MSS

How timely! Here just last week I wrote about my stash and today in the Braille Scale forum on Missing-Lynx is a thread on basically the same subject. You can read this at http://www.network54.com/Forum/47210/thread/1280794512/Odd+thing+with+resin+kit... If memory serves me correct, though, I think you have to be a subscribed user to see that page (which I highly recommended you do if you are an armor modeler.). Here is a synopsis of what was said:

Modeler A wrote: "I was assembling some MIG resin figures this past weekend and noted some prominant writing on the packaging: "DO NOT KEEP THIS KIT IN YOUR BASEMENT. BUILD AS SOON AS POSSIBLE."
I have never seen this warning on any other kit or website. I presume this has to do with the resin getting moldy?"

Response 1 was "it's a joke!" Which it probably is.

Response 3: "This probably has to do with our increased understanding of this little known disease. With your 100 kits to be built you are clearly in the early stages. Mig's warning is timely, don't put it away, it'll never be seen again. Build those figures now so they have a chance to see the open sky (well the inside of an exhibition hall anyway) don't let them collect dust in a ziplock polythene bag. Think of a new era in modelling [sic] when we can all build each and every model as soon as we get it home, think of those poor kits languishing in your basement waiting for someone to liberate them, some one to make them complete! "

In the thread was a term new to me that I liked: Modeler's Stash Syndrome. Now a disease for we modelers who do not suffer with AMS (Advanced Modeler's Syndrome)! I feel complete.

Remember, it is better to have stashed away hundreds of kits you plan on building than to ...

Stash versus Collection

One of the running themes of this blog -- if I can call it a running theme since I am bad about posting -- is the fact that I rarely get anything finished. I continue to purchase more kits, photo-etched sheets, conversion sets, decals, and odds-and-ends at an unknown rate (probably 10 times faster than I build). So I have what I call a stash (of 2,500 plus kits.) The closet is full and I have had to rent space at a storage facility to house overflow. But this is NOT a kit collection. That has a connotation to me of something bought and hoarded for it's monetary worth. No, mine is a stash. A stash is just an overage of kits that a modeler plans on building. And I plan on building them all.

The July issue of FineScale Modeler has a "Guest" Editorial on this subject. The point the author makes that I liked was his use of the term "mind-modeling". This is what separates a stash from a collection. Mind-modeling is where one takes a kit, opens it up, and looks through it. This is where one looks at the instructions and starts planning what they are going to do with the kit. How one is going to build it. How one is going to paint it. Sound familiar? I know I do that a lot. That's why the cellophane is off most of my kits. So I can fondle the styrene and dream.

If you haven't read the editorial buy or borrow the July issue.

Remember, it is better to have entered a model contest and lost than to have collected stamps.

I'm Back

Well, I haven't even looked at this blog since I last posted in January. In reading the October issue of the IPMS North Central Texas newsletter, the Flaksheet, I find my picture from the blog and the URL published. Interesting. So I decided I should start back up writing since maybe someone will read my ramblings. But now I found that I do have a few readers out there. There were comments posted that I have just finished okaying for publishing. To those gentlemen who sent the interesting comments my apology for not seeing them until now. It's nice to know there are others in the same situation...misery loves company.

And what have I accomplished since January? Nuttin'. Oh, I've started quite a few projects but as usual haven't finished a thing. Let's see...what's on the workbench?

I started the Italeri 1/72 M3A1 halftrack. The box says it is an M3 but it doesn't have a skate rail for the .30 cal machine guns. In fact it doesn't have .30 cal machine guns with the kit. This kit (and there are two halftracks in it) comes with a .50 cal mg on a post. I do have some Sgt's Mess .30 cals I plan on attaching. There's also a Cromwell Sherman which I started painting. It's been so long sitting there that I forgot what model of Sherman it is. I have a 1/48 scale Kengi Conversione M26 that is also half painted gathering dust.

You know I think I should post some pictures of my starts. That would fill space. Okay, soon!

Remember, it is better to have entered a model contest and lost than to have collected stamps.