Metal Earth Fascinations Cessna 182 Skylane 3D Metal Model Kit

The product and directions are top notch, like other Metal Earth models. I enjoyed building the Red Baron triplane, but it was difficult for me. There were a lot of small pieces and my hands are big and clumsy. I used my magnifying desk lamp almost the entire time to see what I was doing. Pliers, tweezers, benders, etc. are all necessary to build this model imo. The metallic red is quite striking on this model; however, it will scratch off if you’re too aggressive with your tools. Look at the directions carefully! Have fun 😊

Great kit, if you have ever built these kits this will be fun and easy. If this is your first one just be careful on the fuselage bends and the pontoons, it should be a good kit to learn how these kit work.

You'll need a magnifying glass, and some very good tweezers to put this thing together. The color scheme is beautiful, and the parts go together well, just be aware that some of the pieces are very small and require a lot of patience to get right.

I love these metal models. They always look great for display when they're done. The instructions are always clear. My favorite hobby.

The level of patience required is intense. I have experience with the plastic "glue and paint" models and this took me probably 10 hours or so to put together and you definitely need a small pair of pliers, snips and a very small flat head screw driver. The individual pieces are engraved beautifully. That said it will probably still end up coming out poorly. I'm an engineer and there are a plethora of moments when I was putting this together where I could help but think I was fighting an uphill battle with the Fascinations designer, rather than enjoying my time with the model. The way the tail half connects to the front fuselage is an area of truly horrific design, and producing a quality connection is nearly impossible with out bailing on the instructions and simply using some spare material to span the gap and super glue. The H-tail is also very hard to keep from drooping, especially as you attempt to reshape the tail to get it to attach to the front. A lot of the difficulty in this model is artificial, in that its a result of poor design choices in the method of assembly and cutout design, as opposed to the actual challenge of assembling the model. I would highly recommend against getting this for anyone under the age of 15 and even then, your mileage is going to very. If this is what they consider "easy", I'm terrified to see what a harder model entails. If you've done a bunch of these particular models in the past, you may enjoy it. However, as someone coming from another segment of the model community, I could not help but leave disappointing, and inevitably ended up tossing the model as I could not obtain a quality that I was satisfied with prior to the metal shearing out..

I love the affordability of the products offered. This took some time to put together and I would highly recommend buying right tools to assemble these. If you can't afford them all just buy a good pair of cutters so that you don't bend or twist parts so much they snap apart. Overall very satisfied I purchased 5 helicopters and a fire truck and they all came out decent. No complaints.

I will preface by saying this. I have built 20 successful metal earth models so far with most being on the harder difficulty. I have made mistakes and consequently used super glue very few times to fix broken tabs. I have only had to fix 1 or 2 really small tabs in 5 models with superglue and none in recent models. I have gotten pretty darn good. All that being said, this model is the most infuriating as it is impossible to bend and secure the tabs of the vertical stabilizer. Both times when trying to do so, the small tab CONNECTOR in the top section of the tail end of the fuselage completely snapped off. Consequently, both times the flimsy tail wheel also broke off due to constantly trying to secure the vertical stabilizer. This is the coolest looking model that I want to build so bad but I have already bought this model twice and thrown them away both times because you cannot build this model with the tail section broken to the point that the back piece wont connect anything. I can superglue tabs but I cannot superglue broken tab connectors. You will see no videos of this model online and very few pictures of people having built this because it is extremely infuriating. They need to update how in the world they expect you to connect the vertical stabilizer because it is quite impossible with the way they have set up that step. Avoid buying this model with your hard-earned money until they come up with a better one. The problem with this model is that it is impossible to fix the glaring vertical stabilizer problem even with super glue. I suggest buying many of their other models as they are very fun to build. I just wish I could get a replacement kit or see a forum where people discuss how they build this piece or even some advice from the people who designed this kit because I just regret getting this model over others that I could have successfully built as I have had no such problems with models with even greater difficulty than this one.

My husband was very happy with the quality of the model