Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
This is the Academy 1/32 Israeli F-16 Sufa. I am using two aftermarket kits as well; an Aires resin wheel bay kit and a ResKit resin wheel set. I put the coffee cup in the picture to give scale. The box is huge!
In the latest Fine Scale Modeler mag I read the reader tip "organizing parts at the bench" on page 7. Basically it is a way to get rid of the large sprue trees. Forgive me that I did not take photos of the sprues before I stripped them. I didn't think of it until it was done. Here is what is left of them...
And here are the images of what they looked like from the instruction manual;
Ok, so the article says to go through the instruction book, and for each step listed, cut out the parts for that step and put them in a zip lock bag. More than one step can be included in a bag, or split a partcularly large step into "a", "b" and note it on the instruction sheet. Write the step number on the bag and set it aside. Go through the book, making notes about decisions you make on work flow or different version choices. Here is one bag...
After all the steps are done and parts are bagged, clip all of the unused parts and label...uhhh,..."unused parts". I took that a little further and put parts for particular ordinance not used into its own bag and labeled it as the type and scale. (ie 1/32 500lb GBU-38 JDAM) After all the bags are finished and the sprue trees discarded it is time to clean the parts. I dumped each bag into a low pyrex glass pan and scraped seam lines, sprue tabs, etc then cleaned with 70% alcohol. I put the pieces back in the bag and wrote a circled "C" for "cleaned". Here are the tidied up bags and the article...
Sorry about the glare, but you get the idea. Here is the box with the bagged and cleaned parts much more compact and easy to find...
I am hopelessly disorganized. I usually have sprues stacked up all around me and have to search for the right sprue and part. I waste TONS of time doing that, as well as I am notorious for missed parts and don't realize until the very end and have to go backwardsto see what I missed. The "unused parts" list was helpful to me as I cut those pieces and bagged them for each sprue. If there was a part left on the sprue I knew I had missed something and went back to the instructions, found which bag that part should be in and put it in there. All of this took just a few hours, and now I feel I have a streamlined workflow ahead of me. Take the parts out of the bag, assemble, paint, whatever. The author said it cuts his build time in half, even including the prep time. Man, I hope this helps me! I feel it already has.
