Model Madness

So wayyyy back (by like, a few posts 😅) on my cat model post, I mentioned that this little kitty cat build totally hadn't sent me down a rabbit hole.

It totally did.

But little gundam-esque plastic models that aren't, well, Gundam or Warhammer, are harder to find. There's some anime girl type models but I wanted something different which was when I remember the little tab and fold metal models that they sell in museums and gift shops and places of like, historical tanks or Star Wars ships.

Well, now that was a dangerous thought.

I looked it up, and Metal Earth is the big-name western producer of these models, but they're sibling companies with Piececool (China) and Tenyo (Japan) and each brand has its own models and trends, not to mention models from the newer competitors that have also come onto the scene from China and Korea, so there's a lot of variety out there!

Mmmmm, variety. Collection-potential. I love collecting sets of things.

But maybe the cat was a one-off? Maybe the metal sheet models wouldn't be to my taste?

I ordered one of Piececool's Mini Chang'an series models from their new UK site. It's a series of small versions of their larger and more complex historical town/street buildings, and being tiny is much simpler than the full size equivalents.

(Piececool and Metal Earth both grade all of their models in terms of build difficulty, PC goes by number of stars from 1 being super easy to 8+ being super hard, while ME just grade from Easy to Challenging on a curve.)

Long story short, the model took me a couple of hours to build, but it was fun! I enjoyed the challenge of learning how it all goes together and I found it rather meditative: it's very hard to think about anything but the piece you're folding/assembling. Mind-chatter be gone!

Please excuse the poor quality pic, I'll take a better shot at a later date, but here you go! Here's my mini Cloth Factory!

It's all of about 6cm across the front, maybe 5cm at it's tallest and 3cm deep. Tiny, tiny baby.

You don't need many tools for these, and ME and PC both sell a bargain little tool set for these models. It's just some little pliers and flush cutters. If you get into these, I also recommend the little tab twister tool that PC sell that's like a thin rod of steel with a slot at each end, makes it really easy to reach into a model and twist a tab into place without needing to jam pliers in there. If you've not got tiny hands, I also suggest some fine tip tweezers for holding the itty bitty pieces in place.

The build process is kinda straightforward once you get past the massive sheet of instructions. You find the piece you want on the diagram of all the parts as laid out on the metal sheet, snip out that part, and then fold/bend it as required. Pieces are held together or held in place by little tabs that go into equally little slots and are twisted or bent round to keep them locked in. No glue required, unless you break something and then, well, I won't say a word!

If you follow the instructions step by step, carefully, (maybe read through the given section just to be aware of how it all goes together) then the complicated sea of parts and pieces turns into just a series of very simple steps that magically combine to give you this wonderfully detailed little model at the end!

There's the rare step that requires a bit of wiggling and coercing and cursing to get everything into place right, but overall I found the process to be a diverting few hours of mild and pleasant concentration.

And the finished thing does look fantastic, I didn't expect such a level of detail in such a tiny thing, but it's all there. The floor in the open room of that central tower is patterned, for example. It's a lovely looking little decoration and will be taking up a well deserved spot in my display case soon.

At this point, it's fair to say I've been bitten by the modelling bug! Hence why, as soon as I finish the last ones, I'll be posting more pics of a series of ME models that I've built.

Someone take these pliers off me, before I drown in metalwork! :p