Plastic Model Mojo
Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby
Plastic Model Mojo
PMM Twelve Minute Modelsphere: November 2025
Holiday chaos is closing in, but we’re not letting the “dark time” steal the bench. We ride the high of the Cincinnati show: open hangar doors, perfect weather, strong models, and vendors who priced to move. That momentum rolls into plans for Murfreesboro, with friends heading in and schedules to wrangle. Live shows do more than fill a weekend—they sharpen your build list, set deadlines, and remind you why the hobby’s community matters. We also pull back the curtain on production: episode 151 is juggling a guest schedule, so we’re prepping a plan B, while episode 152 locks in a shop talk with Seattle-area multi-genre standout Tim Nelson. Tim’s approach to ships, cars, and aircraft is a masterclass in transferable craft—paint discipline, sub-assembly planning, surface prep—that levels up any subject.
The dojo is surging past 5,500 members, and the feed is buzzing with show reports, flyers, and WIP updates from across genres. We share a practical tip to keep your posts visible: avoid cross-posting from other groups to dodge Facebook’s spam filter—rewrite natively and your updates won’t get stalled. As days get shorter, we lean into small sessions, visible progress, and accountability through community. We’re also looking ahead: HeritageCon, Fort Wayne Nationals, and AMP South Bend are already penciled for 2026, giving everyone milestones to build toward.
Thanks to everyone who reached out about episode 150; the conversation around retirement and modeling clearly resonated. Keep the messages coming, keep inviting friends to the dojo, and keep the bench warm. If you enjoy the show, tap follow, share it with a modeling friend, and drop us a quick review—it helps more builders find their way to the community.
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Mike and Kentucky Dave thank each and everyone of you for participating on this journey with us.
Kev, tell everyone why you started Kit Mask.
Kevin (KitMasx):Well, manually masking canopies sucks, and somebody had to step in to save those countless kits from the shelf of Doom.
Janelle (KitMasx):And now we've got over 400 sets and counting. We've got old kits, new kits, forgotten kits, you name it.
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Kevin (KitMasx):We do.
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Kevin (KitMasx):Several times.
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Kevin (KitMasx):And Janelle, she does everything else. She cares about each customer and is the heart of our business.
Janelle (KitMasx):If you ever reach out, you're talking directly to us. Real people, real modelers.
Kevin (KitMasx):And if you don't love your masks, we'll refund or replace them. No questions asked.
Janelle (KitMasx):Visit kitmask.com, join the mailing list, and treat yourself to easier, cleaner masking.
Kevin (KitMasx):Kitmask, made by a modeler for modelers.
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Kentucky Dave:Where did 2025 go, man?
Mike:I don't know, but the dark time is knocking on your door.
Kentucky Dave:It is, it is. And I'm I'm gonna have to fight it off because I got a lot of things to get done. I'm gonna make a real effort, although, man, stuff is starting to pile up. Holiday obligations and all that stuff's already starting to pile up. Yeah, I know. That's all right.
Mike:That was a topic of conversation tonight after dinner, what we're gonna do for Thanksgiving.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah. Well, luckily we got our Thanksgiving plans already nailed down. So it's just looking ahead and thinking, uh, okay, I gotta get all the stuff for Christmas out of the out of the attic and all that stuff.
Mike:Well, you know, we mentioned in the uh last uh model show spotlight that we're kind of also entering the dark area model shows. That really doesn't happen until December.
Kentucky Dave:No, there are several in November.
Mike:Well, there were several in October too, and you managed to make it to one. So let's talk about where we've been.
Kentucky Dave:Well, I got to go to the Cincinnati show. You unfortunately were not able to make it. I hate I missed that. That is just such a great show and such a great venue. The weather was perfect, so they had the hangar doors open and the couple of aircraft rolled out so that there was plenty of room in the museum. Got to hang out with Inch High all day and Skippy, you know, had a table, promoted IPMS, promoted the upcoming Fort Wayne Nationals, promoted our little podcast, and sold a few things. So it was it was great. The show was fantastic, the models were good. I didn't hear any complaints. In fact, I heard nothing but praise for the show. And boy, the vendors had their stuff priced right, man.
Mike:Well, get to the episodes a little later, but uh next one's gonna be a what broke your wallet affair. So uh I got a list, buddy. I do too, I do too. But uh we'll save that for now. Well, that's where you've been, and I know you're going somewhere. I'm still trying to figure out whether I can go or not. Tell us tell us tell us what's coming up for the Mojo.
Kentucky Dave:Murphy's borough in two weeks, the 15th of November. Murfreesboro's having their model show. We've got a table, thanks to Bill Moore going. I think Skippy's going. I'm hoping you're gonna be able to fit it into your schedule.
Mike:Yeah.
Kentucky Dave:And uh, I mean, I'm looking forward to that. And Dr. Geldmacher's coming up from Birmingham, so it's gonna be a a real good day.
Mike:Well, I'll keep working on plans on my end, and uh hopefully I'll get to make it because I'm itching to get to something else. So well, and four years over.
Kentucky Dave:Well, and Murphy's borough's a great place, man.
Mike:Well, Dave, we got two episodes coming up in November.
Kentucky Dave:Yep.
Mike:151 and 152. And as the book says, Dave, the best laid plans of mice and men.
Kentucky Dave:Well, we'll see. We'll see.
Mike:We'll see what happens. And what I'm referring to, folks, is uh episode 151 is kind of having some scheduling nuance to put it lightly. We've got an interview we're trying to line up, but uh we haven't had a hard commit yet, and it's looking like we may have to revert to plan B, which means we're gonna have to come up with a plan B, which won't be too won't be too tough, but uh we'll figure it out.
Kentucky Dave:You and I have done 150 episodes. I'm sure we can we can come up with something.
Mike:We can run our mouths off off. Exactly. We'll come up with something. Well, so we're just gonna tell you what's gonna be in store for episode 152, which is gonna be uh Seattle area modeler Tim Nelson joining us for uh I guess we'll kind of couch that one as a shop talk episode. Now, Tim's a uh a multi-genre modeler. Yes, he is, and he does well in everything he touches, right?
Kentucky Dave:You see, he is the true renaissance modeler who it doesn't really matter what the subject is, he builds a beautiful model, whether it's a ship, a car, a plane, whatever.
Mike:And on top of that, he's just a super cool dude.
Kentucky Dave:He is, he is a is a very nice guy. We get to see him usually at the nationals and get to hang out a little and always enjoy that.
Mike:We're gonna hang out with him a little bit over the airwaves. That sounds good. Dave, I keep adding folks to the dojo in multiple almost every day these days. Yeah I think a few of our calls for folks to add their friends has been answered because I know I got a bunch from a couple of people in the last week. Where are we standing now?
Kentucky Dave:We are currently at 5,530 members. And it's like you noted, we're adding a bunch. So I imagine we're gonna hit 5,600 fairly soon. And I appreciate everybody out there inviting their friends. Please keep that up. If you have modelers you're friends with on Facebook, invite them to join the dojo. The dojo's been hopping. Now it's fall show season, so we're getting a lot of folks who are posting either show reports with photos from shows. We're also getting a lot of folks who are taking up your and my invitation to post flyers for their upcoming shows in the dojo. So if your club has a show coming up in the future, almost every show has a flyer, post a copy of that flyer in the dojo. We're happy to spread the word and let people know. In addition, there's a lot of building going on, including some by people who record podcasts. You you've you've actually been building, I've actually been building, and we both actually posted fairly recently. So we're not the only ones. Lots of guys out there building. I I think the fall stimulates a lot of building as the weather gets cooler and the the nights get longer. I think people people get to the bench more and it's showing up. I mean, there's a lot of everything from cars to to armor to figures. There's just every day I open up the dojo and go through the posts, and I'm I'm blown away by what people are doing. So keep posting. We're continuing to have the problem with spam or the Facebook flagging posts as spam that appears to be triggered by folks who cross-posts posts from other Facebook groups. So if if you're gonna post in the dojo and you want to avoid getting flagged as spam, if you've posted something somewhere else, instead of cross-posting it on the dojo, do a new post just in the dojo. Recreate your post elsewhere in the dojo, and that'll at least go some ways toward avoiding getting your post delayed because it gets flagged as spam. We're still working on it, and that we haven't got it figured out completely, but that's one piece of advice I can give folks.
Mike:We gotta post more, Dave.
Kentucky Dave:I know. Well, we gotta build more, okay? I'm working, I'm working, man. You and I are both getting lectured by certain individuals who shall remain nameless about the fact that uh we need to get more building done, and they're right. And so hopefully the dark time doesn't overtake you both of us, and hopefully you and I are gonna get a lot of building done in November and December.
Mike:Well, I hope so. I'm gonna post everything I can and hopefully keep chipping away at my projects. That's the big thing. This is this is all built for motivation, and uh I tell you, when I do do something and get to post it, it does help me feel like it was time well spent. So, you know, I'm at my pace, I'm having fun. So hopefully we'll see more out of me.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, and me too, I hope. Uh now, one thing I will say, as we've noted, 2025's coming to an end. I've already started planning for 2026, started putting stuff on the calendar, HeritageCon, the Fort Wayne Nationals, the AMP show in South Bend. So 2026 is going to be here before we know it. So make sure that you got all your ducks in a row and get those things on the calendar so that hopefully you'll be able to make all of them.
Mike:Well, I hope we can make all of them, Dave. I do too. Well, in closing, this installment of the 12-minute model sphere, I just want to thank one more time Dr. Paul Buzzick for uh his appearance in episode 150. This is that episode has has exceeded all our expectations, though we had a hunch it might be a popular topic. Um, it really was something a lot of folks were interested in hearing about. I don't know if it was his retirement in particular or just how he's dealing with it, which is what I suspect it is, because the demographic in our hobby does skew that way, and there's probably more folks than we realize were kind of at that point in their life.
Kentucky Dave:I can't tell you the number of people who've reached out to me to comment on how much they enjoyed that particular episode and his his takes not only on the transition to retirement, but on modeling in general. Absolutely. Yep.
Mike:And and those folks have done that either through DMs or uh emails. So uh keep the listener mail coming, folks.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, that's our favorite part of each episode.
Mike:All right, Dave. Well, we'll see you in November.
Kentucky Dave:Yep. Get back to the bench man.
