The Biggest Headaches in Scale Modelling - Airfix and Chill - 24th June 2024 

100% agree with @John Alec - my biggest headache is that final pulling everything together stage. Other things like fit, gatekeepers, photoetch etc can all be dealt with either with work or by avoidance, but you can't avoid making a kit in making a kit! There are available solutions to things like tracks, but I have the choice to build a kit or not and how to build it, so any "headache" in a kit I've committed to is my own fault - like the hangover after drinking, it's the consequence of the action!

Biggest headache? The tweezers fling. When you look on helplessly, as a vital component arcs majestically onto the tufted Wilton, and you have to spend ages on your hands and knees looking for it.

D'oh.. no idea how the hell I missed this! I see making models and social media as /separate/ parts of a /process/. The actual hobby as Luke inferred is making models. Once the model is made, the hobby part is over, then the next part of the process starts. The crossover of course is filming while making a model; the camera isn't usually there, you can curse to your hearts' content as you don't have You Tube rules to follow, etc. If however you're not a YT creator and just make models then the question really is only what's a pain in the proverbial in Scale Modelling. As for the biggest headache, nobody's mentioned having to modify a kit. Often there is advice to drill holes - which are sometimes not marked! - and the hole size advised is in a drill bit size that doesn't exist and/or you don't have, e.g. a 0.8mm hole when you have a 1mm bit (is 0.2mm really going to make any difference?). I even saw one kit where the instructions told the modeller to make the machine guns!! Accuracy is another issue sometimes. Not the rivet counter level, but a kit say the wrong shape - for example Gary Evans made a Mistercraft Sea Harrier and the kit had entirely the wrong nose. Luke's right about critical comments. There's a difference between /criticism/ - usually negative and confined to an unqualified opinion - and a /critique/ - always qualified feedback and usually if not all positive, then some of the feedback is. [Edit: I wrote that before Luke said essentially the same thing] Often a critique is requested, criticism isn't. For example as a Senior Tech when I gave feedback I used what I called a 'sh!t sandwich' and told the team member what they were doing right, then wrong, then right again, so they'd go off thinking 'I'm doing OK.. not perfect but I know what to work on and how.' The same is true of models.. if someone just says 'That's crap!' it's unhelpful negativity, but someone else may say 'It's not bad for a first go, but [for example] the canopy's fogged and has overspill.. next time use PVA and canopy masks.' In the second instance the person knows what they did wrong and how to correct it. The problem with the word 'appraisal' BTW I think is that it includes the word 'praise' so there is an expectation that it be wholly positive, which in some ways is equally as unhelpful as criticism; one ignores mistakes and the other highlights them exclusively. Luke mentioned the definition is that it's from an expert. The problem with that is the world is full of people who /think/ they are experts, so they may appraise something and be completely wrong. Instructions. Do they /instruct/ or inform and how successful are they? Do they tell the reader what they need to know? Is it in a clear concise manner? If no to either then IMHO they've failed at the only job they had. BTW it could be worse. Far Eastern companies etc. could do instructions in the direction they read, so you start with the complete model, and finish with a sprue tree *lol* As for languages, Google Translate is often a car crash unless it's a really simple sentence. Try translating a sentence, then flip it and I guarantee the English version will be wrong. [I've watched 1:15 so far, may add more tomorrow]