There is something odd here. The raised moulding along the back of the Thornycroft should, I would have thought, form a continuous line around the three sides. It doesn't.
Two sides, yes. The short one, no. It misses by several mm.
At least it's another easy fix. Removed the raised lump with a pair of wire cutters (those ones meant to cut flush to the surface, very handy for this sort of job) and file. A quick polish with a bit of emery and the surface is clean. I'll re-instate the line with some plastic later. After I finish with the soldering iron.
Talking of which, the sharp eyed will notice that the corners have been filled with blobs of solder. It's a good filler as well as fixative.
I was once told the best way to make a model was to treat each part as a model in itself. Obviously the designer of the kit has taken the concept literally.
ReplyDeleteOne does wonder if the caster/seller has ever made their own model.
Should modellers be expected to put manufacturing errors right? #discuss
As consumers we don't accept such things in other products such as washing machines.
Should we be expected to put right the errors ? No.
ReplyDeleteWould we be willing to pay for the manufacturer to make another set of moulds by a higher priced kit? I suspect not.
The trouble is that this kit will have been lucky to sell 100 units because of what it is. If they shifted thousands then the development cost per unit would be lower and we could expect a better kit. Trouble is that even if it were perfect, I doubt you'd get more than the 100 sales.
It will be interesting if new techniques such as 3d printing improve the quality of traditional kits as well if it used to build prototypes, as industry does.
ReplyDeleteOr even for the CAD/CAM files to be modified by modelers themselves to build in preferred variations and make improvements on an open source basis
To be fair, most modern kits are pretty good. I suspect this one dates from a long while ago when standards weren't as good. That's not an excuse but a sad reality.
ReplyDeletePhil,
ReplyDeleteI find it enlightening to read through old copies of the RM and MRC to see how far we have come, but then is there a point where building a "shake the box" kit is no more creative than plonking an out of the box model down on a layout
Good point. I shall tell heroic tales of my battles with recalcitrent whitemetal kits around camp fires in the future.
ReplyDelete