Saturday, August 22, 2015

A quick fix for motorization holes

A lot of you still build older armor kits, and those of you who do are familiar with Tamiya's marketing gimmick back in the 1970s where their armor was sold with small, battery-powered motors. A square or rectangular hole was molded into the underside of the lower hull to allow you to insert the batteries that powered the tiny motors.

Serious modelers laugh at the idea of running their carefully built and painted models on the floor, so the first task with every model was filling the hole. Unfortunately, most modelers over-engineered the solution, choosing the laborious process of filling and sanding the hole flush. I counted 14,335 articles in FineScale Modeler where the authors took that approach with their tracked masterpieces.

There's an easier way, and I really don't understand why no one does this. Rather than fill and sand the hole, simply cut a piece of sheet plastic that vaguely represents an access hatch and glue it over the hole. You're done in 10 minutes and you're an hour closer to modulating the bejesus out of your model and applying rain streaks.

Simple sheet plastic on a Tamiya Chieftan.

I hear a few of you protesting. "But that's not accurate. Access panels are flush with the underside!" True, but once the model is on a base or in your display case, it's extremely difficult to see the very fine line where the bogus hatch has been applied. And rarely, even in a contest, does it matter.

So there you go. Easy, right?


  1. Good tip and I like the idea.....Shame it is not that easy with the underside of a car.

  2. We all get these plastic "credit" cards, advertising this, or that, in the mail. A free source of building material. Perfect for this job...