I leapt from my desk and sprinted with the fervor of a man about to receive an envelope stuffed with $1,000 bills. I’d heard knocking at the front door. But so had my wife. And she was faster. I arrived at the door and she handed me the package. “What is it?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said, in an outright lie. Had the package come from Amazon she’d have had little interest. But a handwritten return address with a women’s name on the upper left of the box piqued her interest.
My wife wasn’t suspicious. But two years into pandemic house-arrest, anything mildly unusual is enough to pass as thrillingly compelling. I’d have been just as curious had this package arrived for her. I sighed. I was going to have to confess.
“It’s a model,” I said, “of a motorcycle.” She shot me a questioning look. “Yes, I know,” I said. “I bought a model. Unopened, wrapped in cellophane. It was cheap.” Her look hadn’t changed. I’d been busted.
I reserve a certain disdain for adults keen on childish pursuits, feelings I’ve shared openly and frequently with my wife. Collecting dolls, commemorative kitsch (Elvis or Jesus airbrushed on a dinner plate) or anything by The Franklin Mint is code for men who have one leg stuck in adolescence. Model-building, for anyone over age 13, is just sad. And yet I’d just purchased a model of a Ducati 916. Just like the real one in the shed, which means I can’t even say I’d bought the model as a substitution for the real thing.
Forget multitasking. I struggle with unitasking—there are days when doing one thing at a time is beyond me. Modern life, with its demands and distractions, gnaws away at our attention spans and tempts the tempt-able away from what we really should be accomplishing. One of my gravest weaknesses is unfinished projects. At night, as I drift off to sleep, a queue forms in my mind of all the things, big and small, that require my attention. From shoring up the foundation on the house to replacing a dashboard light in the Jeep, it doesn’t matter how trivial or inconsequential the task is, they haunt me.
是什么es this have to do with a plastic model of a motorcycle? Isn’t adding another thing to the list (assembling the model) just creating another problem? I’d imagined, when I’d sent off $20, that by completing a project within a few hours I’d be able to bask in the pleasure of having brought a project from inception to fruition. And because a model—even a model of a Ducati—doesn’t require valve adjustments or its timing belts changed, it’s a project that wouldn’t require anything of me in the future. And I hoped the pleasure of completion would instill in me the fortitude to press on with the demands of other projects.
Before I started, I thought it prudent to head to YouTube for tips, as the last time I’d built a model I was an age-appropriate 13. I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to find a number of videos dedicated specifically to Tamiya’s 916 kit. The first video was 20 minutes and 17 seconds, which seemed excessively long for a model not much longer than the length of your hand. Then I looked again. The video was part one offour. Part one was about assembling the engine. Just the engine.
The care with which the builder in the video clipped parts off the plastic tree was my first inkling that modern model building had progressed since my last go at it. With an airbrush, the builder meticulously primed all surfaces, then sprayed the engine cases with aluminum paint. Next up were the engine covers, which were painted with a mixture of metallic green and grey to mimic the magnesium of the real bike’s engine. (Which is not exactly true. Factory race bikes had magnesium engine covers, but roadgoing bikes, which this model replicates, had aluminum covers.) But a little paint wasn’t the end of it. It was just the beginning.
To add a convincing element of the lifelike, the builder fabricated a full set of oil lines and a wiring harness for the fuel injectors from minuscule braided cloth. These were not in the kit. Nor was the linkage between the throttle bodies, fabricated from an aluminum pop tin. Finally, the engine was dabbed in something called panel line accent color, a watery black liquid painted overtop the junctions where parts meet. Once the excess was absorbed with Q-tips, this process provided a believable burnishing that echoed the dust and dirt that collect on a real engine.
As the 916’s engine is tucked behind a fairing, I didn’t see the need to be as obsessive about something you couldn’t see. Skipping ahead to episode four, I noted the procedure for painting the bodywork. To begin, glue the fuel tank and tail section together. And then, to hide the junction that runs right down the spine of the bike, carefully add body filler and sand smooth. Then prime. And sand. Next up, two mist coats of “Italian Red.” Sand. Then two “wet coats” of red. Now wet sand. Add two more wet coats of red. Apply fairing decals. And, finally, multiple coats of clear to make it shine like an apple polished on cashmere.
After an hour’s worth of video-watching, I closed the laptop and walked to the shed. I looked at the (full-sized) Ducati engine that required a rebuild, with its oil lines full of oil and radiator hoses that contained coolant. Here was an actual engine that could be rebuilt in not much more time than it would take me to build a non-operative plastic version half the size of a house cat.
睡前,我巧妙地隐藏内容of the model back in its box and slotted it into a credenza drawer. But that’s not where it will stay. Tonight, it’ll be circulating through my dreams, alongside the leaky oil pan from my VW and the rear tire of my mountain bike that only leaks air when I throw a leg over to go for a ride. But unlike many of my issues, this is one that offers a potential resolution. Anyone know of a 13-year-old with time on his—or her—hands?
