I was asked by one of my work colleagues if I could give his son a few hints on starter kits and scales as he is looking to get into model building. As we only have a couple of small hobby shops selling limited number of model kits I recommended Airfix kits as the basic beginers kits to cut his teeth on.
I know they have a few at 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 so really his choice is down to his dad and him as to what takes his fancy.
I was also thinking about this topic when I was chatting to him and thought, as I have a good few duplicate tools I would make up a very basic starter set for his son.
A pair of small scissors
A couple of craft knives
A file
A pair of double ended scribes
A few emery boards
A sanding block
Sand paper
Four spring clamps
Toothpics
A tooth pick with a crocodile clip on the end
Tweezers
A hack saw blade
A pencil and rubber
Four paint brushes
And a coffee jar for water based paints
One of the paint tube squeezers so he can make corrugated tin or squeeze paint tubes
I then thought about a portable work station to save their dining table from the usual fate
I used a square of MDF board and closed cell packing foam (not the polystyrene type) from a flat screen TV packaging.
The foam is held on with black cable ties fed through holes drilled in the MDF and simply pierced through the packing foam and drawn tight.
One piece of foam had a notch just the right size that grips a 100g glass Nescafe coffee jar real tight for holding water or white spirits.
The foam is easily pierced with sharp tools and holds loads of them very safely with pointy ends protected. I have a couple of work points in my shed with my tools all placed in the same kind of foam.
I had an old hand held magnifying glass that had a broken handle and decided to drill a hole and feed a length of aluminium tube through it. The tube is pierced into the foam at a suitable angle and is steady as a rock. If needed to be packed away, the tube can be fed horizontally through the foam with the magnifier supported on the foam.
The large low slab of foam above will easily take a 1/35 vehicle or 1/72 fighter held in place on cocktail sticks with crocodile clips added to the end to allow hand painting. The side blocks with high and low levels will allow smaller parts super glued to cocktail sticks or whole 1/35 or 1/24 figures with fuse wire drilled into the soles of their boots to be stabbed into the foam during assembly, painting or drying.
The foam recovers well and holes can be re-used. Multiple cocktail sticks with crock clips can easily hold a large model in place in the same way.
To give you an idea of the space available, the van is 1/32 and the figure is 1/24.
What do you reckon as a starter set?
Nige
