Evaluating Kit Design: Instructions, Parts and Packaging

The overwhelming majority of kit makers provide very poor to average instructions and generally fail to actually have anyone ever test drive building their kits prior to marketing them.  

mwb posted:

The overwhelming majority of kit makers provide very poor to average instructions and generally fail to actually have anyone ever test drive building their kits prior to marketing them.  

Not sure I agree with that 100%, but it contains a lot of truth, and, back in the days of truly manly modelers, the appropriate (and better) slogan that Kalmbach should have put on the cover of MR was "Model Railroading Is Hard".

I just opened the box of Brennan's Oblong Box Co.  I was immediately impressed with the instructions and the packaging of parts.  The test is building the kit, but l bash almost everything, and envision this as a run-through station, appearing somewhat like EBT's Orbisonia station.   I am starting off with major changes to foundation.  I have built four Carolina Craftsman Kits and highly recommend them.  I do not recommend JV Models "Watson's Siding", which is a "box of sticks", with no clear suggestion or direction, and l dumped everything back in the box after mulling it over.  All my opinion, and your mileage may differ.

About 15 years ago I built a wide variety of On30 rolling stock kits and a few buildings.  I found the same thing--instructions were poor. 

The biggest mistake that rolling stock kit instructions had was that they left mounting the trucks and couplers until the end of the build.  The kit just said, "use whatever trucks you have" and by the time the car is completed it has to be modified (which in reality means torn apart) to fit the T&C.  When I pointed this out to the manufacturer I didn't get any response.

I also found a complicated brass loco body did not show how a piece of the floor fit until three steps past soldering.  Even though I had read through the instructions I missed this detail. This was not the only instance of the construction sequence being out of order. 

I quit buying kits because I got tired of trying to interpret how the model is supposed to go together when the manufacturer was supposed to have figured that out before I plopped down my $50+. 

I was writing a column for a model railroad magazine at that time in which I went through a step-by-step process of scratchbuilding rolling stock and loco bodies.  Also at my work I was part of the team writing documentation for the operation of work in our department.  My conclusion was that it is easier to create the project myself, order the materials and build it.  It is a trade-off:  do you want to spend your time interpreting the instructions and figuring out any missing steps or fuss over buying materials and parts for you own design.

I build a lot of kits and the ones that have the cartoon graphics with iso sketches and dimensions with rubber bands of you cut it wood pieces I will never build again!

that K&P kit is a real bugger 

My favorite kits are from Altoona Models Works

and Downtown Deco

Could it be that some kit makers assumed that the purchaser/builder would already know enough to be able to figure some things out for themselves?

Speaking of Heathkit: 

I picked this up a couple years ago; it runs any DC powered train better than one could have thought possible. Great for HO and 2 rail O scale (the pulse is a little "harsh" for my liking for N scale, however.)

When I first got this, I wasn't sure how the get most out of it: the instruction book came with it and was very detailed and easy to follow.

Mark in Oregon

Wow! I never knew Heath made anything for model railroading! I love it!--an excellent find. I am a ham N3RHT and used to have a ton of Heath stuff. But it is almost all gone now.

The kit makers assuming anything is just unprofessional. As a spoiled rotten 21st century customer I expect to be taken care of. Or some such new age BS....I dunno what I expect. But the blueprint currently under my wax paper for this Gantry Crane has a handwritten line on it (I am not making this up) that says "Drawing is 1/2 inch longer than actual. Space walkway supports evenly." ......uhhhhh.....say what? The whole sub-assembly is--I guess the best word for it is "stretched" and there isn't a doggone location on this print that matches the actual parts placement.  You'd have to see this to believe it. "space the walkway supports evenly....." Sure. Okay. Now what do I do about the other 40 parts that attach to and make up this sub-assembly? If I space them all out evenly I have nothing to glue them to!

There is a sub-story here. Apparently K&P bought the tooling and all from another company that was making this stuff in S scale. So to sell O scale, they transmogrified the S scale drawings and design into O scale. Hey, how bad could it be, right? The correct answer to that question is underneath my wax paper at this very minute.

Never say die! I will have this gantry crane on my layout if I have to join the sub-assemblies with peanut butter. And it will be finger-lickin' good!

Don

With kit instructions, a picture really is worth a thousand words.  Unfortunately kit manufacturers rarely include enough pictures.  Altoona Model works is a notable exception.  Their plastic spine booklet folds flat and has lots of photos.  My only gripe was that their were so many spelling errors in the instructions for the water tower kit.  Given the incredible detail and quality in their kits, it was just surprising.

Older craftsman kits (gloor craft/quality craft, suncoast, campbell, K&P) often have nicely drawn templates, one photo, and written steps. It's manageable, but sometimes you have to read and re-read a step and carefully study the drawings.  Gloor craft color coded their parts and packaged parts by subassembly. This was  a huge help.  I have the K&P gantry crane kit.  The OP's comments about the one not to scale diagram are correct.  It was the result of scaling up the old Lehigh Valley S kits to O scale.  It is a little annoying, but does not keep one from properly finishing this high quality kit (sort of like the spelling errors that annoyed me!).  K&P pre-cuts a lot of parts which is really helpful.

Lasercut kits can be designed to only assemble one way and have far fewer parts, which allows simpler instructions.

Putting instructions online is the best idea since it allows unlimited drawings and photos.  River Leaf Models has their full instructions online and Downtown Deco has painting/finishing techniques online.

Even styrene kits can have inadequate instructions.  A few years ago I built an Intermountain reefer kit.  It had about 200 parts and only a couple of drawings, but lots and lots of word descriptions.  The problem was that I did not know the technical names of the parts on a real reefer, so I was lost.  I struggled through and eventually got it built.  When I finally got around to building another, I put the instructions aside and used the built one as the instructions.

While I agree that use of a technical writer would be beneficial, it would raise the kit cost or reduce the margin, neither of which may be acceptable.  A better compromise is for manufactures to use beta testers, both master modelers, and some with only modest modeling experience.

Having written a number of how to articles for OGR Magazine, I know how difficult it is to write unambiguous step by step instructions.  I enjoy it, but for others it's the least enjoyable part of the creative process and it may not be where their talents are.

Bob Glorioso

I've built more than 50 craftsman structure kits that are now on my two current layouts. As an experienced modeler who also builds structural models from scratch, I don't rely heavily on instructions but I do prefer well-written instructions with photographs that make the construction process more enjoyable and help to avoid errors. Comments on two kits I have built recently:

I built the outstanding Trainworx New Haven Railroad control tower kit. Excellent detailed step-by-step instructions including text and about 100 photographs are available on their website. I would say that the Trainworx instructions for this model are an example of the very best I have seen with any kit. I also requested that they send me a printed copy of the instructions (my computer is upstairs, my work area is downstairs, and I don't have a printer) which they did promptly.

Instructions for kits from Stoney Creek Designs by Roger Malinowski come with a compact disk that includes many photographs. The kit that I built (Village Groceries and Drygoods) also came with full (model) scale printed architectural drawings for (as I recall) every elevation of the building. I think these instructions are also representative of the best modern computerized instructions.

MELGAR

Bar-Mills has very good instructions. 

Some of the problem with building kits is general construction terms, that may not be common to hobbyist.  Lintel, joist, header, truss, etc.    You gotta figure-out the figuring-out.   

BTS kits have a couple of pages of parts, listed with the associated parts numbers.   Each part card, is a different letter, then the number. 

I like to think that I am a slightly better than average modeler but I learned a long time ago to avoid "Craftsman Style Kits".

My first stereo receiver was a Heathkit. Loved their catalog. Old Tandy / Radio Shack catalogs were pretty good too!

Wow! &75 kits? That's hard to imagine. Any "best of" highlihts or "worst of" lowlights? Favorite structure built from a kit?

Don