandon know that no, it's not bad etiquette. They want you to come, or we're gonna put that out on the interwebs to uh invite anybody.

Yeah. And what what you'll find is if you show up and this is your first time and nobody knows you, you will get you, you will usually find yourself with an embarrassed amount of attention because everybody wants these these guys and ladies have all been in the club for years. They all know each other. The chance to talk to somebody new, that's great. And so usually the new guy is is the center of attention.

So if you're looking for a response just to get an invite, I'd say stop waiting.

Yeah, no, just go.

And just and and just show up. The information is on their on their website. But here's one that needs to be fixed tomorrow, Dave. Okay. IPMS Reno High Rollers is not listed in the IPMS chapter directory on the Flippin' national website.

Oh, which means, well, one of two things has happened. I'll check and figure it out. All right. All right. No, we'll get it straightened out. Up next, Steve Rui. Uh, do we know this guy?

Yes, Steve was with our travel party for Heritage Con. And he's stoked, man. Yes. He's he enjoyed our time together. And in fact, he's uh now he'll be he's confirmed he'll be attending the national convention in Fort Wayne. Good. And Chris Wallace, model airplane maker, might just be his roommate for the show. So that's that's great.

Yes. First of all, you can't make a better friend than Chris Wallace. Number two, to show you how dedicated Steve Ruey is, Steve's a Delta pilot. Steve lives in Minneapolis. Steve could have simply deadheaded to Hamilton or to Detroit in Madison.

That would have been easy.

Okay. He could have done either of that. Instead, he rode in a car for Lord knows two days with Mark Copeland and Steve Houstad, rather than taking the easy way to get to Detroit or to Hamilton.

Time Tracking And Better Notes

Well, we'll see what he does for Fort Wayne. I'll assume he'll do the exact same thing. It's not nearly as far as Hamilton. I assume he will too. Well, Steve, that's great news and look forward to it.

Yes.

Well, from uh the Pacific Northwest, friend of Jim Bates, friend of us, friend of the show, Mark DeRamos. Listening to and reading about Dave's time tracking. He wants to know if that's a lawyer thing. He's wondering.

It is a lawyer thing, but I'm doing it because I'm trying to find anything to help drive myself to the bench.

He says not so much in 2025, but in our earlier years, we were both saying the podcast was a way of holding ourselves accountable for getting things done at the bench. Yep. Dave was also very concerned about his productivity when he did get to the bench. Yep. Well, here's the come to Jesus. Yep. How's that worked out for you? Did you discover, did you discover any tricks or tips for keeping up with your projects?

I I will tell you that as a lawyer, the the the law firm that I work at now, I don't have to track my time. But most lawyers and most law practices, you bill by the hours. So you have to track every minute of the day what you're working on for what client and what project. And lawyers hate this. And lawyers are bad at it.

Yeah, 35 minutes, morning constitutional.

Usually that's some non-billable item. Usually I say. You never know. If you're reading a brief, you might get away with it. In any event, so lawyers hate doing it. And Lord knows when I was at a firm where I had to do it, I hated it and was not very good at it, just like most lawyers. I will tell you that.

Oh, in your in your early days, not now.

Yeah, not now. But I will tell you that tracking the time really has a, it's been motivational. Because when there's a like I had a two-week gap in the end of March. I mean, I had two weeks where I didn't get to the bench and model a single minute. And I'm gonna start calling you, man, like at nine o'clock. Yes, I don't need you interrupting me. But to look back at the time and to track the time when you actually do the work, for some reason, I do find that that is helping keep me both accountable and motivated so that I can see, hey, maybe you're slacking off, maybe you haven't been, you haven't gotten any time in in the last three or four days. Why is that? Is it legitimate reasons, or are you just procrastinating, which is the other thing the lawyers do a whole lot of? So to answer Mr. DeRamus's question, the time tracking is actually helping me. And I would not necessarily have thought that when I started doing it.

And then did we discover any tricks or tips for keeping up with your projects? I'm not sure the context of that question. Uh I I will say this. I've started writing down paint formulations, and the last thing I did on my projects, not all the time, but a lot more frequently than I used to. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And you know, and you're building one right now, you've pulled off the shelf of Doom. Right. And you you mentioned it in the last couple episodes about okay, what the heck was I doing when I put this thing on the shelf?

That's right.

And uh, does that finish? I might have thought that was finished four years ago, but man, it doesn't look finished now that I've gotten better or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Just stuff like that. So I guess that's a a tip for keeping up with my project.

And let me give you another tip. You can buy on Amazon. You know what a reporter reporter's notebook is. They're really cheap little flip notebooks that you, you know, in the old movies, you'll see a reporter pull out spiral bound at the top. It's real made of cheap paper, cheap everything. But they sell them in like packs of 20 on Amazon. And if you put on the front of one of those notebooks, the kit you're working on, and use that to make notes about where you are, or don't forget to do this, or don't forget to do this before this, as opposed to making notes on instruction sheets, which I know a fair number of people do. But I found these little reporter notebooks, and then you can just throw it in the box with the kit parts. And so if it does move to the back burner or God forbid, the shelf of doom, when you pull it back off, when, not if, you pull it back off, you've got a handy reference. The more notes you've made, the better. Pack of 20, huh? Yeah, pack of I bought a pack of 20 on Amazon for I'll I'll send you the link. You can put it in the show notes.

Dude, I could throw 10 of them away and still be set for life.

Yeah, well, that's okay. That's that's a you thing. We need to although again, no, it's not. You you it's an us thing. Well, yeah. But you finished a kit this year. You're you're one and oh.

I am barking at the the back gate for number two.

Yeah, that's right.

And you're close too. We'll talk about that later.

Yes, that's right.

Well, he closes. Would you recommend a podcast, a vlog, or blog as a means of keeping yourself accountable? A podcast, no. Blog, definitely, definitely not, because that's more work than a podcast. A blog where it's all manuscript and pictures, maybe.

Yeah. I think I think a blog is, in fact, that's one of the things that Inch got into the blog for was an ability to track his previous builds. Now he's prolific and all, so you know, he's producing so much that he may forget what he did two years ago on that be nice, on that KI 43 group build. And the blog is a way for him to memorialize that so he can go back and look at. So, yes, I think a blog is wonderful. They're just set yourself up a simple WordPress blog, free to do, and it'll help you keep track of what you've done and you what you've done, and you may find it motivating for what you're what you want to do.

Well, Dave, that is it for the email side of things. Okay. I I I've seen some interesting DMs come across. Yes, there have been a few. One I think I even flagged you. Hey, you want to talk about that one for sure.

So I hope I did remember what that was. I don't know. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. You're gonna have to help me with that. Well, okay. First things want to mention is you and I got a lot of happy Easter DMs. Thank you all very much for that. Second thing I want to mention is that we got a number of DMs from a number of listeners who either were already doing the AI fig 3D printed figure thing, or motivated by Jake's interview, started doing it. And a number of members have have sent us photographs or or descriptions or updates on doing this, and people seem to be having some some real success with it across multiple scales. And so that just further piques my interest about where all this is going. I mean, just really, really interesting.

Yeah, that wasn't it. Okay. I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but that's not the one I was thinking of.

Well, listener Marco Lips was listening to some of our back episodes and heard us, or me, I think, mention, maybe Jim Bates as well, mention the Fine Mold's 104 that's coming out. Well, Marco was at a show, I believe, in Germany, and came across This is it, by the way. Okay. Came came across a vendor who was doing 3D printed items in multiple scales. And one of the items that this vendor had was the West German Zell system, which is zero launch length launch. It's basically a rocket strapped to the bottom of an F-104, and then you raise the F-104 up on a launch rail and shoot the F-104 into flight, basically to provide you the ability to launch fighters without an airfield, and particularly the 104 required pretty long runways. And so he saw that, was inter had been interested in it, so I think he picked it up. And then he gave us a link to this manufacturer, and um we'll put a link in the show notes to the manufacturer. And this manufacturer had not only this thing, but a bunch of really, really interesting 3D printed items. So I've got to tell you that you buying any of it? I've started making a list.

We'll check it twice.

Yes. Next, we've already mentioned the Podfather, but we do need to let people know, and the reason this is in the DM segment is the Podfather was DMing with us. You and I are going to be doing an appearance on an upcoming OTB that's going to be recorded, I think, this Friday night. And so if you if you can't get enough of us on plastic model mojo, or need a break from the normal OTB crowd. There you go. Then if you hop on over there, one of the next episodes of OTB should have both Mike and I on it. Next, Chris Mettings, Inside the Armor 3, ITA 3. He had uh DM'd with me previously, shown me some work he was doing on Japanese ordinance and 48 scale. I kind of begged and cajoled him into considering shrinking those down to 72nd scale. And he sent me some shots of that he had done. And I guess you don't call them shots, you guys you call them prints. They're stunning. I mean, just absolutely stunning. These are Japanese bombs and bomb racks for 72nd scale. He also makes them in 48 scale, by the way. Japanese aircraft.

The fidelity of the tail fins and uh Yeah, that's where I thought it would fall apart if it was going to work or not. You'd have to go back and redo those in a thicker size.

And I and it was amazing. And I was talking to him. I'm like, how do you possibly do this? And what he does makes perfect sense. He designs it, prints it, then goes back in and tries to make the parts thinner, prints it again and prints it again, saving it each time. And at some point, the print fails. And so he knows, okay, well, go back one, and that's what I'm gonna be able to accomplish with it.

Are you familiar with the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon about how they rate bridges?

No, I'm not. Keep driving heavier trucks over them.

Yes, how do they know this how do they know this bridge is rated for three tons? Yeah. I can't remember they, but yeah, it's the same thing. They keep driving bigger and bigger trucks over until it falls down. Then they back it up by one and build rebuild the bridge. Yeah. Um, and but they are nice. And and I'll I'll say that the only reason that my E16 doesn't have the bombs under the wings is because they sucked. Yeah.

Well, if if you ever feel like putting them on, I can shoot you a pair of them. I'm not gonna touch it. Okay.

But next time, they'll there'll be something else. Yeah. Um, but probably need to get me some of those.

Listener Meetups And FOMO

These things are amazing. Absolutely. They're on his website. You can get them. Also, he happened to share with me a secret project that he was working on, which we can't talk about, but is equally amazing. So I can't wait for him to get all that done so that he can tell the world, so that I can tell the world, because it's pretty darn amazing stuff. Finally, you and I didn't make it to Indy. We did not. But it's just too close to HeritageCon. Yes, I know. And amps. We've had it it was sandwiched in between, and there's just no way our we we could we could justify that to the family.

Not the not the working man's uh ideal situation.

Yes. However, that doesn't that doesn't mean that listeners weren't there. And both Tom Choi and Jeff Intro Who was at HeritageCon, by the way. Yes, Tom was at HeritageCon and then did Amps. So he's he put us to shame. Or I mean he was at HeritageCon, then did Indy. So he put us to shame. If he shows up at Amps, I'm calling his wife for a conversation. Really? Don't you spoil it for him, man. Um I'm not. Or maybe have her talk to your our wives. Uh in any event.

Now you now you're seeing what I got going on.

There you go. In any event, Tom and and Jeff uh managed to to connect up and uh good. I got photos from both of them, of both of them at the show, as well as photos of the show. They posted photos of the contest. It was really great, and I am thrilled when even when what we're not there, our listeners manage to find each other and and get together and talk and share it on our Facebook page. And share it on our Facebook page. It's awesome. So that was fantastic. And I had a real case of FOMO when I I did too, because it looked like that show rocked. It did. It really looked like they were they were hitting on all cylinders, and and I did I did feel twins of jealousy not being there. So Tom, Jeff, thank you very much. I'm glad you all found each other. I'm glad you all hung out. And maybe next year in Indy, we'll see. That's it, Mike.

Starting Over After 30 Years

Well, that was a lot and some really great feedback and questions and all that. So we appreciate it. And we want more, folks. If you want to send it in listener mail, plasticmodelmojo at gmail.com for the email. Direct message via the Facebook Messenger system. Dave will get those. I'll get the emails most of the time. And there's a feedback web link in the show notes of each and every episode. You can use that too. We get some that way as well. Not this time, but we have in the past, and that's certainly a viable alternative if you don't want to do email or Facebook message for some reason. Keep it coming, folks. Well, folks, our main segment tonight is starting anew or starting over. And we'd mentioned Wayne Stopka in the Lister Mail episode. And to recap on uh Wayne, he's Wayne's an Air Force veteran, and for the last 30 years, he's been a over over-the-road cross-country truck driver, but now he's local and his travels are close to home now, so he's home every day and on weekends, so he's trying to get back to the bench after a 30 year hiatus from doing so. He never lost the bug of being a modeler other than being on the road or being in the Air Force and not being able to do it. Yeah. He wants to do it, but he's keeps coming to a complete stop because so much stuff has changed since he was last doing this that it just makes his head spin.

Everything.

From canopy masks to weathering. He says in the last four to six months, he's done nothing but set up his work area and he believes he's doing it to avoid actually building a model. I feel you, brother. I was going to say, Dave, that might sound like you. That sounds familiar. Yeah. I need to stop organizing and start doing it.

Yep.

But he says every time he sits down to work, he just sits there and stares. I can understand it. Let me keep going here, and we'll then we'll get into this. He sent me a long email. Yep. He knows he's not going to be at the level he was at when he punched out 30 years ago for life stuff. But he feels everything he knew then is obsolete. Now, this is where I can start relating to this too. He has no clue what to do. He sees models from these members of the club that are so outside his comfort zone. Doesn't feel he can get there. I'm not going to say he can't get there. He doesn't feel he can get there. I think he can get there.

Oh, he can easily get. Well, I don't want to say easily. He can get there.

He can get there. And he's he's comfortable with his fundamental skills. You know, the the the getting the parts off the sprue and getting them together, and I guess even getting the the base paint on them. And he wants to know things. Can a clean model airplane still win a competition? Oh heck yes. Or does he need to dirty up his planes to where they're unrealistic? He does not have to. He's gotten the feeling some of his local shows that all the grungies are winning. And I was thinking, wow, that's uh that's uh paradoxical to what a lot of folks say is going on uh within the the the major IPMS shows, right? It's all the spotless stuff that's winning and everything's overweathered. Well um I you know he and he makes the comment about the commander of his squadron in the Air Force and what planes what might have happened if planes were let to get that dirty. And you know, that's I don't want to I'll get into that a little bit. I don't want to get into it deeply, but it gets back to the whole the meme about no crew chief ever would have left this whatever, insert whatever detail or paint job, right?

Right.

Um and it gets into the difference of of a of uh a daily wartime squadron versus a peacetime squadron. And then a land-based squadron versus maybe a naval deployed squadron. Yeah. A lot of Air National Guard jets are stinking blindingly clean. Yeah. Well, I've got I've got a lot to say. That and getting their hours in is basically all they got going on, right?

Yeah. Well, I've got a lot to say here.

But you you got a a ground support aircraft or an Eighth Air Force bomber who's flying a mission every day off a grass field. They were incredibly dirty. Those planes have mud on the bottom of them, like a freaking Jeep. A naval squadron at the end of their deployment. I've I've seen, you know, like a reconnaissance plane or a drone photo of a U.S. aircraft carrier taken 90 degrees from above, straight down. Those planes look like an empty parking lot at Walmart on a on a on a holiday. That's how filthy and and miscolored the top surface of those planes are after, you know, however long their deployment is at sea. So I wouldn't get too wrapped around to Axel about what's too clean and what's too dirty. But yes, absolutely a clean model can win the contest. Maybe, maybe I would de-emphasize wanting to win at a contest.

That's a whole nother topic. That's another topic.

Go ahead, Dave. You got something to say.

I got lots to say.

Well, about this, or we're going to get into how do you start over?

No, well, about this.

Okay, we'll start there first.

A, welcome back.

Okay.

You have you have rejoined the modeling community at the right time because this is the golden age of modeling. And it is easier to become a really proficient modeler now than it ever was 30 years ago when you were building before. Because the kits are unbelievably better engineered. They will go together so much nicer than the ones you built 30 years ago. That in and of itself is going to lead you to better models more quickly. Not only that, but you have YouTube tutorials will you can probably find whatever your project is, you can probably find a YouTube build of that project. You watch that, it will tell you, okay, you know, watch this step here, or this part is mislabeled, or be sure the instructions say do it in this order, but you really should do it in that order. The amount of information available to help you combined with kits that are so much better engineered than a 30-year-old monogram kit or a 30-year-old Hasegawa kit.

It's just next level. Well, that's a decent segue in getting into the heart of what he's asking as far as a topic for plastic model mojo is what do we have to say about starting over? Maybe a primer or a guide to starting over. You you've mentioned kits, let's so let's start there. If if you were a new guy comes to the club, he's still trying to build those old kits he built as a kid. Right. He can't get the folding wings on his monogram Avenger to to work.

I'd smack them out of his hand.

Pick Modern Kits Build Out Of Box

What do you say? What what kit, kits only now? What what kits should a a newbie or somebody just coming back after like him, 30 years, from from Dave's 72nd scale aircraft centric perspective, what should he get?

What you should concentrate on is building a kit that's been released within the last 10 years. Okay, whatever your area of interest is, okay, whatever particular aircraft you love or armor piece or whatever, but I'm just gonna talk aircraft. You want a kit that's been made in the last 10 to maybe 12 years, because that's when the revolution happened. So I'm gonna hand him a Tamiya Zero. I'm gonna hand him an Edward F-6F, I'm gonna hand him the brand new Edward BF-109K4s, Arma Hurricane. If it's a modern jet, maybe the special hobby HE162 or the new Arma ME262, but there are modern equivalents, okay? The Fine Molds F4s, the Fine Molds F104s. Just I would tell somebody coming back into it or somebody starting fresh, you can pick up old kits cheap at vendors at swap meets and contests. Don't do it. You're gonna have a bad time. You you might develop a faunus in place for that later. Well, right. That that comes later. Greg's models is a great YouTube channel, and you can go watch that later, and it's amazing what he does. But but seriously, kit first. Get a good newly engineered kit. Second, start by building it out of the box. Okay. I know you see all these YouTube channels, you know, the photo etch and the resin and 3D print and all that. Your first few kits, build them out of the box. You're just getting comfortable getting back into it. As far as painting, first of all. Well, hang on, you're getting ahead of it. Okay. How am I getting ahead of it? Okay.

Well, so but you don't you don't have the same outline I've got. That's why. Well, of course.

But what you'll find those kits easier to assemble. You'll find the materials to glue them together much better. Any filling that's required, first of all, filling is almost unheard of other than light coats of Mr. Surface or 1500 along seams just to catch any small gaps. Modern kits go together almost without without needing filling in any significant fashion.

Well, from the armor side, 35th scale. Okay. I I think I would start. In a past episode, I mentioned like a Tamiya BT7.

Yeah.

I was rummaging around in my Tamiya JS2 a couple days ago.

Beautiful kit.

Canopy Masks And Easier Painting

And I think for for an armor modeler looking to get started, I think that would be a good one. It's got uh all the all the armor stuff, it's got all the the cast texture and all the weld seams and all that stuff that's gonna let you practice dealing with those things on the painting side. Um that kit comes with both length and length tracks, which are pretty well engineered in their own right. And if you botch that, it's got vinyl tracks like the traditional armor kits did in the past. So you gotta opportunity to do something that's on a newer spectrum with a fallback option in the box if you fail to pull it off. And I don't think you would fail to pull it off, but the option's there to use either style tracks, and uh just a really solid kit that's gonna go together and it's gonna give you a really cool palette to try a bunch of other stuff that we're probably gonna talk about here in a couple seconds.

Next up for aircraft canopy masks. You have now, you have come back into modeling at the time where the single worst thing you had to deal with as an aircraft modeler, masking the canopy, has now been made extremely easy for.

And it's interesting because in his email, it it's it he he put that out there as something that's causing him consternation and confusion or or hesitancy. Maybe I'm misreading how he's he's mentioning it here, but yes, if it's canopy mask for the one you're building and it's not already in the kit, go get it because it's gonna make your life easier.

Exactly. And if it you know, you're not used to using canopy masks, so because you've come back into it and your modeling previous modeling experience didn't have it, have it. Maybe it gives you some hesitation, but there's no reason to hesitate. I mean, these things are fantastic. Maybe what you do is you get some canopy masks and you take a couple of kits and a couple of canopy masks and cut the canopies off and mask the practice masking them. Because once you do, you can put it in a ziploc bag, put it back in the kit, and then you've got the kit masked even before you start the you've got the canopy masked even before you start building the kit. So that's something that you just have to to do a couple of times, but you will quickly find that it is so easy compared to what you did previously.

Yeah. Like covering the whole thing with mask and tape and carving it out.

Yeah. Oh God, please don't give me flashbacks.

I would Canopy Mask let a large percentage percentage of modelers achieve what was quite difficult before, almost voodoo with some kits.

Yep. Not only, not only that, but they they probably have they are probably responsible for the finishing of more aircraft kits than anything else combined. Because the place that modelers, aircraft modelers used to stop was they get through the build, they might even prime or start painting the kit, but when it came to that canopy, if it was any complex canopy at all, that would stop you dead in your tracks. Because it was such a time-consuming pain in the butt. But even beyond that, once you mask your canopies, once you've used the canopy masks a couple times and you're comfortable with them, the paints that are available now are so much Mike and I joke on here a lot about how there's a new paint line announced every week. And we're only partly kidding, but the paints that are available, the wide spectrum of the different types and the fineness of the pigment and the uh ability to thin with some really great thinners, combined with inexpensive airbrushes that are high quality. I remember when airbrushing, airbrushing was an art that a lot of guys didn't do because they couldn't afford the the upfront cost in their hobby. Now these things are unbelievably inexpensive to get a decent one. And to get a good one, not much money at all. I mean, especially compared to the price of a of a nice kit these days. Yeah. You will find that because of the quality of the paints and the quality of the airbrushes, that your ability to learn to put down a good paint on a model is again a whole lot more, a whole lot easier than it was 30 years ago.

And what paints to use as a recommendation for somebody new or coming back is it's it's a harder question to answer because uh we all have our own situations in in where we're doing our modeling and what we could get away with spraying. But no matter what the uh you know the the chemical basis of the paint line you're you're gonna use, be it a you know a water-based acrylic, a lacquer-based acrylic, a straight lacquer, enamel, whatever, I think my recommendation would be to understand what you have and do the the investigation into getting the best results for the paint you're using. And you know, there he's a sponsor of the show, but John Miller at Model Paint Solutions, his website has got a lot of resources for getting the most the or most or best performance out of a multitude of paint lines and how to make make some of those things work when they seem like they're impossible.

So and on that subject, the place where I think the biggest gain has come is guys who don't want to spray enamels or lacquers, who, for reasons of lung health or odors, you know, disturbing the family, et cetera, they wanted to spray water-based acrylics. Well, water-based acrylics that used to mean you got poly S and there was some voodoo magic that you had to try and, you know, it didn't spray very well. Now there's a half a dozen water-based acrylic paint lines that spray so beautifully that in nine cases out of ten, you couldn't tell the difference between an acrylic locker finish and a water-based acrylic finish.

Yeah, just understand what you got and the various compatibilities. Do your research there and don't uh you shouldn't have to jump. There's enough out there, I guess is my point. There's enough information out there that you should not have to start spraying something new blindly.

Yeah.

Unless it's a brand new paint line with no no Right. And don't do no legacy information out there.

Wait for somebody else to be the explorer.

Stop Comparing Yourself To YouTube

Yes, and don't do it on your new model.

Stuff that you mentioned, two things that he mentioned in the email that I do want to talk about. One, don't worry about contests. And two, don't compare yourself to other modelers and your models to them. We are we all go through all of these phases as we build models. The good news for you is because of all of the advances in modeling, you will go through those phases much more quickly than guys did 30 years ago. 30 years ago, it might take you 10 years of building five to seven models a year to get to a level that you consider decent. Nowadays, your fifth model is going to be so much better than your first, you'll be shocked by it. And really, I understand some people are motivated by contest, and some people are motivated by trying to achieve what others have achieved. Try not to do that. Try to build it for yourself and say, okay, I completed this model, and we're all more critical of our own build than anybody else's because we sat there with it for 50 hours. So we know where every flaw in the paint is, where every not quite covered seam is, where every misaligned decal is, you're always going to be your own harshest critic. Don't let that bother you and don't compare yourself to other modelers. Because ultimately the hobby is about you enjoying yourself while you're sitting there constructing and finishing a model. And if you get to the end of it and you enjoyed your time doing it, to be honest, the end result is kind of, I mean, it's important to you because of the sense of accomplishment, but that's really not where the enjoyment comes in. We were talking the other day about how often do you go back and look at your built models? And the answer is, at least to most people, not everybody, but most people, I don't look at them often once they're finished and in the case.

We had a few that did. So that's that's that's kind of a there's a spectrum there as well. There is.

Must Have Tools On A Budget

There's a spectrum in everything. But try not to compare yourself to other people. Understand that your first build is not going to be good as good as your second build, which isn't going to be as good as your third build. But you're going to progress in your skills much more quickly than modelers did 30 years ago when you were modeling previously.

Well, let me ask this, Kentucky Dave. All right. You are new to this, you have limited disposable income to throw at this, at least up front. Yep. As you start a new or start fresh into this new hobby. What are your must-have tools to start getting down the road to get a successful build together?

Well, if you happen to be building 70 seconds scale aircraft, there's good news for you. Because you can acquire a really good 70-second scale aircraft for a very inexpensive price.

No, I said tools.

I know, I'm I'm starting there. I'm getting there. Hang on. Hold up. As far as tools go, uh, sanding sticks, you can now some of the branded sanding sticks like Infini or Display, they're really nice and they are of higher quality than, say, a stand sanding stick that you get at the beauty supply store. But you can start out with those and they'll work perfectly fine. I mean, they'll they'll get you there, particularly on your on your early builds. So you don't need to lay out a lot of money on that. As far as the paint, paints are not that expensive either. The thing I'd recommend is to get yourself a good side cutter or guillotine cutters, they call them. Now, I like the god hand, but that's really expensive. And and you don't need them to get that bleed. The god hand gets you to the bleeding edge of cutting parts off of sprues.

You don't need your 800 and above sanding sticks. Right. Right. But if you got them all the way down to 80, you don't need as good a cutters.

Exactly. So you can find some good off-brand side cutters.

Or even inexpensive non-off-brand. Like a to me to me, it's got some decent cutters.

The steady off of Amazon has really nice side cutters that are that are very inexpensive. Same thing with tweezers. You can, again, Mike and I, you you don't want to buy cheap tweezers because the teeth, the the jaws don't meet evenly, etc. But if you buy a steady or despake tweezers, you're even the inexpensive quality is is the price for quality is.

Come down. A lot. Yeah. When we've we've joked about the the argument 30 years ago in our own club, and I was, man, I was paying a lot of money for some good tweezers from a laboratory supply company.

Because that's where you could only place you could get really good tweezers.

But but even those now aren't as expensive as they used to be. So yeah, I agree. A good pointed set of tweezers, a good angled set of tweezers, and a good kind of blunt square tip kind of tweezers. Yep. That's that's where I'd go. Yep. Those would be my three. And that now you get a little more advanced, you're gonna want different sizes of all those things is what I've got now. I've got a lot of tweezers, but I've got a rack full of them.

And then the the other thing that you you really are gonna need is an airbrush and a compressor. You're gonna need a hobby knife of some kind. Well, yes, okay. And a regular exocto or off-brand exocto, perfectly fine.

Or or or even scalpels, but yeah, Swan Morton. Where where I would be, there are three blades I use, and there's only three blades I use. And they're available, these these these numbers, at least for the scalpels we buy at my employer for the lab, the numbers hold for the blade shape.

Yep.

You've got a number 11, which is a pointed blade. Right. The classic. The classic number 11 exacto blade. There's a number 11 scalpel blade that we use at work, the exact same shape.

Yep.

Uh there's a number 10, which is a a round, a rounded blade. Right. Which I use a lot. It's great for scraping and for what I call edging into a cut instead of going straight at it. Yep. Number 10, the rounded tip blades, either Xacto or scalpel, whatever you want to do there. And then I use the uh the the square front chisel blade, the number 18, which is the one for the the standard size handle.

Right.

Now they make a wider one. But I don't know if that's they that exists for a scalpel or not. It might. I've never seen it, so I I don't really know. But those those are the three blades I use constantly. It's the only ones I I ever buy.

Yeah, and that that is one thing I would say that you, you know, again, if you're getting into the hobby, you might start with cheaper off-brand blades. But as soon as you can afford it, if you buy the exacto branded blades, or Swan Morton, if you're working with a scalpel, the the quality of the of the of the blade itself is a lot better. And it's one of those things that's worth paying a little more for once you get into it. But if you start and you start buying off-brand blades, that's perfectly fine.

Um and then then things like you know, sandpaper, you can get that at the hardware store. Right. Uh just get a good assortment of wet dry. Yep. Uh that's usually not very expensive. If you need the really fine stuff, again, like flexifile or somebody like that, it's got assortments of the really fine stuff. That you can't find it at the hardware store, but you can probably find maybe an auto finishing supplier, things like that.

Get yourself some Tamiya extra thin cement. Get yourself some cheap super glue. Particularly what I do is get the super glue in the little one-use bottles at Harbor Freight or one-use tubes. Then you don't have to worry about it going bad. And then, like I said, the the biggest final thing is the airbrush and the compressor. And back in the day, that used to be prohibitively expensive. There were a lot of modelers who were brush painters, not out of choice, but because that purchase was simply just out of reach. That's not really the case today. Now, you can get high-end brush, high-end silent compressor, and you know, pay out coin, some real coin, but you can get a decent, I think it's gallery, is the Chinese one that you see a lot. You can get a decent gallery brush and a decent compressor. And the combination's not going to run you uh a hundred dollars or a hundred and twenty bucks. And that'll that'll serve you well until you get to the point where you realize, okay, maybe I need something better, but by that time, you're you've you've gotten a fair number of models under your belt, and you're you're ready to make those choices as you model more.

Well, we've talked about kits, tools, and paints, and we've talked about some of the changes, for better or worse. I think you know the canopy mask is is a change for the better.

Oh, by far.

For armor, most of the time, I think individual track links are a change for the better.

Yep. And they're getting cheaper. I mean, do you remember when the only game in town was model casting and they were super expensive and super hard to get? I do, but not so much anymore. And exactly.

Yeah, they even still making tracks. I don't I don't know how they compete with some of this stuff that's coming out now, but uh a lot of those get better results and they're are faster to put together than a lot of the well, I don't know about faster put together, but uh they look better and they are not hard to assemble generally for uh for most vehicles, I think.

Yep.

The media landscape, yes, if if you're if you're just coming back to the hobby, there's a lot of information out there to help you out. And you mentioned one, Greg's models, if you're if you're gonna delve into the the nostalgia kind of kits, but uh there's a a lot of resources. You know, we often mention Martin Kovac and Night Shift modeler, a very advanced modeler, doing a lot of crazy stuff, a lot of really cool things. But for the new guy, I don't know if if would that be a good place to start? Yeah. Well, I mean For inspiration, maybe not, but for learning techniques, for actually learning techniques, maybe not. I don't know.

Well, and here's the thing: you you're gonna watch a lot of really good modelers on on YouTube, and you should, and you should learn from them and try and try and at least learn the techniques and try them out yourself, but don't compare yourself to Ian. Our friend Ian McCauley who works I've got that on my outline. Our friend Ian McCauley, who works up at Hobby Shop up in Ottawa. The Hobby Center. The Hobby Center, yeah, shout out hobby center. He talks about people walking into the shop who have watched Night Shift or one of these other really, really talented modelers who have their own channel. Panzermeister 36 would be another one. And these people come in after watching those videos, buy the products that they see used in the videos by the armful. By the armful, and then think that simply because they purchased the product, their stuff is going to come out as nice as night shifts. And it's not. But he's been building models forever. And the techniques and and the talent that he has, some of it's innately God-given, but a lot of it is he's done model after model after model and perfected those techniques. And a lot of modelers who get back into modeling or come into modeling, see those YouTubes and compare themselves to those guys, build a model, it doesn't look as good as the one on the video, and they get frustrated. Well, of course it doesn't look as good. You haven't built the number of models this person has built. You're, you know, you're just starting out. Understand you're gonna get better, and you're gonna get better quicker because of all these things. But if if you compare yourself to these go these people with these very large YouTube channels, you're ultimately gonna become frustrated just simply because you're thinking that you're gonna become Michael Jordan overnight. And Michael Jordan didn't become Michael Jordan overnight. Michael Jordan was out there for three hours before every game, shooting, shooting, shooting, dribbling, dribbling, dribbling. And that's how he got to be Michael Jordan. Same thing with Night Shift, same thing with Panzermeister, same thing with pretty much all of those YouTube guys. And while I think all of that YouTube information is really, really helpful, there is a downside to it. And that downside to it is people compare themselves and their work way too quickly to those those people. And if they do, they can become frustrated. Unrealistic expectations. Exactly.

Is what I have on the outline. We've talked a lot about it now. It's getting coming back after X number of years. You know, my experience was similar. The the the whole paradigm of weathering and things changed in like one build one of my build cycles, essentially, which was probably too long to begin with. Oh well.

Um It was a very quick transformation.

It it did. When when Miggie Menace came on the scene, things changed really, really quick.

Yep.

And for the better, I think. I think the model certainly better.

No, no doubt. I'm I don't think it's a lot of people.

And the products are better, and and uh like you said, it for the average Joe, you can you can get to a a good place a lot faster than you could in the past. Yep. And and you you've said it a number of times here in this segment, don't compare. Right. Try not to compare. Try not to certainly s seek inspiration in all this stuff, but don't be down if yours doesn't look like theirs. Right. Because it maybe shouldn't, because of of reasons you've already stated here.

Yeah. Listen, because of this podcast, I'm friends with Steve Hustad. If I compared myself to Steve Hustad every time I built a model, I'd I'd quit the game. Keep at it, man. You're gonna get there. I hear you. Anything else? No, just I I'd encourage you. Nothing makes me happier, and this happens a lot. Mike and I are at shows, and a modeler comes up and says, I just got into modeling, or I just got back into modeling, found your podcast, and you all have really helped, and all. I love nothing better than hearing stories about people either getting into the hobby or getting back into the hobby. And those are the kind of people that we want to encourage. And it that's part of the people we make the podcast for is to give you all encouragement to keep doing that, to to build and improve.

So, Wayne Stopke, keep at it, don't stop, keep building models.

And thank you for your email because it uh and we've mentioned this numerous times. Please send in topics, suggestions, questions, because a lot of the topics we end up discussing are generated because somebody had a really thoughtful question or insight or whatever. So please keep sending those in.

And Frank Blanton keep helping Wayne out. Absolutely. Keep him on the straight and narrow, and then who get to where he's really pleased with what he's doing if he's not already. So uh that's a really good question.

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Dave, it's time for the bench top halftime report. And I hope you've been doing better than you have in the last few weeks.

I have this past weekend, after, like I said, I had a two-week dry spell in March where I did not get a minute at the bench, or at least a minute building at the bench. This past weekend, post-HeritageCon managed to grab some time and got some good sessions in, got all of the weathering on the top of the Hellcat done. Now I've got to turn it over, do the oil weathering on the bottom, then satin coat it, chip it, and it'll be 99% done at that point. It's moving along. The thing I have realized, and this is partly just an epiphany on my part that I it's not really an epiphany because I already knew it. But when you're weathering a model while you're in the process and not finished with the process, there are stages where it looks really bad. It just does not look good. And it's discouraging, and that I think drives you away from the bench. What you have to do is power through that and realize that when the model weathering is complete, then you judge how it looks. Because while you're doing it in the different stages, there are many times where you're at an intermediate stage, and that intermediate stage doesn't look good. Just like when you're halfway through a model that you primed and sanded, primed and sanded and primed and sanded. It doesn't look like it's ever going to come together, but you just got to have faith and and go through. So I made a lot of progress on that. I also made progress on the T33 from the shelf of Doom. I uh filled. Again, pulling it off of the shelf of Doom after seven or eight years and looking at it. I really wasn't as good a modeler then as I as I am now. So it truly, you know, when you build model after model after model, you may not see a lot of progress in your skills. But if you go back and start working on something that you put on the shelf of Doom eight years ago, it really does lead you to see it. Now, the downside of that is that meant there's a whole bunch of things I had to bring up to my current satisfaction level. And I'm in the middle of doing that. And I really like it. I thought I it it now, the big challenges are going to be that it's a bare metal finish. So I've got to get everything just right before I proceed to apply a bare metal finish to this, to this aircraft. But it's moving. I feel good about both of those kits. The Sam's sitting there waiting, and as soon as one of these two gets done, it's back on to finish it off. I'm pleased. I'm I'm feeling good. The mojo is flowing, and I'm already starting to think about what I'm gonna do after I clear one or the two of these off my bench.

So uh I hope you do, man.

Yeah, yeah. So that that that's my halftime, my bench top halftime. How about you?

Well, with the moose through deeply in the rearview mirror now, has gone over the horizon. Can I get a hallelujah? Yeah, hallelujah, brother. Uh that was done, unless I dig it back out and finish what I was hoping to do with it from the start. Yeah. Odds of that are slim. Won't say none, but they're slim. Right. Man, last week after I was busy, so I didn't get a lot done the first week after hair discon, but but this past week, I've gotten things to the point where it's ready for primer, the KV 85, that is.

Yeah, you got a lot done on it.

That's exciting. So I got all the little bits and bobs, I got the turnbuckle things done for the for the tow cables. That was kind of the last real modeling problem to solve.

And I really liked your solution on that.

Well, it it it came together pretty good. I I was pleased with them. Um they're they're better than the kit parts, I think, at this point. And I can I can pose them and do with them what I want instead of being stuck with what I was given. So uh that's always a plus. Yep. Other than that, trying to figure out what I want to start next, once, once primer starts hitting that plastic on the KV85, it's gonna be time to get something else out in the build phase again.

So that's a nice problem to have, man.

I got several things I'm considering. I don't even want to get into them tonight, but uh I will say that maybe a real space or real space adjacent subject may uh creep onto the bench after, especially after all the stuff going on at work's got me kind of jazzed to do something, something like that for a change.

Yeah. You know there is a kid of the Artemis, right?

Uh couple.

Yeah.

Actually.

Yeah, I know.

But I don't have those. I know. So other than that, I don't have anything else new yet, but something's coming soon, I think.

I'm I can't wait to hear it. And listeners, if you've got suggestions for Mike, write in and tell him what you'd like to see him build. It's called the Musaruka. Oh, I'm just funny with you.

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Some money got spent.

Okay. Well, I could I can tell you that I spent some money. And boy howdy, was I I was pleased with every purchase, I gotta say. Absolutely. So you want to go first?

I will go first. We've we've mentioned before numerous times in this episode that we were we were recently at HeritageCon in Hamilton, Ontario. It was a two-day affair to get there because we we went up to Detroit on the first day and overnight there with our Minnesota friends. Picked up Jim Bates. Picked up Jim Bates at the airport and then met our Minnesota friends at the hotel, had some drinks, went out to dinner, came back, had some more drinks, went to bed, slept late, got up and hit some hobby shops that didn't open till 11 on the Saturday after. So first stop, Michigan Toy Soldier. I came out of there fairly unscathed this time. I picked up a couple of vials of paint and a color I was interested in investigating a little bit, and then an AK book on uh modeling World War II light tanks that I thought had some interesting projects in it I wanted to read a little bit about more about. So didn't do too bad at Michigan, Toy Soldier. Then we went a little further northeast of there to Great Lake Hobbies, which is in an old grocery store or drugstore or something, an expansive place.

Yes.

I will say that. I picked up one kit there from Daswerk via Amusing Hobby. I picked up the Yagpanzer Canona 90mm Panzer Jaeger. It's kind of the last Panzer Jaeger ever built. It was a West German project during the 1960s in the Cold War.

And I've got to say, Mike, I was impressed by the number of kits that this place has.

Good grief, yeah. No kidding.

It's like going into a grocery store for model kits. Just row after row of kits, everything from really old. Old kits to fairly current kits. And the prices were they weren't dirt cheap, but they were very reasonable. They were reasonable.

And then there's a whole model railroad side. We didn't even well.

I didn't buy it.

I mean, there was a lot of that too. Yeah. So, you know, I picked up that kit and you know, I've opened it since then. And yeah, I gotta say, I don't know. I'm I'm tempted to do a side-by-side build because I've got the the older Ravel kit of that vehicle.

Yep.

And a bunch of aftermarket from perfect scale model bow out of Germany.

Yep.

And I'm not so sure that with those aftermarket sets in the Ravel kit, you don't get a better model than this DOS work kit, as far as Fidelity of Detail goes. I don't know. Quick look says some of these perfect scale model bow parts are better than the DOS work amusing hobby parts. So we'll see. And for some reason, that kit from DOS work is is kind of difficult to find. It's the first time I've ever seen it on the shelf anywhere.

Yeah, it I don't know. It's like it wasn't widely produced. I agree with you.

I don't know. And it's not, it's, you know, and when you find on eBay, it's like only one seller has it. Like there's not like a bunch of folks, it's not like some tiger tank or something where there's like 18 people selling the same thing. Right. So that's what I got. And then finally, Sunday at HeritageCon, I was fairly good there too. I I picked up speaking of nostalgia kits, the Air Fix E-boat. Yes. S-boat. I already had one, but it was But you gotta tell them why you bought this one. Well, I bought this one because it was only $30. Well, that was one and and it was an original pressing in the original box with the original shrink wrap on it.

Yep.

So when I got that one home and cut the plastic off of it, I was the first person to open that box.

And yeah, it's if you had not bought that kit, I would have bought it. And it's a nice kit for the day.

And when you say $30, you mean $30 Canadian. $30 Canadian. So it was like 20 something. So dirt cheap. I was when I got my original copy of the kit, I was worried that some of the parts might not be in the box. So now I've got two of these kits. One of them, they're both, they're both original air fix releases. They're they're not the the new incarnation of the kit. And they're not they're not 80s or 90s versions of the air fix kit before it went out of hard out of production for a while.

Yeah.

Uh but this is the one that says got the new stamp on on the box art.

Yeah.

And it had the original shrink wrap on it. So uh really, really funny.

The molds were as fresh as they ever were gonna be.

It it's that kit's as good as it's ever gonna be. Yep. And yeah, that one's on the short list too. That one I don't blame you. Not necessarily that one, but one of the air fixed 72nd scale boats is is on the short list.

I I like all three of those choices. I will, I'm, I will encourage you. And if you go e-boat, I've got references out the wazoo. Well, I think for me, that's it. Oh, well, gosh, that's since the last episode.

That's amateur hour.

That's fine. Okay. Let me let me tell you what what I did. We went to Michigan Toy Soldier. I bought six bottles of Mr. Color, Mr. Hobby. I bought a spare airbrush hose uh simply because I like to have one around in case uh I've had have you ever had a hose develop a leak before?

Yeah, but it's it has happened.

And it always happens to me in the middle of a project.

So I like I like to feel safe.

Yeah, I like to feel safe. So I'm just hang that and I know that I can use it. So from there we went to Great Lakes, which again was really impressive in the number of kits that they had. The prices were reasonable. It it's like a vendor, a really good vendor at a show on steroids on steroids, lots of great stuff. I think almost every one of us picked something up at Great Lakes. I picked up the Fine Molds, one of the Fine Molds KI61s, and also picked up a another KI61 by Fine Mold. So there were two in two different boxings. Um one of those pretty old? Well, one of them is older, probably about 20 years, 18 years old, but it is top quality. And between the fine molds and the Hasegawa and the Tamiya, you can build now pretty much any version of the Tony, including the the KI100 versions. So and I like the Tony, so it was nice to pick that up. Then we went to HeritageCon, where I bought, and this is gonna shock everybody, five decal sheets, including a really great Hussar sheet of B24Ds in assembly ship markings, and some other Hassar sheets, two old Aeromaster sheets for 109Ds, now that the IVG kits out. So I've got five decal sheets. I bought three books, two were actually French magazines, and then one was a Polish book on U-boats. Then in addition, I bought well, okay, Jim Bates gave me a special hobby F-86H. You gave me something I had ordered from Squadron, the Arma Hurricane 2 ABC combo kit. And then I purchased two kits at the show at HeritageCon, the Hasegawa Betty with the Oka. And I also purchased an ME110 C or D, I forget which is the Edward kit. But our friend Mark Copeland wanted that kit. He'd been looking for it. And so I simply sold it right to him for what I had bought it from the vendor. So I actually came home with one less kit. Oh, and I would be remiss if I forgot to mention Steve Hustad picked up from his source slash dealer in Minnesota the two new Fine Mold Zeros kits, the early and mid-production of the Model 52 Zero, and he brought them and I paid him for those. So I came home with three books, five decal sheets, and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and two minute kits. Oh. And then in addition to that, I bought a new light box and a new DSLR camera. Uh oh, geez. To hopefully take really great pictures of my models and maybe do some videos. I'm gonna experiment around with that just to see. I may have to reach out to Evan and Chris to get their input on doing those because both of them do really, really good videos. So we'll see. But I spent a lot of money and now gonna not spend a lot of money for a while, although we're going to amps next week, and I'm not sure how I'm going to avoid spending money at amps.

Well, there won't be many airplanes there.

Well, that doesn't that necessarily necessarily mean I'm not gonna spend money.

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Folks, it's that time in the podcast where we ask you when you're done listening if you would please rate the podcast on whatever app you're using to listen to us. Please give us uh the top rating. It helps drive visibility. In addition, if you know a modeler who isn't listening to Plastic Model Mojo, would you please recommend us to them? Give them any help they need to locate the podcast and start listening. The best way for us to continue to grow is for current listeners to recommend us to other modelers who aren't currently listening.

And in addition to that, please check out all the other podcasts in the model sphere. You can do that by going to www.modelpodcast.com. That's model podcastplural with an S. It's a consortium website set up with the help of Stuart Clark from the Skill Modeling Podcast up in Canada, where he's aggregated all the banner links to all the other shows in the model sphere, and it's a one-stop shop for you to go find out what shows are out there and available. So please check them out. In addition, we got a lot of YouTube and the blog type content creators out there in the model sphere who we've befriended over the years. We've mentioned Chris Wallace, model airplane maker. He's got a great YouTube channel and a great blog. Stephen Lee, Sprue Pie with Fretz, a great 70-second scale centric blog with a lot of uh model railroad content as well. Evan McCallum, Panzermeister 36, a great YouTube channel on armor weathering and also a little bit of uh model railroad content thrown in there. We mentioned Jeff Groves, the inch high guy. He's got a great 70-second scale blog, does a lot of group or a lot of batch builds building the same subject across manufacturers and multiple kits and just some amazing builds he does there to show you the differences in those kits and what can be done with them. Yep. We've also got uh Paul Budzik, Scale Model Workshop, and he certainly made a pivot here recently from his ship bills to another aircraft. So you want to check out what Paul's up to on Scale Model Workshop.

Finally, if you're not a member of IPMS USA, the national organization, we I would ask you to join. It is a fine organization of uh volunteers, modelers who give up some of their time to help run the national organization, to bring a lot of benefits to modelers at local shows, at regionals, and at nationals. In addition, if you are interested in armor or post-1900 figure modeling, please consider joining the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society. Their national contest is next week, the 16th, 17th, and 18th, I believe, of April in South Bend, Indiana. A great group of guys, great organization, really dedicated to the art form of armor modeling. You can't go wrong going to any AMP show, but particularly the Amps National. Mike, we're almost at the end of the show, and I'm almost at the end of my Flying Monkey Craft Brewery Juicy A double S beer IPA. 6.5% all alcohol by volume. It's it's good. It's an IPA, but it's not overly heavy. Like most of the IPAs that I enjoy, it has very much of a citrus background. Very smooth. I can recommend Flying Monkey Craft Brewery, Juicy A S IPA.

Keeping it clean. Keeping it clean. Well, my Mulsa Canadian was good. Oh, well, of course it's good.

Comes from Canada. Everything that comes from Canada is good.

Well, you know, it's a it's a mass market Canadian beer. Right. But we have a low bar to beat with our mass market American beer.

Exactly.

Not even close. I mean, for a mass market beer, it's it's really good and enjoyable. And we got it from Robbie Knouse.

Yes. Thank you, Robbie.

And Robbie's got a YouTube channel called The Model Guy, which we were familiar with, and I hope folks out in the models who are familiar with. If you're not, check out the model guy on YouTube. That's Robbie's build. We had never met Robbie face to face until HeritageCon, and he hung out with us at the at the dojo at the Airbnb and at the show, and then with uh most of our meals. So we enjoy getting to know Robbie and enjoyed his company throughout the time we're in uh Canada at HeritageCon.

Shout Outs And Closing

Yep. Like most Canadians, he's a great guy. Mike, this is uh the actual end of the episode. But before we go, we want to do some shout-outs.

As I always do, I want to shout out all the contributors who have chosen to help Plastic Model Mojo through their uh generosity. We appreciate the help to support the show. It's uh gone a long way to help us keep this going and to help us expand our reach and to uh do some new things. And hopefully you'll see some of those new things a little later this year. We've set up several avenues to do that via through uh via Patreon or PayPal or buy me a coffee. All those links to those avenues of support are available at plasticmodelmojo.com. And thanks a lot, folks. It it makes doing this a lot easier for us, and we're gonna keep it coming as long as we as long as we can.

I'd like to shout out two modelers, both of whom we mention on the podcast all the time. They are Steve Hewstead and Chris Wallace. The reason I'm shouting them out is at HeritageCon, both Chris and Steve gave me gifts, and they're really special. They're something that I'm gonna treasure. It really was thoughtful of them to do so, and I couldn't have two greater modeling friends. So shout out to both Steve and to Chris Wallace.

And all our HeritageCon travel crew for that matter.

Absolutely.

They all made it a great time.

Yep.

Uh my last shout is to uh Dr. David Morris, uh recently retired. He and uh Brad Belsheim were at uh at HeritageCon. I think we're gonna see him again at AMPS, honestly.

Yeah.

Uh which I look forward to. But I had what I will call a professional conversation with uh Dr. Dave, and uh I just want to let him know that I really appreciated the insight and it's gonna help me with some decisions going forward and look forward to seeing him at AMPS. So uh thanks for that. I re I I appreciate the uh non-modeling conversation we had.

Modelers are good guys, though if they've got information for you, they'll be happy to give it to you. Oh, that's for sure. Yeah. We got anything else, Dave, or we need to wrap this up. I think we need to wrap this up, Mike.

Well, as we always say, folks, so many kids. So a little time, Dave. And yes, we've been back around. Yes, we've been.