Why do you build models?

[Steven P Allen]

What maotivates you to build what you build how you build it?

[Michael Eastes]

I build models because I can't afford the real thing. Also it has a calming,therapeutic effect.

[Jacques]

Modelling appeals to my meticulous, extreme anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive nature.

 

and I like to build smaller versions of the real deal, so i get my own copy.

[Armored Marine]

I've always been fascinated with things in minature. As a child, I remember joining my dad to a hobbie store. In the center of the store was a railroad set. It was a complete diorama of a city, complete with working traffic lights and RR crossings. I must have stared at it for what seems like hours, I was hooked ever since. My Dad also had a love for anything nautical. He enjoyed building old ships from the days of sail. I would watch him build the model, often it would take him days to finish a kit, because he actually rigged his lines, just like on the real thing. After the model was completed, I would stare at it, imangining what it might have been like to be there on a real ship. These days as I build models, I also day dream of what the model would have been like in life. I find all this highly relaxing, but also models can be a great tool for teaching, as my nephews have become interested in my collection

Ed

[Gennady I. Beregovoy]

History is my prime motivation. I just love to have a model that reminds me of some battle or event sitting on my desk or shelf.

 

Another motivation is, as someone rightly mentioned earlier, its therapeutic effect. I have had bad times before and building a kit somehow makes it go away. Though sometimes it's the opposite as Manic Moran has mentioned in another thread. Yes, sometimes it can be stressful instead of fun (especially when, late at night, one trips over, knocking the liquid cement, hits the clear plastic and ruins it. In the attempt to fix it, paint spills over, small pieces get lost, and...)

 

And of course, FUN!

 

[Edited by Gennady I. Beregovoy (21 July 2001).]

[Gennady I. Beregovoy]

Building models also has some other good effects. One is that the attention to detail makes one quite attentive to such things outside model making. Example: In studying a criminal case in law school, details such as the plate number of a car, or the length of the steel pipe used in the murder, are somehow easy to remember. I attribute this to my experience of making models.

 

Another good thing about making models is that it keeps me away from the computer. Although, as you can see, I'm logged on. That's because I don't have the paints for my PzH 2000.

 

And of course, research skills. And its educational value. I got a friend who I built models with in the past. Now, he's an avid reader of history, politics, etc.

[DougRichards]

Meditation in plastic