Jean-Benoit Buisson

Where this started

It started with four characters printed on a box lid. A scale — 1:72 — read by almost everybody as a size rather than as a ratio. It is nothing of the kind. That figure says only how many times smaller than the original the model is; it says nothing about how long the finished thing will be, because that depends on the original, and the same four characters cover a kit of eight centimeters and one of thirty. Once that gap is visible, the same shape turns up across every shelf. Parts counts quoted without saying that two hundred of them are identical track links. Age marks sold as difficulty grades when they are safety mentions about small parts. Compressor pressures quoted in bars nobody paints at. And most pages answering these questions look identical: a ranked list, a score, a button, and not one figure a reader could hold against the maker's own sheet.

The second problem arrives after the carton is opened. This hobby is bought on a headline and kept or returned on a fitment. A spare 0,3 mm (0.01 in) nozzle that will not seat in the gun it was bought for. A lacquer thinner poured into a water-based acrylic. A 1:48 decal sheet on a 1:72 fuselage. A styrene cement on an ABS brick model. A painting handle made for 20 to 25 mm (0.79 to 0.98 in) bases and a figure on a 32 mm (1.26 in) one. A pack of figures with no bases to put them on. None of that is on the front of the carton, and each one decides whether the purchase was worth making.

So the site does the tedious part. It reads what manufacturers and standards bodies publish, confirms each reference market by market, and writes down the line that settles the question — a scale next to the fact that it is a ratio and not a length, a parts count next to what the maker chose to count, a nozzle diameter next to the pressure it works at, a paint next to the base and the thinner that belong to it — and it states plainly when a figure was never published. That last habit matters more than it sounds: a great deal of the disappointment on these shelves comes from a number nobody printed, or one printed without the condition that gives it meaning.

Behind every published page sits a working file for that shelf, and it holds five things: the one dimension a purchase turns on; every place a manual and a sales page disagree; the fittings that tie an owner to a single maker for everything bought afterwards; what a figure is worth when it arrives without its condition; and the particular mistake that shelf invites. The site is those files, sorted and written out, in five languages — the same questions get asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian, and answered worse in most of them.

The list below is counted by the build, not by hand

None of it is maintained by me. It is read back out of the catalog every time the site is built, one line for each published page, and it grows or shrinks on its own as a shelf opens or a reference vanishes. What it records is what has been written up — which — and there is no polite way around this — is a different thing from what is standing on anybody’s shelf.

• Italeri 6754

Three things I had to pay to learn

Whatever is set in the largest type is almost never what the purchase actually turns on. A kit is sold on its parts count when the scale decides what the build will demand. A compressor is sold on its maximum pressure when the tank decides whether the motor runs all afternoon. A brush set is sold on the number of brushes when two shapes do the work. A spray booth is sold on its lighting when the extraction rate and an opening window decide whether it does anything at all.

Keeping a bench working costs more, over its life, than getting the tools home ever did. An airbrush whose nozzle was dropped from the spares list has a service life set by that list. A wet palette is a subscription to its own paper. And a first airbrush belongs to its thread and its nozzle range for the rest of its life, which sets what every part bought after it can be.

And the thing you end up judging it by is usually absent from the specification sheet altogether: whether the trigger still returns square in its fourth year, whether a palette foam grew mold over a summer, whether a twenty-year-old decal sheet still releases from its backing, and whether the part that fails first will still be listed on the day it fails.

What I have no claim to be

I am not a professional model builder, a commission painter, a club instructor or a certification body. I hold no qualification in any of those fields, I have never worked for a manufacturer, an importer or a model shop, and nothing on this site leans on a professional title. A page here describes a product — its dimensions, its declared figures, any standard it cites — and stops there. In particular, every scale, parts count, finished length, nozzle diameter, working pressure, volume in milliliters, grit number, base diameter, age mark, pack weight and stated capacity on this site is reported from the manufacturer, with its unit as published and its source named, and never derived by me. Where a maker gives a figure together with the condition it was taken under, the page credits both to that maker and keeps them together, and nothing here is called finer, stronger or safer than anything else on the strength of a specification sheet.

This site is not a manual and not training. For the hazard label that governs how a glue, a thinner or an aerosol may be used, for the ventilation a carton asks for, for the disposal of what is left in a jar of cleaner, and for the standards a product cites, it points to the maker's instructions, to the regulation that sets the rule and to the body behind the standard, rather than paraphrasing them. Two statements are repeated rather than assumed. a published value and the condition behind it are one thing in two halves, and this site never prints half of it — the value, its unit and the maker who wrote it down travel together. The second, no glue, no thinner, no primer, no aerosol and no spray booth is described here as making anything safe. What a page carries is the figure its maker published and the condition that came with it. Everything past that point is settled by the sheet in the box, by the standard on the label, and by the room the work is done in.

A name at the foot of a page proves nothing, and this site never asks to be taken on the strength of one. Each judgment shows its grounds where it is made, and the method in full sits under what decides the order of a shelf.

The five rules every page is held to

• No figure appears without its source beside it — a datasheet, an instruction sheet, the number molded into the sprue, a named standard, or what owners agree on after a year at the bench.
• No cell is filled in to make a table look finished — not a price, not a reference, not a dimension. Where a maker published nothing, the row stays blank and the page says as much in words.
• Each reference is checked market by market before it goes out. Where a model is not sold where you are, the button searches that store instead of opening a listing that has gone.
• Where the cheaper option is the right one, the page says so — and where the right answer is a fresh blade, an overnight wait before sanding a filled seam or a sheet of baking parchment rather than any purchase at all, it says that instead.
• No shelf is arranged around whichever number is printed largest — and where this year’s box is hard to tell from last year’s, the page says that too.

What it costs to read one of these figures wrong

This hobby is sold on numbers that state one thing and are read as another, and the gap usually surfaces on the first evening at the bench. A scale stands where a size is assumed. A parts count stands where a difficulty is assumed. An age mark stands where a skill level is assumed. Meanwhile the things everybody treats as afterthoughts — a blade changed before it drags, a seam left proud overnight, a gloss coat under a decal, a cupful of cleaner through a gun — repeatedly decide whether the model worked.

Most of what matters on these shelves is free to learn and fits in a single line: a published figure records what a maker was willing to print about its own product, and promises nothing whatever about whoever will use it. Most of the rest is the same kind of thing. Reading a nozzle diameter and its working pressure as one figure rather than two. Keeping a spare needle for the evening one bends. Checking a decal scale before buying the sheet. Priming in grey rather than in white. Sites that exist to shift equipment walk straight past all of that. It is not walked past here.

Sending a correction

Name something that is wrong and it is corrected, and the date of the correction stays on the page for anyone to check. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · ScaleVerdict · Paris, France