I recorded a couple of videos while I was finishing up The Seahorse, which I will release in the next couple of weeks. This is one of them. I was cracking open a tin of Humbrol enamel paint, a garish metallic green left over from my very early days of making models when I was rather partial to a loud hot rod model. Then I realised that I've been using this same tin of paint, albeit sparingly, since about 1988. That's thirty years.
It got me to thinking: what are people's oldest modelling tools? What have you been using the longest?
For me, it would have to be a pair of surgical scissors that I use to cut pieces from plastic sprue. I've been using these since my very first model ever.
I'd love to say let's use this as an opportunity for us modellers to work out amazing products, to celebrate brands that make quality tools and use that for future purchases... But I rather suspect that most of the answers are going to be for products from the 1960s-1980s, and I very much doubt they are made to the same standards today. Cue old man complaining about modern things and how they don't make 'em like they used to...
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Video is embedded below, but in case that doesn't work here is the link:
What tool have you been using the longest in making scale models?
Cheers,
Dave
I have a tin of Humbrol 27004 Metallic Gunmetal that has served for the entire decade that I've been back to the hobby. I recently got a new one but the old tin and its remnants of paint are still in service, filled with thinner, as a really good oil wash. That said, I'm expecting my tins of Transparent Green and Transparent Red to still be in use when the sun goes supernova as I use about one drop per year.
ReplyDeleteAs far as actual tools go, I guess my pin-vice is the oldest. It's a cheap & cheerful one and has seen a lot of service (as a primarily WWI modeller I end up drilling out an awful lot of rigging holes!). A local tool shop sells a full box of 20 micro-bits from 0.3 to 1.6 for about €6. Funnily enough, I have many boxes with the bits from 0.8 up still intact but nothing smaller!
Hi Mike, I love the notion of your transparent green and red still being around somewhere when the sun goes supernova!!! ;)
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