Plastic model kits for beginners: snap-fit or cement, and the tools you need

A plastic model kit arrives as a box of plastic parts attached to plastic frames. You cut the parts off and assemble them yourself ¹. Difficulty varies a lot: some boxes can be finished straight out of the box, while others need cement, paint and several specialist tools ². This article covers the first things a beginner needs to sort out: the difference between snap-fit and cement kits, the minimum tools to buy, how to cut parts off without leaving marks, and how to pick a first kit.

Scale and the usual scales for each subject have their own article, and so do brands and product series. Here, each maker's entry-level line is used only as an example, with no brand recommendation.

Two ways of building

Plastic kits fall roughly into two types. One is snap-fit, where parts clip together with tabs and sockets and no cement is needed. These kits often simplify detail, and the plastic is often molded in the finished color ². The other is the cement kit, where parts are joined with solvent-type plastic cement ², and harder ones also need painting.

There is no sharp line between the two. Wikipedia mentions kits where most parts snap together but a few still need glue ². So check what the box or product page says before buying, instead of asking only "is it snap-fit?"

Here is what each maker's official site says about its entry-level line:

Snap-fit does not mean tool-free. Tamiya's Clic Loc page says outright that you need pliers to cut the parts off, while Bandai's Entry Grade uses the "touch gate" design, so parts come off without tools ⁶. Bandai's customer support center explains the term as a kit designed so that parts can be taken off the runner directly, without nippers ⁸. How Gunpla is handled is left for a later Gundam topic, and this is the only mention here.

The minimum tools to buy

Tamiya's beginner guide says that the sheer range of tools can leave people not knowing where to start, and advises buying the basic ones first and adding more as your methods and skills develop ¹. The minimum list for a beginner:

Figure 1 shows a pair of hobby nippers.

*Figure 1: Hobby nippers and sprues. Photo: Gravis, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

White glue, super glue and epoxy are other kinds of adhesive, which some people use alongside plastic cement when their properties are needed ². A beginner can skip paint at first: the parts in snap-fit kits are already in their final colors ³, and for Step 2 Hasegawa also recommends products with colored parts that are easier to assemble ¹³. Painting is only recommended at Hasegawa's Step 3 page ¹⁴.

Sprues, gates and part numbers

Parts grow on a plastic frame called a sprue or runner (ランナー) ¹⁹. The short stretch where a part joins the sprue is the gate (ゲート), a word Bandai's tutorial uses when it covers cleanup after cutting ¹⁰.

In Figure 2, a dark blue part has been cut off and a small stub is left standing on the sprue. That stub is the gate nub.

*Figure 2: The gate nub left on the sprue after cutting. Photo: Gravis, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

How to cut

Hasegawa's official tutorial has five steps: hold the nippers with the flat side toward your palm, find the part by the number in the instructions, cut with the flat of the jaw against the part, clean up the nub left after cutting, and cut from a little further away when the blade will not fit in ¹⁵.

Bandai's tutorial recommends two-step cutting (二度切り): leave a little material, make a second cut, then finish with a file or similar. The nippers go in from the back of the sprue ¹⁰. Bandai's support center explains why. However sharp the nippers are, the cut surface gets squeezed, and where the pressure concentrates the plastic turns white. Making the first cut a little away from the part and then cutting a second time keeps the whitening to a minimum ¹⁶.

For thick sprues, the support center suggests cutting the sprue with ordinary nippers first and then cutting the gates with precision nippers, which makes the precision nippers last longer ¹⁷.

As for how much of a nub to leave, the official sources give no figure in millimeters. A retailer's article says to leave 1 to 2 mm and trim it with a knife or sanding stick ¹⁸. That is a single secondary source. It follows the same idea as Bandai's two-step cut, so go by feel when using it.

When to cut

The support center advises cutting parts off in batches, section by section as the instructions go, so parts are less likely to get lost and a wrong assembly is noticed earlier ¹⁹. Commenters on the same page also mention that small parts and left-right symmetrical joint parts are easy to lose or mix up if cut off early ¹⁹.

Instructions

Figure 3 shows two pages of a Revell instruction sheet beside a bottle of plastic cement, a pot of paint and a brush. Figure 4 is the first page of an Airfix T-34 instruction sheet. Both break assembly into small numbered boxes, each drawing the parts for that step, and the number beside each part matches a part in the box. Hasegawa's tutorial also says to read the number in the instructions and find the part with the same number on the sprue ¹⁵.

*Figure 3: Instructions, plastic cement, paint and brush. Photo: Auge=mit, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

*Figure 4: Airfix T-34 instructions. Photo: TheRustler45, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.*

How to read the skill level, scale and paint chart on the box has its own article, "How to read a model kit box and instructions".

Choosing a first kit

First decide which way of building you want.

• If you want no glue and no paint, pick a snap-fit kit. In the table above, the official pages for Clic Loc ³, Quickbuild ⁵ and Entry Grade ⁶ say no painting is needed, while Revell's click system page says only that no cement is needed ⁴, so check the product page for painting. Note that kits that still need nippers (such as Clic Loc) ³ are not the same as kits that do not (such as Entry Grade) ⁶.
• If you want a traditional cement kit, Hasegawa splits its entry range into three steps: Step 1 is glue-free, Step 2 teaches how to use cement, and Step 3 is full-scale models that are still easy for beginners to build ⁷¹³¹⁴.

On scale, the makers give no single "best for beginners." Within Hasegawa's one entry system, Step 1 holds 1/20 and 1/35, Step 2 has 1/48, 1/72 and 1/200, and Step 3 is 1/450 ships ⁷¹³¹⁴. The scales within entry lines are mixed, so scale does not map directly to difficulty. Revell's difficulty explanation looks at part count and color scheme (see below).

Revell's difficulty levels are a useful reference. Its site advises beginners to choose level 1 or 2. Level 1 is glue-free push-together, level 2 needs basic gluing, and these kits have few parts (usually 20 to 50) and simple color schemes. From level 3 on, careful painting and precise gluing are needed ²⁰. Airfix marks difficulty on the box from 1 to 4, and kits at higher levels usually have more parts ²¹. Each maker defines its own grading, and the numbers do not necessarily line up, so do not apply one maker's level to another.

To buy everything at once, Airfix's Starter Set includes glue, paint and brushes, while the Classic Kit is the kit alone ²¹.