Sankei Good Old Diorama Series : Buffet B

I had a little hobby and movies time this past weekend. I had the house to myself and I was sick, so the choice to actually sit and build the paper kit I was sitting on came a bit easier. There were no major tasks I was going to take on in the house and a bike ride was out of the question. :)

The kit was the Sankei Buffet B kit. I hated it and cursed at it all the way through the building process! heheheheh







I've built these kits before and I have my systems down for sure. I know I need to take my time, use the right glue, and "measure twice and cut once" when it comes to the process - especially with this ROKET CARD GLUE I use. There's no turning back once you put the pieces together. But, for some reason, this kit was a real bear to get right.

I think some of it was me being sick - I definitely wasn't 100%.  The building's angles were an issue, as well. The instructions - usually spot on - were a bit off and hard to fathom in spots. Basically a perfect storm for things to go wrong!


I was plugging away and things started to not fit and line up like they usually do. I was starting to get frustrated, so I walked away for a minute after remembering that I tell my daughter to do that when she's starting to get angry at her projects. It worked and I was able to calm down a bit...ALL FOUR TIMES that I walked away from this sucker. heh

I even managed to squish a wall as I tried to get something to fit. That's something I had not done since my first few times building these kits - I've learned that you can't apply as much pressure as you can with plastic kits. Not at all.

I resorted to a pair of snips at one point - removing some tabs that were not syncing up.

The upside was that I've gotten FAR better working with the smaller card pieces. Again, systems. Like using the knife to snag and apply smaller items.

I finally started cutting some additional corners, aiming to have the front look good and sacrificing items on the back side of the building that would be less visible. The result was FAR better than I expected. I thought this was going to be dumped in the far....FAR back of the layout....behind some trees, maybe. hehehe  Turned out ok.

Again, the back has the most issues. The roof doesn't hit the wall on the one side, there's glue showing on the wood slat parts, and things just look so dern sloppy. :(  I need to address the edges of the paper that makes up the roof as well. They are always so thick that you need to dull the edges a bit to avoid that bright white line at the edges.

Large, open gap between the wall corners and rooftop

But, again, this is N scale and the three foot rule applies!  It looks better from a distance. Especially since the back isn't visible. I'm going to build a base foundation for it as well. That will help to lock it into the scene.

I was going to quit Sankei kits, but after seeing the result of a BAD build, I think I might get a few more to fill in the new pink foam sections at the back of the layout space.  I do like the details and the overall looks of the Sankei kits.

 I might get these guys - a ramen house and warehouse space.

I need to play around with weathering these kits. I might look into weathering powders or pastels. It'll give me another level of details to play with later.

I like keeping little items in the back of my mind - like paper kit weathering or little things I'd like to tackle like adding more water to the layout space somewhere at some point. A pond of little pool of water. As I'm working with the space, I can keep an eye out for places and details where things like this might fit.

A MODEL RAIL RADIO Facebook page member suggested that I might drop a THUNDERBIRD 2 (from the TV show THUNDERBIRDS) scene into the mix somewhere. It just might happen now that my kaiju monster idea has been back-burnered for a moment!

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