Juuuust working on a Dodge 1.5 ton which is after having worked on a 3/4 ton and a staff car (vehicle is all same company so the same front end basically).
I hate headlights, really I do!
I lost track of how often I dropped the left side outter light. Grrrr.
And it is not always on the floor, sometimes they escape behind something on the desk, but of course you figure it is on the floor first so you just keep looking there till your endurance gives up and you resolve to live with a missing part. Then you find it on the desk and you smile thinking ‘I can find anything’. 20 seconds later you have dropped it again. This time you know it is on the floor, yet its not there. Then you check if anyone is looking and you wonder is it in my clothes somehow? Learned real early to have something on while making a model that didn’t permit parts going down there.
Headlights have to be about the most irritating things to hold on to while trying to put them on a model. And when they escape the tweezers, they defy all the laws of physics.
Hell would be doing nothing but put headlights on fenders.
I made this little box,lined with ‘transfer tape’ this is used in the sign industry to apply vinyl decals ,it is low tack ,with the sticky side up I stopped losing the tiny parts and was able to enjoy the work.
decals are the most frustrating for me. Chances are you have only enough markings on the decal sheet, meaning no extras if you mess up. I hate that kind of pressure! [:S]
Its gotta be canopies for me as well. Even if I’ve got a pre-cut mask, they never seem to fit perfectly, and there is always a little bit of raggedness on the edges when I take them off.
HisNHers, check out this tool from Micro Mark for your headlights:
Its got three sizes of attachments, and is really useful once you get a little practice with it. You can also get a toothpick and put a blob of blue-tak on the tip to stick the headlight to temporarily. Both of these methods work great for those parts with smooth round surfaces that are hard to grab and hold with tweezers, especially headlight lenses.
On aircraft - the filling/sanding/filling process. It’s usually at this stage that I feel the most “down” on a kit. Once it moves on to paint, I cheer up substantially.
On armor - the fiddly bits. Pioneer tools and the like. Mainly because, thanks to them, you have this ungodly gap between painting and weathering. And all I ever want to do is move straight into the weathering!
Case in point - my Panzer IV WIP is whispering sweet weathering nothings in my ear:
But I still have all the tools, plus a resin stowage set, to prep, paint and place before I can move along.
A shallow box with a low tack adhesive tape to keep the parts in the box and the work going ahead.