Monday 12 November 2018

Why you shouldn’t use the wrong tool for the job

 

By Sunday evening, we'd finally unpacked enough boxes that we could reach the hobby bench, and I thought it would be nice to get going on some scenery. I picked up the "ST Ryza-Pattern Ruins" from Dark Sphere for the bargain price of £14 some time ago, and thought it would be good to start getting scenery sorted for the new gaming table.


You get four sprues with two designs - enough for two sets of five pieces of scenery.


And this is where the "wrong tool" problem came in. With not everything unpacked, getting the scenery pieces off the sprue with a scalpel was a huge amount of work. Don't get me wrong, the kit itself was very nice - a bit mould line heavy, but nothing that a bit of cleaning wouldn't fix.


As you can see, each piece cleaned up pretty well - it was just getting them off the sprue that was taking forever.


After an hour, I'd only managed to get two pieces off the sprue and cleaned up.


As I took my lunch break, my darling wife then told me where a pair of clippers were hidden. We got the remaining eight pieces done in an hour and a half between us - easily half the time the first two pieces took, even allowing for two people.

So, folks, the lesson here is definitely to use the right tool for the job. I just scientifically proved it so you don't have to make the same mistakes...

Also, the Ryza ruin kit is excellent value for money and a good way of adding some cheap scatter terrain to your table.

Progress Accountability Update:
  • Swapped Bagh-Mari Sniper for a Nisse Sniper (model neutral)
  • Box of Infinity stuff sent for assembly
  • Assembled the Ryza Ruins kit myself (with wifely help)
  • No new models bought
  • No new models painted
Painted / Purchased score: 0 / 19

6 comments:

  1. I thought there was going to be some slashing your finger open with the scalpel horror story. I was wincing in advance so it was a relief to get to the happy ending.

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    1. I will say - cutting the first two off the sprue probably went much slower than it could have as I was absolutely terrified of doing so! It was a real risk...

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  2. I do pretty much everything - everything - with superglue and a heavy-duty Stanley knife.

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    1. Stanley knife is where it's at. I use mine for most modelling purposes.

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    2. A Stanley knife would definitely have been an improvement on the scalpel, but I think the clippers were faster than a Stanley knife would have been.

      It's about balance, really - you can do a lot with a few key tools, but if you do a thing a lot, and it would be sped up by a labour saving tool... In particular, as someone who's cash rich and time poor, it's usually worth it for me to buy labour saving gadgets provided they actually save me time!

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  3. For a long time, my list of Required Modeling Supplies* was just a decent knife (honestly, I still use a box cutter with snap-off blades), and an appropriate glue for your material. And, indeed, while I can still get by with just those if need be, since I started using clippers, it feels incredibly awkward and inefficient when I have to make do without them. They're my #1 Quality of Life-improving tool for building Models.

    *For basic assembly and kitbashing, not extensive conversion.

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