I decided I’d try and make use of the discarded upper hull part of this Trumpeter 1/72 Tiger I (Early!). I figured it might be fun to see if could… open up the rear deck grills!
I started out on this idea by filing, sanding and scraping away styrene, from underneath. On a 1/35 or larger model, this might well work relatively easily. At 1/72, it was – and I knew it – asking for trouble.
The thing is, at this scale, once you’ve removed or thinned down the supporting styrene, what’s left is do perilously thin, it flexes and breaks all too easily. Which of course it did. Hence the reinforcement visible in the above photo.
Is the classic case of attempting to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear? Perhaps. But on another level, this kind of silliness is what makes model-making such fun. If the hours of messy and sado-masochistic work this entailed can be called fun!?
And all this for a piece of plastic currently destined for the spares box! How, I wonder, can I/shall I make use of it? When I’m lacking the vast majority of ç