Plastic Model Mojo

The Model Show Spotlight is brought to you by The World of Armor A free model kit, a folding table, and someone patient enough to coach can add up to something bigger than a hobby. We’re joined by organizers behind Scale 41, a veterans-focused model making workshop hosted at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. They walk us through the plan: an unjudged public displ...

Decals can be the moment a build turns from fun to stressful, and we have all watched a perfect marking fold onto itself or silver at the worst possible time. That’s why we were excited to finally sit down with John Federico from Hawaiian Air Depot, a Hawaii-based aftermarket brand with a smart twist: instead of shipping pre-cut masks, John sells digital downloads (SVG and DXF) so you can cut your...

As we slide into fall show season mode. The weather is turning, the hobby calendar is filling up.  We’re talking about where we’ve been and where we’re going next including a recap of the Military Modelers Club of Louisville show in Shepherdsville and plans for the Cincinnati show at the Tri-State Warbirds Museum. We also share why vendor tables are part of the fun, even when we absolutely do not...

Model contests can be a blast, but they can also mess with your head if winning becomes the point. We dig into a listener question that hits a nerve for a lot of scale modelers: do you need to compete to be recognized, and what happens when you start building with “beating other builders” as the goal? We share our own experiences with competition, dopamine hits, and disappointment, plus the guardr...

The Cincinnati Scale Modelers are becoming the scale modeling equivalent to "The Big Red Machine"!  Join us as we discuss their upcoming show, and then pivot to a conversation regarding their Junior Modelers Chapter! A model contest inside a warbird museum is already a strong idea, but Cincinnati Scale Modelers are pushing it further with the kind of details that make a show feel effortl...

Your hobby room can either pull you into the build or quietly push you away from it. We talk through a real-world reset that many scale modelers are facing right now: replacing doom scrolling with model reading, building a simple nightly routine that feeds ideas, and making smart changes to the model room so the bench feels focused again instead of scattered. Listener mail takes us into two topics...

The fall model show season is here. We talk through upcoming events like the Military Modelers Club of Louisville invitational in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, plus an early nudge to start planning for the Cincinnati show in October. If you’ve been itching to get your work on a table, see new builds up close, or just hang out with other builders, this is the stretch of the year where local contests an...

The best model shows are not just contests, they are proof that a hobby can feel like a community. We’re back with Model Show Spotlight to share what’s coming next after Nationals, starting with our own Military Modelers Club of Louisville (MMCL) and the practical choices that make a local plastic model show run like a well-oiled machine. Alex Restrepo joins us to break down how MMCL pulled off a...

The best part of a national convention is not just the stacks of kits and the contest tables, it’s the moment you walk in and realize you are surrounded by your people. We’re back from the 2026 IPMS National Convention and talking through the full comedown: the unpacking, the reorganizing, and the small but important truth that some “solutions” in the model room (looking at you, retail paint racks...

Fort Wayne set a new bar for what an IPMS National Convention can feel like: busy without being crushing, loud without being unbearable, and packed with modelers who actually have room to stop and talk. We’re fresh back from Nationals, and before we dive into the “juicy bits” in our next feature show, we wanted to put the spotlight where it belongs, on the people who made the weekend work and the...

Digger Dave Goldfinch joins us for some brief travel talk, from recent events to what’s ahead, including the 2026 IPMS National Convention in Fort Wayne. There’s a full-on side quest too: a road trip to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, plus essential Americana stops like Waffle House and Buc-ee’s.  Look for National Convention show content along with another listener submitted topic...

The fastest way to lose your modeling mojo is not a bad kit, it is a workspace that fights you every step of the build. With the IPMS Nationals in Fort Wayne around the corner, we keep things “Mojo Light” but pack in a ton of practical shop talk driven by listener messages, real bench mishaps, and the kind of small changes that add up to better results. We start with what life looks like when gues...

Vendors sold out months early, a Star Trek 60th anniversary category on the awards table, and a full day of plastic modeling in one of the most visitor-friendly spots in north Alabama. We sit down with Tom Clark from the Huntsville Plastic Modelers Society to get the real details on their 49th annual show at the Huntsville JC’s building on Airport Road, including what to expect if you’re traveling...

The hobby is drowning in great choices right now, and that’s both a gift and a trap. We talk through what “superabundance” really looks like in modern scale modeling: a flood of high-quality plastic model kits, aftermarket decals, 3D printed parts, and specialized paint and weathering products that would’ve felt impossible a couple decades ago. Using examples like the suddenly crowded field of 1/7...

A Mighty Eighth Air Force book is on the table, but we’re not doing a “click and win” giveaway. We want something that makes the show better for everyone: your best Shop Talk topic ideas and your sharpest questions for the Wheel of Accidental Wisdom. Mike and Kentucky Dave start with a laid back Fourth of July catch up, from road weariness to the kind of heat that makes even a pool feel too warm....

We settle into a laid-back holiday catch-up, swap a few vacation highlights, and revisit that specific kind of nostalgia that comes from remembering long-gone hobby shops and the stuff we bought there. Then we look ahead to July with two feature episodes on the calendar, including a shop talk segment, plus a Nationals run-up as IPMS Nationals gets closer. If you like plastic model building podcast...

A tiny paint question can turn into a big lesson about how the hobby actually works. We start with the everyday reality of scale modeling: reorganizing the model room, fighting distractions, and trying to protect bench time while life keeps piling on. Then we jump into listener mail that gets surprisingly deep, including how to choose an olive drab or Marine green for a Pacific Theater Sherman in...

A hobby can feel timeless right up until the moment it changes under your hands. We start with the real-world catch up: Wonderfest, the sprint toward the IPMS Nationals in Fort Wayne, and the listener mail that reminds us why this community is so strong. Along the way we share show intel, a clever “Squadron Catalog Challenge” idea, and what one contest recap teaches about entry growth, online regi...

You can feel when a Nationals is being built with real intention and Fort Wayne is making that case early. We sit down with John Figueroa, chair of the 2026 IPMS USA National Convention, and treasurer Dave Mason to get the behind-the-scenes look at what’s coming to the Grand Wayne Convention Center in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana, August 5 through 8. The big headline: they’re not doing this with o...

We get real about the behind-the-scenes side of running a scale modeling podcast. May hit us with health issues, a car that refused to make the trip, and the kind of production chaos that throws schedules off. We lay out what June should look like, what we’ve already recorded, and how we’re planning to get feature episodes and shorts back on track as we head toward bigger events like the IPMS Nati...

A hobby can be the best kind of escape until your workspace fights you, your calendar fills up, and the internet decides a vague press blurb means the sky is falling. We start with what’s been happening at our own benches, including Dave’s push to overhaul a hobby room that has somehow become “anti-modeling,” plus a listener-recommended project tracking app that could genuinely help builders log p...

Something big is happening in scale modeling, and you can feel it in the way builders talk about 3D printing, new subjects, and the shows that are turning into true hobby meetups. We sit down with Brandon Lowe from Squadron to get a grounded look at what it takes to turn a cool idea into a real 3D printed model kit you can buy, build, paint, and display with pride.  We talk through two attention-g...

We zoom out to the bigger modeling hobby community. We recap our trip to the AMPS International Convention in South Bend, Indiana, from standout vendors to the simple joy of photographing great models without hovering too close with a phone. We also look ahead to Wonderfest at the end of May, including the added buzz around the 60th anniversary of Star Trek and what that could mean for sci-fi mode...

Two model shows, two very different philosophies, one shared goal: make the scale modeling hobby feel bigger than your workbench. We’re in the thick of show season, and we’re shining a light on events that are actively evolving what a great model show can be for builders, vendors, and first-timers who just want to learn and meet people. First up is SilverCon in Sacramento, California, hosted by IP...

Your bench time is precious, so when something starts sabotaging it, like CA glue fumes wrecking your sinuses or a half-finished kit stalling for months, we want fixes that actually work. After two big shows in three weeks, we finally do some much-needed housekeeping and burn down a mountain of listener mail with the kind of practical advice you can put to work immediately. We dig deep into cyanoa...