Quite right.

I tried to be a rivet counter, early on. But, I didn't have the skills. With the Shilka interior I am planning on building, that may change.

With respect to the thread title, I lost it YEARS ago!

I agree with many of the comments here, especially the way we raise our expectations (and our blood pressure) in proportion to the price - I'll forgive a lot of errors in a cheapo kit, but will gripe if the latest £50 monster is off by a millimetre. It's not rational, but is somehow conditioned by the level of cash investment, even if the cheapo kit will use up ten times the man-hours as I upgrade or convert it - and I'll somehow convince myself it's "added play value" rather than "unnecessary work".

But all this is driven by the rising cost of our ever more detailed and obscure kits, which are harder to produce and sell in smaller numbers. But if you think it's bad now, you should have seen my face a decade ago when my son decided he absolutely needed the new Baneblade kit from Games Workshop, which came in at a whopping £60 at a time when most Dragon kits were still in the £30 range! It reminded me we've got it easy compared to some other hobbies out there.

Reviews are a tricky one - they do need to address all potential audiences from the "looks like a tank" guys to the most fastidious rivet counters. So I figure the less interested will get what they need from the pictures and my comments on buildability, while glossing over all the accuracy stuff. But if I left out that accuracy stuff that the "looks like..." guys don't care about then the rivet counters would be let down, so my reviews will always tend towards a full warts and all approach. I've read plenty of reviews in my time that cover a subject I am only slightly interested in - I just read the bits that are of interest and ignore the rest without getting steamed.

But the kits still pile up faster than I can tackle 'em...

Found this over on the Shipwrights site. This dude has no problem with the modeling plot...

http://modelshipwrights.kitmaker.net/forums/244742

Cheers

WOW

I once read a review about a Concorde model in 1/144 the reviewer commented that it was a scale six inches short. I would say that in that scale it probably equates to the thickness of the line on the drawings he compared it to. Bring that into 1/32 scale you got a big error. I make models because I enjoy it and have for the last 50 yrs or so. I do admit to being a bit picky sometimes with magazine reviews. As a modeller I like to build old kits and scratch the details required to make it in my eyes look better. Also limited run offerings for a challenge. As I said I enjoy building kits it is after all a hobby .

Model reviews used to be having the author actually building the kit and writing on experience. Not taking pictures of sprues and saying the shape might probably be wrong, then having readers jump on the bandwagon.

Bryan: You bring up a valid point, but that is not really the point that I am trying to get across here. I will however look into your comment further and see what I can do to accommodate it. i will say that due to the large number of review samples we get into the KitMaker Network and the time required to build a model in many cases, it is not something that can be easily fixed. We also only have a limited number of members who have proved themselves to be able to manage reviews to a high standard. With that all said there are a number of models that we do ask for builds to be done, these tend to be the long awaited and specials that come into us.

I don't think we're losing the plot per se. The old adage 'if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be a duck' is okay by me.

Personally I feel life's too short for rivet counting, but if others wish to do so, then that's okay by me.

Sure, I spend more time on some kits than others, but I build for fun and if it stops being fun, I put the kit down and go onto another for a while and come back to it later.

What we need to remember is: if a kit is 0.5mm out here or there, would the world really change for better or worse if it were more accurate? Probably not.

As long as it goes together nicely and you can build it how you want (OOB or super detailed, your choice of course) then that's what's important. And enjoy yourself