Your Path
Gear & Guides for Complete Beginners
You need four things to build your first kit well: a kit, a nipper, a sanding stick, and a mat to work on. Everything else — the airbrush, the booth, the forty paints — is a later chapter, and buying it now teaches you nothing except regret.
This page is the whole first-timer path in one place: what the $60 starting bench looks like, the words you’ll meet on the box, and the exact order to add tools as your builds get more ambitious.
The path
- 01
Build one snap-fit kit clean
A 1/144 snap-fit kit, a $20 nipper, and two evenings. Two-stage cuts, no paint, no pressure.
- 02
Learn the sanding ladder
Erase your nub marks at 400→600→800 grit. This one skill upgrades every build you ever do.
- 03
Add panel lining
One accent-color bottle turns a clean build into a finished-looking one in twenty minutes.
- 04
Then decide about paint
Only after three clean builds does an airbrush conversation make sense. We’ll be here.
Gear for this path
60 field guides published
42 products vetted
229 reader price checks
Sheet 09 · Bench Goods
