This little model occupied far more of my time than it had any right to this week. WHen the daily eBay alerts came in, a couple of clicks lead me to a listing for this Kymodel Mooring Tug kit.
I was facinated as it looks like the hull and superstructure are a small series of larg plastic mouldings. OK, the boat is 35cm long, so not that large, but large and complicated on model boat terms.
Digging around when I should have been doing some work, leads me to beleive that the parts are either 3D printed, or low-pressure ABS mouldings. My money is on the former, although I can't see any printing lines in photos. There is discussion of making the model watertight though, an issue with 3D printed boats (and submarines as one of our club members knows).
At £114, the price isn't bad, and it's small enough for comfortable workbench building, but large enough (as seen in this video) to sail on a normal model boating pond. It will even pull a load withouth falling over, which is quite impressive.
The problem is - even if it landed in my lap, I'm still short of the urge to make anything. I'm not short of projects. I'm sure there is even a similar size boat kit in the stash. If there isn't, I know I have plans for a scratchbuild. I managed to sternly tell myself this long before the credit card starting calling.
Should I think the buzz of a potential new project is a good thing? Not sure really, as it's never entirely gone away. Over the last three months, a tiny numbers of kits have been added to the pile. Admitedly, these are models that I've fancied for many years (over 30 on one case) and are on eBay searches as much to scratch an itch as anything else.
While I'd hope to have plenty more years left in me, I still wonder if I have already built a stash too large for me to ever hope to build. Maybe if a lottery win left me with no need to work, and able to build that perfect workshop. But then I'd have the cash to buy even more projects, so maybe it would never end!
Why is it that the new project buzz is so strong? I know I'm not alone in feeling this.