Beetle van complete and lessons learned

Well, it's done and I don't think looks too bad.

The glazing was "interesting" in the way that trying to cut bits of plastic to fit slightly irregular resin holes can be. Fixed with Deluxe Materials Glue'n'Glaze, the lesson learned here is that a sharpened and slightly damp cocktail stick will remove excess glue, but you have to work at it.

I won't say this is the greatest model in the world, but I have finished it and along the way learned a bit.

• Start with the best car body you can. This was OK, but the Revell original was better. Chopping the back off it and scratchbuilding the rest would have given a sharper result - if I could blend the parts, especially the roof and gutters.
• Car paint is lovely, but too thick and you can't match it for touch-up. I should have used some nice enamel. I know you can squirt aerosol into the cap and apply it with a brush, but the paint is very thin and pain to use.
• I should have scraped the side trim off and replaced it. The body has an odd mix of correctly raised trim and sunken stuff at the front. The bow pen I used to paint it didn't like that much. Another reason to use paint that can be touched up. 
• Humbrol Clear is very good and easy to use.

However, I'm not unhappy with my model and I'll know better in the future.