8404 Diorama Studios

I’m all for accuracy up to a point, historical accuracy matters most to me being as I am first and foremost a history geek. Even with that, I don’t dwell on arcane minutiae that in the long run doesn’t matter. On the modeling side those people are called rivet counters, they nit pick everything for the tiniest inaccuracy in a kit or finished model and act like it’s the end of the world. They leave me wondering if perhaps they were potty trained at gunpoint. I believe if there is something inaccurate in a kit and it bothers you, there are several options — 1.) Don’t buy the kit; 2.) You call yourself a modeler, fix it if it’s within your abilities; or 3.) Live with it and get on with life there are far more important things than worrying about the minutiae of a plastic model most people have no idea there’s anything inaccurate on to begin with. I honestly have nothing against them personally, to each his own. However, if they decide to criticize my work with a know-it-all attitude and I can prove them wrong that’s where we have a problem.

I’d like to give you a prime example – the rivet counter who told me that it was wrong to depict MRE cases on the props of an LAV-25. “They would never do that…” Having spent 6 months living in the back of one in Iraq I knew differently, and produced a picture to prove it. His response was, “Oh, that was just an aberration, no unit would allow that.” He felt pretty smug right up until I showed him a picture of the company laager in Ad Diwaniyah with nearly all the LAV’s having them in place. His response was “Well, how do you know that wasn’t staged?” When I told him I’d taken the pictures in Iraq and that the aberration vehicle was my home for 6 months he got a dumb look on his face and stopped talking.

So, to wrap things up on the subject of rivet counters. If you are one, enjoy it as much as you want. Don’t bring your need to feel superior here, because it is unwelcome. Model building is a hobby, it’s not a matter of life and death; at the end of the day what matters is that you enjoyed what you did. I’ll step down off my soap box now. Let’s get back to Iwo Jima and that cave, shall we?