Just a tiny, tiny little blog as I am thinking about how to solve the pickle I put myself in back in 2017.
I had troubles with the exhaust back then, and as part of the solution I glued the entire engine block in the fuselage so I could attach the exhaust pipes again. I couldn’t make that work at the time because I didn’t use the right glue, but when I finally picked up the kit last week after 5 years I fixed it pretty quickly, although not perfectly.
However.. why did I glue the block to the fuselage in the first place? I probably could have done the same without doing so, and I wouldn’t have to mask off the insanely fragile engine block to be able to apply primer on this kit.
Ok, so thinking in terms of solutions: it seems to me I have to carefully remove the entire engine block. After that I have the green gun-cowling that I can attempt to mask off, although I would absolutely not be surprised if it would flake off after all this time.
I’ve also sort of decided on which paint/livery I am going for:
4th Guard Fighter Regiment of the Baltic Fleet Aviation.
The Revell version of this kit also has a unit of this regiment:
I don’t know if it would make sense for these 2 to ever ‘meet’ each other, but right now I have very blurry visions of a diorama with these 2 little planes.
Also: 2 white planes means it’s going to be weathering galore. That seems essential with white planes.
I am pretty happy with developments since writing the last blog where I wrote about my perfectionism and about how it kept me dropping the hobby again and again.
After that blog, the first thing I did was clean up my desk and sort out my tools and paint. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I can work in it and find stuff. That’s half the fun of building, right?
I don’t have any answers for perfectionism, but what I do know is that I enjoyed my first build even though I made plenty of mistakes. I even was of the mind to throw in the towel at some point, but I kept going after putting it all away for a few hours. And I think there is a huge clue there for me, because the main thing was that it was the only kit I was working on, and the only reason I have so many unfinished kits now is that I keep running away from my mistakes by starting new kits.
It all started going wrong with the I-16.. Or actually with a CargoLux 747-8F that I threw out. That kit is probably burned somewhere on a pile of trash, so we don’t talk about that here at dutchscalemodels.com… Back to the I-16, the last thing I did was trying to fit the awful exhaust construction, many moons ago.
I have 5 exhaust parts that I was smart enough to place in a bag before packing this kit up.
I do not like the instructions here, and I can only guess which part should go where exactly.
I am not sure about any of this, but if this isn’t correct that means I already placed some parts wrong 5 years ago..
Whatever.. it’s time to continue because that is what all of this is about!
I went straight for this stuff, since much plastic had already melted away back in 2017.Picture made this afternoon just after I finished putting the last exhaust parts on!
I faced my exhaust/unfinished kit demons and I am pretty happy with the result!
Unfortunately, I did lose one of the pipes in the process. Working with tweezers somehow always is a risk for me and especially for the smallest parts. I seem to pinch too hard so they fly across the room, never to be seen again. The good news is, it’s one of the pipes at the bottom end of the engine. No one will know.
Well, now you know, and perhaps it would be in your best interest to look over your shoulders more often for the rest of your life. Of course I’m just kidding. Or.. am I? Obviously I am, because this is a modelbuilding blog and not a meth lab.
The even better news is: I don’t care too much about losing that part. At first I had the idea to probably turn this kit into a sort of wreck to serve in a diorama. I can still make it part of a diorama of course, but right now I feel I sort of saved it from destruction.
I am not out of the woods yet though! At some point, we’re going to have to mask those exhaust parts off to be able to prime and color the fuselage. I am skeptical of these parts being able to survive that. Not sure how I will make that work, but we’ll pass that bridge when we get to it.
I haven’t even taken a look at the instructions to see what the next step would be, but I feel relieved that I know this is the project I am finishing first now!
The previous post is from October 2019, eh? A full 3 years then.. Of course a few things happened in all that time, but not so much on the modelmaking side of things.
The Spitfire I was working on back then is finished. Went a bit overboard with the weathering so definitely not my favorite.
I also started work on A-10, and of course didn’t finish it. Then I started work on a flight deck carrier, of course didn’t finish it. I also started work on a Messerschmitt BF-109 E3, but that one isn’t finished.
Yes, I absolutely do have a problem with perfectionism..
And it seems to make it impossible for me to enjoy this hobby for more than a month before I mess up a model and throw it in a box to return to a new model a while later. I start on that enthusiastically, then mess up and on we go for another cycle.
I’ve suffered from perfectionism for as long as I can remember. As a kid I would come home crying because I thought I just wasn’t doing good enough compared to other kids. As an adult, I finally found some rest in my work by taking anti-depressants which take a huge deal of the anxiety off. I’ve tried going without them in the last few years, and immediately the fear and insecurities come back: I am not doing enough, and it’s not good enough. Those insecurities are the reason I got a burn-out back in 2017, and the reason I started taking those meds back then.
So, those work for me on a professional level and I’m very happy to be able to function with them. I turned 37 last week, so there is still a while to go before I can professionally retire, and I simply can’t afford to question my own professional worth for another 30 years! Because rationally I do know I am good enough, and I know where my qualities lie and how I can use them effectively. It is just impossible to function when you are constantly second guessing yourself.
But although the meds seem to work for fine for the things that I have to do, like work. But not so much for the stuff that I want to do, like hobbies. In modelbuilding, that means I just stop as I describe above, and start a new kit after a while. In gaming, my other big hobby, I just keep buying new games so I can run away from the nagging feeling of perfectionism whenever the going gets tough when playing a game.
I am a man of solutions though, and I feel the best thing for me to do is get rid of the stash-of-doom with all those unfinished projects, and focus on a single project from that moment on and force myself to finish it. The first kit I placed in the stash-of-doom was the I-16 after the exhaust assembly didn’t go the way I planned it.
I see two options with that kit: -Get the exhaust assembly right. Might be impossible since the tiny exhaust parts are likely to have gone missing after moving the box a few times. -Make a diorama with it. I have another 1/32 I-16 lying around. It’s essentially the exact same kit, however rebranded by Revell. If I can get the both from the same squadron or at least of two squadrons who were historically based on the same airfield that might be a nice little project.
I have absolutely no idea how to go about making diorama’s though, so that would take some researching. But that’s half the fun, right?
First things first though: my workplace has become my office, and it’s a huge mess not fit for building anything.
Time to first clean up all that junk..
I always enjoyed writing, so it felt like a good idea to start up this blog again. That also takes a bit of cleaning up though, since after 5 years I see some dead links and incorrect categorization which I want to fix.
By the time my next blog comes around I should have sorted out the desk, and hopefully fixed the blog as well!
Dutch Scale Models 