What 1:72 actually means
Every MODEL KIT is made to a SCALE, written as a ratio. A 1:72 aircraft is exactly seventy-two times smaller than the real one in every direction, so a Spitfire with a wingspan of about eleven metres becomes a model roughly fifteen centimetres across. Popular scales for aircraft include 1:72 and 1:48, while cars are often 1:24 and military figures 1:35.
Model railways have their own sizes. In Britain the most common is OO gauge, with trains built to 1:76 but running on track made for the slightly smaller 1:87 scale used elsewhere. That odd mismatch goes back to the 1920s: British trains are small, and early motors would not fit inside bodies at 1:87, so makers enlarged the bodies and kept the track. Our trains page covers the real things.
Plastic cement melts the plastic
Airfix, the best-known British brand, began by making plastic combs before it produced its first kits around 1950. Plastic kits come as PIECES attached to a frame called a sprue. Parts are snipped off and cleaned up, with a craft knife used to TRIM leftover plastic and a fine file or paper to SAND the joins smooth. PUTTY fills any gaps.
The GLUE sold for plastic kits, often called CEMENT, is not really glue. It is a solvent that softens the surface of two pieces so they melt into each other and set as one, a joint as strong as the plastic itself. That is also why a drip in the wrong place leaves a permanent mark, and why modellers use as little as possible. TWEEZERS handle the smallest PARTS.
Paint, decals and weathering
Most models are painted before or during building, with a fine BRUSH or an airbrush. DECALS — the markings, numbers and badges — are printed on thin film that slides off a backing paper when soaked in water, and a modeller eases each one into position before it dries. Patience with this step is where a good model is made.
Many builders then add weathering: rust streaks, mud, faded paint and oil stains, so a tank looks as if it has driven across a field rather than out of a box. A DIORAMA sets the finished model in a miniature scene. The word first named a Paris entertainment of the 1820s, where huge painted scenes changed with the lighting.
Film models built from spare parts
Before computer effects, film spaceships and cities were real models. Model makers building the spacecraft for the original Star Wars films covered them in DETAIL taken from hundreds of shop-bought kits of tanks, ships and cars — a technique known as kitbashing — and that is what makes so many of those ships look convincingly complicated. Collectors still spot the tank and aircraft parts on screen.
Following the INSTRUCTIONS step by step builds real skill: reading a technical drawing, planning an order of work, and handling tiny pieces with care. As a HOBBY it rewards slow, steady effort, and a finished model on DISPLAY is proof of how much can be made from a box of PLASTIC pieces. It is quiet, absorbing work to ASSEMBLE, PAINT and BUILD.