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Research: digging for information

Zinkit: starting scale models from the ground up

At Zinkit we firmly believe in a good, serious, solid research as a prime step in the process for a perfect scale model.

Accurate and precise information is allways fundamental to achieve a product appreciated by the modeller, and thereafter with good sales and helping the image and positioning of the brand. Information is the key.

Certainly there are and will be cases of difficult and long research for a certain project, but the fact is in most cases the information exists in a way or another, either in private or public archives, museums, collections, companies…

We have dealt with all kind of projects, some easy, some difficult, some almost impossible. But we love to search for, to observe, to dig, and to dig again. Sometimes after a long search a tiny detail in the corner of a blurry photograph will guide us into the most useful set of pictures we could dream off. Sometimes greasy handbooks, forgotten in the selves of an old bookshop. Sometimes a company historian, who stubornly kept dirty old papers away from the trash or the fire. Sometimes a digital collection, which hides fantastic material under wrong spelling, dates or indexation.

So, in many cases, there’s just a bunch of poor excuses when bad research is done and a bad kit is released to the market, to be unmercifully trashed by modellers across all the media, good, serious, solid researchand with a reason. All because good, serious, solid research was not done.

At Zinkit we love digging into the obscure to bring light onto your kits.

Nothing like the real thing

We have travelled across many museums and collections to gather information for many of our projects. We have photographed, measured, scanned in 3D, up and down the real thing, to get the most accurate data and details needed for the design of the best possible kit.

The smell of old papers

Original publications will provide in most cases a wealth of useful information. Handbooks, brochures and manuals will bring plans, pictures, dimensions, tabulated data, snippets of technical info allways helpful to design the kit to the last nut and bolt. Magazine articles, drive tests, press reviews, user comments, will provide the ice on the cake to get a lively picture of the machine: its daily life, the workings, the intrincacies, the goods and bads. Plus service memories, photographs, official orders, will help for options, profiles, colours, decals… We love digging into old papers.