Scale model inaccuracies

[Tom Geiger]

Then why do you keep reading it and commenting here? Is someone forcing you to keep coming back to this topic? There are plenty of other topics on this site that you might like better.

This thread is like a train wreck. You don't wanna look, but something makes you come back for another look

[martinfan5]

This thread is sort of like a measuring contest

[sjordan2]

This thread doesn't have to be like a train wreck. We have learned from some of our members that the kit makers follow what's going on here. This sort of conversation can be helpful for encouraging them to raise their standards. Moebius, for example, has been quite attentive to the needs expressed here and has become one of the best model companies out there.

Edited February 23, 2014 by sjordan2

[Luc Janssens]

This thread is sort of like a measuring contest

It doesn't need to be, when people really listen, there will be an understanding, which means that we can understand the viewpoint of opposing parties.

But then again drama sells LOL

[Luc Janssens]

Hey Luc, I'm have double vision since my assualt causing a kind of blindness so I use a font and a size that appeals to me sorry for the funky font I thought it looked good I hope this is better.

Yes it is and sorry to hear.

I wrapped my remark in a joke, so I wouldn't offend, I just had a hard time trying to read your posts, so sometimes skipped them.

thanks for adjusting

Luc

[Chuck Kourouklis]

...But you've illustrated my point clearly. You were one of the vocal guys complaining about the kit, but you're not buying the corrected resin.

Yeah, and I'm one of the vocal guys who's pestered Greg twice for one and is about to go yank his sleeve again via pm. So? This "point" is really no point at all.

And that's true of all the "points" made by that noisy faction in this hobby who can't get over the fact that some of us, anyway, expect a scale model to do its main job of looking like the subject. I have asked you guys time and time again, I've pled with you to offer some vague description of just what it is that gets YOU ALL soooo defensive about something you had no part in designing. Several times I've done my level best not to pose it as a challenge, but I guess in the end, the challenge aspect is inevitable - because I'm asking you all to explain something that makes NO SENSE.

Your own arguments have you shivering at the prospect of negative feedback driving a manufacturer to stop making new models, and then you turn and snap phrases like "DON'T BUY IT IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT". Tell me, which of these approaches is really MORE likely to hurt a given manufacturer? 'Cause kit manufacturers have chugged along just fine through criticism (I mean you all DO realize that certain ebbs in the flow of new product really had more to do with the ECONOMY, right?), but I'm not at all keen about seeing how encouraging fellow hobbyists not to buy their products is gonna work out for the hobby.

You "get your dander up" and you fairly demand to categorize something as "damnation with faint praise" whether the content actually supports that or not, simply to justify a reaction to that content that's totally hysterical and nonsensical - not to be mealy-mouthed about it or anything.

You make broad statements about people taking their toys too seriously, and not having a life, or not enjoying life, and then you have the a s t o n i s h i n g brass to carp about name-calling when some of that scat heads back your way.

You guys can't even bring math into it without it biting you. It's a fact established in INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL that mass is a function of volume, and that volume varies by the CUBE - so a replica half the size of the original is ONE-EIGHTH its volume. Third scale is 1/27th the volume, and so on, down to a 1/25 scale model having 1/15,625 of the volume and weighing 1/15,625 of the 1:1 as constructed in the same materials. Of course, even THIS observation is negated by the fact that at this point, you guys have long veered into PRECISION rather than the ACCURACY that's really the topic.

Let's get back to BRASS for a minute. With a total absence of irony, you all carp about the "fire" that "Harry started", when all that's really demonstrated here is that you all can't even handle it when we're not talking about a specific subject!

Harry gets deeper into a kit and finds problems obvious enough that no halfway-vigilant manufacturer in 1870 would have let them pass, let alone 1970, and oh lo and behold, the project gets stretched, more difficult than anticipated, more troublesome. Now before anybody offers one more pious trope about thriving on such challenges, I suggest for YOUR sake, not mine, that you go review what Harry's finished at "Big Boyz", because you run a serious risk of stepping on yourself otherwise. But there's a LOGICAL CIRCUMSTANCE to influence Harry's outlook one way or another on this project, to drive him to vent in a posting online in a forum about, *gasp*, CAR MODELS. And that post is topical to today's releases, no matter how some of you would appear to want to whitewash it all.

There's no manufacturer listed. Maybe it's rhetorical, or maybe the Dave Metzners, Sean Svensons, and Steve Goldmans of the hobby are meant to pipe in. But WHAT exactly IS the "fire"?

I'll tell you what it is. It is a fire of YOUR OWN MAKING. You KNOW it is. Because there is NO RATIONAL BASIS for all the interrogation, the cross-examination, the fatuous credential-challenging that followed, and all the other personal focus that YOU ALL introduced into this discussion about an inanimate object, just as you have done time and time immemorial. YOUR INABILITY to handle a frank discussion about kit issues in a forum inviting such discussion is the constantly recurring problem, and it's YOUR PROBLEM.

NOBODY'S. BUT. YOUR. OWN.

What impact does such a post have on any project you're doing at the time? What effect can such a post possibly have on you but the one YOU CHOOSE to LET it have?

And all the dime store psychoanalysis here is doubly rich in light of that.

But hey, please don't read me as not appreciating and loving you all. My latest major project had a prime impetus in demonstrating concretely and completely the utter brute folly in those sad old devices you all constantly regurgitate, most particularly that champion of logical ineptitude, "REAL modelers vs. kit-assemblers." And for the record, I DID hold my execution to a higher accuracy standard than what was in the box.

So really, despite all this controversy that you lot are truly at the root of, this is actually my round-about "Thank you!" Because in your acceptance of mediocrity, in your inadvertent encouragement of it, you've actually driven me that much closer to excellence.

Note: edited to correct the spelling of Steve Goldman's name.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Harry P.

[Art Anderson]

In all this, sitting here in the quiet privacy of my own home, I keep coming back to what's really the fun, the challenge for me in this hobby: I can find something wrong, incorrectly dimensioned or just plain omitted from just about any of the several hundred kits in my "ready stash" (there's a lot more stored off-site). And yet, for me the challenge of correcting what I see as wrong, adding back what I see as missing is a tremendous part of the fun (as well as a lot of frustration) in any model I build--and that goes back a good 40-50 years now.

Of course I'd like nothing better than to open a box to find a perfectly accurate model car kit (particularly if it's a subject that really trips my trigger) but after I pinch myself, I realize that more than likely I (or somebody else) will find at least a little niggle here or there. For me, a big part of the fun (and a challenge I accept readily BTW) of building any model car kit is spotting those problems (hopefully small and readily correctible) and then tackling the job of correcting them to the point that once built most people who see the finished car just assume that's the way the kit was molded/produced. BTW, I am not saying this to merely "gloss over" any kit with truly glaring errors!)

However, with many kits, it can be like that cartoon lady "Maxine", who sits at the bar staring at her drink: "Some folks say my glass is half full, others tell me it's half empty--but either way, there's still room for more wine" (or did she really mean to say "whine"?).

Art

Edited February 23, 2014 by Art Anderson

[Guest]

I have the opposite view from Art. My hobby time is limited, and I would rather not take up any extra building time in correcting flaws and omissions. There is room for both points of view, neither is wrong.

[Harry P.]

I have the opposite view from Art. My hobby time is limited, and I would rather not take up any extra building time in correcting flaws and omissions. There is room for both points of view, neither is wrong.

I agree. You can look at mistakes in a model kit as a challenge, and actually enjoy fixing the mistakes. And a lot of people do just that. Great. Good for them.

But in my opinion, while I do correct mistakes when I build (which is what brought on this whole thread in the first place), as the consumer who paid good money for the product, I resent having to take the time to correct the mistakes made by the people who were PAID to design, engineer and manufacture the kit.

Simple as that.

[Chuck Kourouklis]

Yup. Right in line with something I've asked before:

Just what is wrong with preferring to spend your time and skill ​augmenting a kit rather than correcting it?

[Modelmartin]

In all this, sitting here in the quiet privacy of my own home, I keep coming back to what's really the fun, the challenge for me in this hobby: I can find something wrong, incorrectly dimensioned or just plain omitted from just about any of the several hundred kits in my "ready stash" (there's a lot more stored off-site). And yet, for me the challenge of correcting what I see as wrong, adding back what I see as missing is a tremendous part of the fun (as well as a lot of frustration) in any model I build--and that goes back a good 40-50 years now.

Of course I'd like nothing better than to open a box to find a perfectly accurate model car kit (particularly if it's a subject that really trips my trigger) but after I pinch myself, I realize that more than likely I (or somebody else) will find at least a little niggle here or there. For me, a big part of the fun (and a challenge I accept readily BTW) of building any model car kit is spotting those problems (hopefully small and readily correctible) and then tackling the job of correcting them to the point that once built most people who see the finished car just assume that's the way the kit was molded/produced. BTW, I am not saying this to merely "gloss over" any kit with truly glaring errors!)

However, with many kits, it can be like that cartoon lady "Maxine", who sits at the bar staring at her drink: "Some folks say my glass is half full, others tell me it's half empty--but either way, there's still room for more wine" (or did she really mean to say "whine"?).

Art

I am with you on this one, Art! For several years I was getting ready and doing some initial work on a Protar Honda RC166 GP bike. I loved the idea of really going through it and detailing it and adding all kinds of cool parts and accurizing some incorrect details. Then Tamiya goes and releases the same bike and the danged thing is near perfect! I lost all interest.

[sjordan2]

Another issue relating to all this is the question of "don't buy it if you don't like it." The way kits are packaged today, how are you supposed to like it until you get it home after you've bought it, unwrap it and study all the parts? Take it from there.

[Modelmartin]

Yup. Right in line with something I've asked before:

Just what is wrong with preferring to spend your time and skill ​augmenting a kit rather than correcting it?

I just build a subject that I want and I don't care that much if the subject is a really great or a so-so kit. I just do what it takes to finish it and to a level of build quality that satisfies me.

[Modelmartin]

I have the opposite view from Art. My hobby time is limited, and I would rather not take up any extra building time in correcting flaws and omissions. There is room for both points of view, neither is wrong.

Neither is wrong. It is just that one point of view produces nice built models and the other doesn't.

[Chuck Kourouklis]

Well and good - except that this thread started with someone who HAS that very point of view that allegedly doesn't produce nice models...

and is doing it anyway.

As have I, and who knows how many others in this thread and out, with the same viewpoint.

Not trying to mosh you in with the crowd I was addressing, Andrew - I know you're more thoughtful than that - but what you said kinda begs this exception.

[Guest]

Neither is wrong. It is just that one point of view produces nice built models and the other doesn't.

Again, bull. Not correcting flaws does NOT necessarily result in a "bad" model. It may be inaccurate, but it can still be well built. If you like correcting major flaws Andrew, go for it. Some of us do not, yet still build nice models.

Edited February 24, 2014 by midnightprowler

[dieseldawg142]

wow!, eight pages of this...

i'm not going to comment, i think i will go finish scratch building the frame for my stepper

[Cato]

So really, despite all this controversy that you all are truly at the root of, this is actually my round-about "Thank you!" Because in your acceptance of mediocrity, in your inadvertent encouragement of it, you've actually driven me that much closer to excellence.

Chuck,

Your entire post is spoken with truth and the voice of angels-a perfect analysis.

But I'll warn you that any day now you will be bashed as an 'elitist' for putting the onus on manufacturers and talking down to the 95% that just like acceptable models and 'what's your problem??'

[niteowl7710]

Well, here's the deal... there were a few niggly details other than the roof he also fixed. There was something with the curve at the rear spoiler / trunk lid edge and something else with the shape of the bottom of the rear bumper. Quite frankly I didn't see any of the issues until he pointed it out with Before and After photos.

And I don't think it matters a whole lot that "THEY KNEW, THEY WERE TOLD!" about the roof height. That change is a major rework of the largest part of the tool (and many parts it touches, like the glass shot and maybe more). No doubt, by the time they knew, it was too late to completely rework it, and stay within their time frame and budget.

Where the problem is, is that we who see this hobby as near religion are maybe 5% of Revell's business. 95% of the people who buy the kit think it's just fine, and that's who they are out to please. The majority. The very few, a small percent of our 5% who absolutely can't live without these minute details being fixed, well they need to buy the resin. Yea, perfection costs a bit more.

But you've illustrated my point clearly. You were one of the vocal guys complaining about the kit, but you're not buying the corrected resin.

They were told back when the kit was shown in it's tooling shot format debut at the NNL in Toledo, so that's a good eight MONTHS in advance of when the kit came out. They had time to go back and fix the size of the previously GIANT out of scale 5.0 badge on the fender, but hey I suppose I should just be glad Revell's in business right?

I'm not buying the resin kit, because I refuse to buy the actual KIT in the first place. I'm not going to financially support Revell's "Good enough for the girls we run with" attitude towards their kits. 2012 was a great year for them, and they managed to pull their collective heads out of their hind-ends for the last couple of releases of 2013, but their two big banner kits were dismal flops. I've talked to my LHS guy, they aren't moving nearly as many LXs and Cudas as you'd expect them to if 95% of the people simply didn't care what the kits looked like.

But lets take a pause and think to what SHOULD have been released in 2013, but wasn't. The '57 Bel Air Convertible...anyone remember that one? The kit that got slammed into an 8 month delay because no one there realized the "X-Brace" was missing of the chassis until the last minute? So clearly if the subject matter is "worth it", they are more than willing to toss the budget and timeline right out the collective window to fix things.

[Chuck Kourouklis]

Preach on, n.o.77.

Chuck,

Your entire post is spoken with truth and the voice of angels-a perfect analysis.

But I'll warn you that any day now you will be bashed as an 'elitist' for putting the onus on manufacturers and talking down to the 95% that just like acceptable models and 'what's your problem??'

Thanks, Cato, and I'd hope so - it'd only be a sign I'd done something right.

[Modelmartin]

Again, bull. Not correcting flaws does NOT necessarily result in a "bad" model. It may be inaccurate, but it can still be well built. If you like correcting major flaws Andrew, go for it. Some of us do not, yet still build nice models.

Standards vary as much as opinions.

[Erik Smith]

Chuck - your words to often fall on deaf ears. Threads like this - which could be a conversation and nothing more - always tend to fall into the same old trap.

Sometimes it's better to know thyself than be thyself...

[Tom Geiger]

They were told back when the kit was shown in it's tooling shot format debut at the NNL in Toledo, so that's a good eight MONTHS in advance of when the kit came out. They had time to go back and fix the size of the previously GIANT out of scale 5.0 badge on the fender, but hey I suppose I should just be glad Revell's in business right?

I'm not buying the resin kit, because I refuse to buy the actual KIT in the first place. I'm not going to financially support Revell's "Good enough for the girls we run with" attitude towards their kits. 2012 was a great year for them, and they managed to pull their collective heads out of their hind-ends for the last couple of releases of 2013, but their two big banner kits were dismal flops. I've talked to my LHS guy, they aren't moving nearly as many LXs and Cudas as you'd expect them to if 95% of the people simply didn't care what the kits looked like.

Again either ignoring or oblivious to manufacturing processes or how projects progress in a corporation. You, or I, don't have that project budget or schedule in front of us, so any opinions are just that. Eight months ahead of product release, may very well have been beyond the last opportunity to make major changes to the product. (those kits have spent the last month prior to those kits appearing in stores in transit alone), Think about it. Changing roof height is easy with a plastic kit. Simply lift the roof off, add little .01 lengths of plastic, glue roof back on. In tooling, you will need to scrap the most expensive part in the tool and recut it all over again. In reverse of a model, that would involve cutting deeper into a tool and recutting the entire roof, and again, retooling all the parts that have a relationship to the change. Say that the body part costs $50,000 as part of a $300,000 project you are asking to scrap a $50,000 investment and invest another $50,000, and add a 90 day cycle into the schedule, it's simply not happening. Especially where we are talking about our very serious modeling group being 5% of the kit market, and the guys who are having this major issue with the kit being 5% of that number, there's simply no way it matters to Revell at all.

And in quoting you "I'm not buying the resin kit, because I refuse to buy the actual KIT in the first place.", you are arguing about a situation that you probably haven't even seen in person since you admit to not having bought a kit. And in the eyes of the manufacturer, your opinion doesn't matter at all since you haven't even become a customer. You have no skin in the game at all.

Edited February 24, 2014 by Tom Geiger

[Harry P.]

Eight months ahead of product release, may very well have been beyond the last opportunity to make major changes to the product. (those kits have spent the last month prior to those kits appearing in stores in transit alone), Think about it. Changing roof height is easy with a plastic kit. Simply lift the roof off, add little .01 lengths of plastic, glue roof back on. In tooling, you will need to scrap the most expensive part in the tool and recut it all over again. In reverse of a model, that would involve cutting deeper into a tool and recutting the entire roof, and again, retooling all the parts that have a relationship to the change. Say that the body part costs $50,000 as part of a $300,000 project you are asking to scrap a $50,000 investment and invest another $50,000, and add a 90 day cycle into the schedule, it's simply not happening. Especially where we are talking about our very serious modeling group being 5% of the kit market, and the guys who are having this major issue with the kit being 5% of that number, there's simply no way it matters to Revell at all.

None of this would even be an issue if only they had gotten it right in the first place...

[Tom Geiger]

None of this would even be an issue if only they had gotten it right in the first place...

who is to say they didn't get it right? Numbers have been produced, that the exact numbers scaled down don't work. Then you have the scale fidelity, what actually 'looks right' vs actual measurements. Guys on this board have said that once they have painted it all in the correct colors and assembled the kit, it looks right. Again, subjectivity. The problem I'm having is that Mr Duff sees fit to scream bloody murder and slander Revell, admitting to have never bought the kit.

The very definition of 'reasonable' is meeting the expectations of the average consumer. Those with extraordinary expectations should realize that they are above the normal consumer and be ready to either modify the kit to meet their expectations or pay extra to buy the resin conversion that meets that need.

Edited February 24, 2014 by Tom Geiger