Ode to Rivet Counters...

Modeling Subjects Armor
1

Am I one? No. Do I like models to be accurate? Yes. If it looks “right” then I feel it passes the “smell test”. But why are models so much more accurate today than they were 10 or 15 or 30 years ago? Some of it has to do with improving technology, but slide-rules were around 30 years ago, weren’t they? A lot of it probably has to do with consumers demanding better models, but didn’t we care if things were accurate 15 years ago?

Although I don’t break out plan-diagrams in 1/35th scale every time I buy a kit and lay the parts on it to see how many millimeters the parts are off, I do secretly thank Hillary Doyle and Jentz for all of their research…And I even thank the sometimes annoying “rivet-counters” for their never ending quest for the perfectly proportioned model. After all, I believe these folks help keep the model companies “honest” with their accuracy. Their never-ending BLOGs about asymetrical Tiger turrets and angled joins of interlocking armor plate serves a useful purpose. It reassures me that if the company didn’t nail the proportions exactly to the real thing, they got it pretty darn close. And that’s good enough for me…

Thank you, Mr. Rivet Counter—please keep blogging about recessed screw heads, just don’t volunteer to be a judge at the next AMPS meet…

2

While I appreciate better detailed and more accurate kits as the next, I think Dragon has taken things a little to literally. Their kits commonly have 600 pieces and up. Construction is overburdened due to excessive detailing. My recent Tamiya Panzer IV J has a tad over 300. The part count is about right, for detail and buidability isn’t compromised IMO. Of course this is my opinion and I’m sure most prefer the high part count for the perceived perception that detail is more accurate.

I guess I prefer good detail with easier buildability more then part counts. Different strokes for different folks.

3

Yeah, but the high part count sometimes is because of the link to link track, that can be about 200 there. And Dragon kits almost always have a boat load of not needed parts. Some of my space ship building compadres really like that. Especially when I open the vault. Aside from that, I don’t think there are anymore than necessary, really, mostly.

Of course I really chuckle at a lot of reviews. When they say something is off 2mm or something really wierd. I can’t see 2mm. I wouldn’t trust a published drawing anymore than a model as a reference. Even measurements can be off. I’m a surveyor, and we can measure to the 0.000001 of a foot, and you can never get two to get the same exact result. Pretty darn close, but never exactly. I don’t know their procedure to get the measurments, either the surveyor or the guy measuring the whatever. Close enough! Some “RC” are just in a P###ing contest, I think with each other, because they’re not talking to me. That doesn’t mean I know more than them, just I really don’t give a hoot. Example, the much hated Academy kits, Sheridan, M-7, M-3 Lee, I just blew the reviewers off. The kits get the job done here, and nobody, absolutly nobody I know gives a hoot, and neither do I. Hey, this is thearaputic. What does bug me is the little condesending tone some take, like, “if this doesn’t matter to you” or “if you just want a model of this”. That annoys me, and then I usually quit reading the review. And I really hate the “this kit is a piece of junk, or it should be thrown in the bin”, The Brits love saying that.

Oh, as for contests. I’ve judged a ton of them,IPMS usually, and rarely if ever did we get down to looking at dimensions or “rivets”. Mostly it’d be something like decal sivering or some contruction error that would take it out. If that.

Now watch out, some may come out and say that it was they that caused the model companies to make more detailed kits. If so, thank you very much. I’ll name my next born kid after you, (not likely at my age or desire, been there, done that). I think is was more competition and face than anything else. Afterall , where are the American’s at? Most of them are pretty much out of making anything new with the same level of detail as our Asian freinds. Feel free to disagree.

Doug

4

don’t take this post as anything derogatory, but I have to ask you anyway. A tenth of an arc second is about .0000048" in a foot, and that’s just about all a Hewitt Packard laser can do on a good day (no drafts or temperature changes). And it’s considered state of the art. An autocolumator is a little more accurate in ten foot or less distances, but still is good for about 1/20th of an arc second on a near perfect setup. How did you do it?

gary

P.S. I’m in total agreement with your comments about kit reviewers!

5

Not to start a pissing contest… But when I was working as a surveyor many years ago we never really went past .001ft for measurments, and very rarely marked a grade or anything more accurately than .01ft. We had EDMs (but not yet GPS) but there is still the human factor… That wood stake, pavement nail, iron pin, or railroad spike might be perfect when you set it… But after a couple days of heavy equipment pounding around, or the sun beating on the pavement, its going to drift.

And after .01ft it gets into what I always ask the rivet counters… Is anyone going to actually notice the difference?

6

I agree with tigerman on this one. I just shed 2 of my Dragon Uber-kits to a fellow modeler because even though I am completing more I have less time because of returning to college.

My next kit will be the old Tamiya M3 Bradley which will be built OOB. I think a hobby should always be fun not work.

My [2c]

7

To some extent I agree with the parts count, but…how many of us take an average parts count kit and add indy tracks and PE and then some carry items…count up those total parts. We are complaining when someone gives you everything in one box and if he does not, we go off and buy 10 accessories for the kit and the part total overall is still over 400. We feel better and paid a lot more!!

It can be daunting to have 12 sprues and 500 parts to a kit but if it is well molded and has nice details, I think it is worth it. Some people want to burp out a build every month…you can’t do that with 500 part kits!!

I will agree with Manny…I don’t consider myself a rivert counter but I like enough detail for the naked eye.

The old kits had details but they were all molded in. We now want to see that separate tools with PE tie downs, we don’t want the one piece molded 50 cal but the six piece detailed version with a metal barrel, instead of molded in spare tracks, we want PE holders and indy link spares.

I dont think the new kits are that much more accurate, they are more three dimensional or pop more by having all the separate details rather than a molded blob with rubber band tracks.

Lastly…remember, when talking about a slide ruler, the batteries never run out and it works in all conditions.

Rounds Complete!!

8

Thank the rivet counters. If it wasn’t for them, we would still be back in the day when there was one Sherman tank, one Tiger Tank, etc. It was their attention to detail and their scratchbuilt conversions that made that one Sherman tank into an M4A3(76) or into an M4(105), etc.

Once the manufacturers had their eyes opened to the fact that there were multiple variants, they gave us kits with optional parts to make multiple variants from one box.

The rivet counters then showed that just because you change the cupola and the mantlet, it doesn’t give you the true representation of each variant they were trying to portray.

Eventually, those rivet counters demands drove the manufacturers to create a kit that gave us a very accurate T-34/76, a T-34/76 Beute Panzer, a T-34/85, etc.

Not so much that the kits are perfectly accurate, but thank them for getting the wide variety of kits out there. There is probably a very good kit of each and every specific Sherman or Tiger that saw action in WW2. While they all can get additionally accurized by the modeler building them, there is no longer the need to convert the OOB version into the version you want to represent.

9

There have been leaps and bounds in the industry in terms of technology for design and molding. CAD for one and of course the cost of tooling and developing new kits has come down, particularly with the advent of the Chinese-based manufacturers. The time-to-market for kits is now much lower than 15 years ago…so the economics of producing a more accurate, more detailed kit has made it a lot more feasible now vs. then.

I agree with you here…I don’t always pull out the plans either, depends on the project. I have done reviews of various kits and when I’m in “review mode” I look at things differently vs. “consumer mode” so-to-speak. Having said that, there are some dimension errors that are more serious than others. Sometimes 1-2mm doesn’t mean much…other times it can be a deal breaker. The advent of the Internet and blogging has definitely raised the awareness level of many modelers and manufacturers when it comes to the relative importance of accuracy in the kits. After all, if you’re going to ask someone to shell out $50-$100+ (especially for some of the larger more esoteric vehicles), people want to know what they’re getting for that kind of price. On the other hand, there’s still a very large population out there that isn’t online, doesn’t care about reviews, and will buy the kits if they like the vehicle, etc. That’s one of the great joys of the hobby, we need both wings of the spectrum to keep it vibrant and thriving. We truly live in a golden age of modeling IMHO.

Amen!

10

Okay, I was exagerating a bit on our closure distances, it is more in the 0.002 range. This is for boundary closure. It seemed really tight to me. So much fun! Total stations are amazing things. When I started surveying in the dark ages, we used steel tapes or chains, and had all sorts of compensting factors to worry about, so today the closure of 0.002 seems as if it’s 0.00000001. Sort of a relative exageration.[:-^]

I sort of feel sorry for model ship buillders. I know they have their own set of “rivet counters”, but as the scales they work in just don’t allow the same sort of detail that larger scale modelers can see. I mean are there any battleship kits with rifleling in the guns? Now, I have seen some insane photo-etch sets, White Ensign comes to mind, where the details can only be seen if you look really really hard. But on average, ship guys can live with missing detail that would drive a armor or airplane dude nuts. I could be totally wrong about this, as I don’t build many ships. Or course now that I think about it, I have this friend who is absoulutly nuts about Japanesse ships, and the things he does in /700 is nuts. Way cool. Still missing tread on the aircraft tires, and where are the cockpit details? [swg]

Doug

11

Ditto…and after all, we are model builders, correct?

Funny, have we come full circle? We wanted more and more details and parts…are we now crying, “uncle”?..

12

[:-^]

13

Or maybe we just want…MORE!!!

Rounds Complete!!

14

I think the “uber-detailed”, thousand-parts models were somewhat of a marketing experiment for DML. They probably looked at the reviews, comments, and sales numbers and from that they came out with the “Smart Kit”–which are far easeir to build, but with less tacky, annoying assemblies. Thank god.

I stayed far away from the “Premium” kits, and I have no use for rivet counters.They remind me of the guys whose wife slaves away the whole day to create an incredible meal, does herself up to look like a sexy movie star–and he complains that she didn’t wash his favorite shirt.

Gimme a break!

15

My…now that’s a bit harsh[:(] Hummmm…I smell a deep discussion coming…we are going to have to send Donna Reid to your house!! OK fans…get out your instant replay flags!!

Rounds Complete!!

16

Karl - I found the perfect PE set for you on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160351928128&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

[swg]

Rounds Complete!!

17

lol!

Unbelievable!

I actually just use a single-edged razor blade and some hexagonal styrene rod. Works like a charm!

18

I was really just kinda courious as to how you did this; that’s all. I was the guy who used to lap in those granite surface plates, and I had to hold them under .000025" in a foot. Plus a micro and another reading to boot. Mostly used an autocolumnator, and then rechecked everything with a Hewitt Packard laser. But the checks with a laser were unacceptable. The best plate I think I ever did was well under .000005" in a foot for a total error of about .000015" per line of travel. The finish was like a mirror, and they couldn’t measure the error because the laser target kept sticking to the plate’s surface. Did it on purpose as the guy who checked my work complained about the finish I did on the plate before (it was borderline junk when I got it), so I gave him what he wanted.

gary

19

I got no beef with Rivet Counters holding manufacturer’s collective feet to the fire, but I got no use for 'em in most other places, especially the afore-mentioned contests… They’re the main reason that I avoid building models of specific aircraft and vehicles and make spurious markings, nose art, and units… That is, unless I’m doing a model of one of “my” vehicles from Active Duty.

Then again, I myself have been guilty of the same thing at times, like when it comes to artillery pieces I’ve crewed. In pointing out some finishing errors or firing vs march order mistakes, it can come off that way… But, since I try to also offer solutions, I’d rather call it a constructive criticism…

20

Well said, but I gotta disagree on that last statement. When Tamiya came out with the Tiger I-late in 1988, it was hailed as the greatest AFV model of all time. Nowadays it is almost never built anymore by most serious modelers, primarily because of the errors in the kit…