Greetings all:  Just thought since model sprues are vastly more complicated compared to those say of the 1960 - 1980 variants  that I would offer my opinions on some Building Basics 101.

1. Clean sprues with mild antibacterial detergent. This helps especially if you live in a humid enviroment and or especially if you are working with resins. Plastic kitchen vegetable brush is ideal.

2. Cut the sprue trees apart. Leave the parts numbers and the tree limbs they are attached to as one unit. This facilitates you being able to paint needed colours to all pertinent pieces in one session.

3. Clean up the parts. At least an hour of my build time on any project usually goes into cleaning up parts. Mold seams and etc. Then paint as much as you can.

4. Separate the parts from the limb stubs as needed being able to use the parts number remaining on the stub to identify them.

5. Some parts are located at stress points on the trees. (Connected by two or more locations to the sprue.) You must strategically cut the sprue away without breaking smaller or fragile kit parts.

6. Paint and finish each sub assemby as if it were a model unto itself.

7. Work from the inside out, cockpit first, engine then the exterior.

8. Have fun and Model on!