DIY Products
Finished products include hobby or DIY products and spare parts, that due to their complexity require machine processing and cannot usually be manufactured at home.
However, they are needed as a component to produce a new product or require additional manual and creative work as a finished product (e.g., assembly and decoration for mock-ups).
Mock-ups are a scaled-down, lifelike but non-functional copy of an object, building, sculpture, creature, or vehicle.
One possible categorization is:
- car mock-ups
- flight mock-ups
- ship mock-ups
- dioramas and building models
- mock-up figurines
Mock-up scales range from 1: 6 to 1: 720. The latter is obviously made in large warships, while human-scale objects and creatures are made at the former rate. For cars, the 1:24 and 1:18 scales are the most common.
You will also need other materials and tools to put together the mock-ups, which you can find in separate categories.
Such as e.g. adhesives, paints, spray guns, stickers, etc.
Some mock-ups already include the necessary accessories. This is always indicated on the products.
Model building steps:
Gluing the elements together in groups
Filling and grinding joint lines and recesses
Painting or varnishing of element groups with a brush or paint sprayer
Assembling and gluing the groups
Applying stickers, signs
Special effects e.g. contouring, dirt, wear, abrasion, exposure to mud, snow, rust, etc.
In order to increase the detail, advanced modelers can also make certain elements separately with the resin casting technique or. they even use photo etching and thermal transfer printing.
From the production cost side, the price of the model depends on 3 factors: The size of the model, the quality of the material and the production technology used.
The difficulty level of the models is denoted by a number between 1 and 5, 1 being the easiest and 5 being the most difficult. This shows, on the one hand, the complexity of the assembly, the difficulty of painting and stickering, the detail itself and the dexterity, experience and assembly time required for this.