Why 1/72 Scale?
by Steve Zaloga

This isn't really an article, but a quote from the excellent Braille Scale Discussion Group (october 24th, 2003) by that Doyen of Armour Experts, mr Steve Zaloga, who also is an expert modeller. Like so many expert military modellers he has kept himself to the bigger scale of 1/35, which admittedly has many things  going for it. Recently he has turned some of his attention back to the Braille Scale. (The string  was initiated by comments on pictures of a 1/72 Sherman DD posted on the Discussion Group.) I find his explanation why most eloquent, and notworthy for all modellers who are considering this small scale. It has been posted here, with the kind permission of mr Zaloga. (For more pics of this wonderful model, click here!)

Until that DD tank, I haven't built a serious small scale model in about 25 years (that PST S-300P doesn't count!). But all the resin fumes and PE radiation at Al Boone's place must have fried my brain. Since I stopped over at Al's last month while attending AMPS-East, I built that DD tank, and now I'm knee deep in another 1/72 project. So I blame Al for leading me away from the righteous path of 1/35th scale!

Click on the picture, to see a larger version!

I was flabbergasted not only by the amount of Al's stockpile, but by the quality of the new stuff. When I was last building small scale in the mid-1970s, the selection of kits was lousy, and the aftermarket stuff was (to put it politely) crap. I don't know how many of you guys remember what small scale was like back then. There were a handful of resin outfits operating in the UK, and the resin was some sticky, brittle stuff. After waiting months for a kit, it came in a lousy little box, broken into several pieces, and tangled in cotton padding which stuck to all the parts. To be charitable, it was not close to Alby or MR in quality. You were lucky if the wheels were round and if the tracks had any more detail than a plain rubber band.

The plastic kits back then were pretty lame. I remember waiting for months for the Hasegawa Stuart- now there's a disappointment. Matchbox was great in comparison, even if the detail was soft and clunky. Airfix tracks eventually melted your kit suspensions, and there were no aftermarket alternatives. If we were lucky, we maybe got two new kits a year, and once Airfix went belly-up, we were screwed. So I ended up doing a lot of scratch-building and heavy-duty conversions since there were so few decent things to build out-of-the-box.

What really flipped me out at Al's place was all the great little stuff that's available now. Part T-26 PE track- I couldn't believe it. Mind-bending stuff compared to the junk available in the 1970s. Resin kits that actually look like the subject they're supposed to represent! What a concept!

I was vaguely aware of the quality of recent resin kits, as I'd seen some of it at European shows. Part of the problem in the States is that a lot of the better stuff is not generally available, even at good shows like AMPS. Think of how hard it is to find Revell-Germany kits even at a half-way decent hobby shop. At the N. Virginia IPMS show last weekend (which is a pretty good show), I think that maybe one dealer out of about fifty had Revell Germany stuff and not much of a selection. But what I found out from Al was that there are a lot of excellent shops on the Internet. For the Omaha beach diorama, I put in E-mail orders with Troops & Tracks, Accurate Armour, AB Figures, and Archer, and I swear I had everything in about a week.

What got me back into building small scale again is that with all the nice stuff now available, it looks like a lot of fun. I've wanted to do a DD tank conversion for some years now, but it would be a bastard to do in 1/35th scale . I did that 1/72nd conversion in two weeks of evenings, and it was a fun little project and not a chore.

I've been wanting to do some diorama stuff, but in 1/35th scale, even a piddly little diorama takes up half the space in my hobby room and takes half a year to build. I built the whole diorama including the DD tank in less than a month. The Omaha beach diorama takes up only about 6x9 inches, but has one tank, two bunkers, and a half dozen figures. It took me only a couple of nights to clean and paint the figures. It would take me about two weeks to do that number of 1/35th scale figures and it would be so aggravating and boring that I wouldn't even want to do it. In 1/35th scale you have to worry about every last little nit-noid detail. In small scale, a lot of the really trivial but time-consuming stuff can be ignored. Small scale is a refreshing change of pace from 1/35th scale.

Considering the amount of 1/35th stuff I've got stashed in my basement, I'm not about to give up modelling in that scale. But I've already got about four future Braille projects in the planning stage (or to put it more accurately, I've started ordering stuff on Internet to build them!) So stay tuned to this channel.

                                                                                                            - Steve Zaloga.