Ten Minutes a Night: A December Reset for the Colchester Workbench

December on a Colchester bench is a strange beast. The shed is cold, the kitchen table is buried under Christmas cards, and there is a works do, a school nativity and at least three trips to Tollgate to negotiate before anyone gets near a sprue. It is also the month when a lot of us quietly lose the plot and start a brand-new kit we have no hope of finishing before January.

This is the alternative. One ten-minute job a night, from the first of December to Christmas Eve. No new project, no grand plan, no heroic airbrush sessions in a freezing garage. Just small, repeatable wins that leave the bench better than they found it and keep the modelling brain ticking over.

Why ten minutes actually works

Most of us can find ten minutes. It is one cup of tea, one podcast segment, one slightly longer than usual loo break. The trick is deciding what the ten minutes is for before you sit down. Vague bench time turns into moving the same box from one side of the desk to the other. A defined ten-minute job turns into a cleaned seam, a sorted decal sheet or a set of wheels that finally got painted.

The other benefit is psychological. December is full of things that are nearly done but not quite — the tree half-decorated, the cards half-written, the sprouts bought but not peeled. A bench job with a clear end point is a small rebellion against all that. You start it, you finish it, you go to bed.

The shape of the month

Rather than a rigid list of twenty-four specific tasks, it helps to group the month into four loose weeks. Each week has a theme, and each night has a job that fits inside it.

Week one: sort and rescue

The first week is about clearing the decks. Night one is the decal audit: pull every sheet out of every box, check for yellowing, bag the loose ones and bin the ones that have turned to confetti. Night two is nozzle cleaning — not a full airbrush strip-down, just a soak and a poke. Night three is the Great Glue Bottle Amnesty, where you throw away every bottle with a crusted lid and a blocked nozzle.

By the end of the first week you have not built anything. You have, however, removed about six tiny sources of daily irritation. That counts.

Week two: seams and small fixes

This is the week of one seam a night. Pick a kit that has been sitting half-built since the summer and fix one join. Sand the fuselage seam. Fill the wing root. Clean up the underside of a tank hull. Ten minutes is enough for one seam if you are not trying to do the whole model.

The club-night challenge for this week is simple: bring the worst seam on your bench and let someone else tell you how they would fix it. No judgement, just practical suggestions. The Colchester club has a long tradition of people saying 'have you tried a bit of sprue goo?' with real sincerity.

Week three: paint and prep

Week three is about getting things ready for the new year. Prime a few sub-assemblies. Paint a batch of wheels. Mask a canopy. Sort your paints by type rather than by whichever drawer they ended up in. One night could be spent purely on stirring and checking old pots — you will be surprised how many have quietly turned to rubber.

This is also a good week for the 'one colour' challenge. Pick a single paint you use a lot — RAF Dark Green, say, or German Grey — and spend ten minutes making sure you have a usable supply, a clean brush and a plan for it. It sounds dull. It saves an hour in February.

Week four: finish and file

Christmas week is for finishing, not starting. Add the last small parts to something that is 90% done. Fit the aerial. Glue the hatch. Paint the tyres. Then file the instructions, bag the spare decals and write a short note on what went wrong and what you would do differently. That note is the most valuable thing you will produce all month.

A printable checklist

If you want to pin something to the shed wall, here is a simple version. Print it, tick it off, and do not worry if you miss a night. The plan is a guide, not a contract.

• Decal audit and loose-sheet bagging
• Airbrush nozzle soak and clean
• Glue bottle amnesty
• Sand one fuselage seam
• Fill one wing root
• Clean up one tank hull
• Prime two sub-assemblies
• Paint a batch of wheels
• Mask one canopy
• Sort paints by type
• Check and stir old pots
• Fit one small final part
• File instructions for a finished kit
• Write a three-line build note
• Clear one square foot of bench
• Sharpen or replace a knife blade

That is sixteen jobs. The other eight nights are for the pub, the wrapping paper and the inevitable panic about whether the turkey will fit in the oven.

The Colchester angle

There is something quite fitting about doing this in Colchester. The town is full of small, incremental things — the castle has been quietly standing there for centuries, the Hythe has been rebuilt more times than anyone can count, and the A12 has been a work in progress since before most of us were born. A ten-minute-a-night bench plan is not glamorous, but it is local in spirit: steady, practical and slightly stubborn.

It also suits the club calendar. December meetings tend to be quieter, with fewer completed builds on the table and more chat about what everyone is planning for the new year. A bench reset gives you something to talk about that is not just 'I have not touched it since October'. Bring your sorted decals. Bring your cleaned nozzle. Bring the three-line build note. It is not a competition, but it is a conversation starter.

A word on not overdoing it

The risk with any advent-style plan is that it becomes another thing to fail at. If you miss three nights because the boiler broke or the in-laws arrived early, that is fine. The point is not the streak. The point is that on the nights you do sit down, you know exactly what you are doing and you stop after ten minutes.

So set a timer. Make a brew. Pick one job. Finish it. Turn off the lamp. That is the whole plan. By Christmas Eve you will have a tidier bench, a clearer head and a few small repairs that would otherwise have waited until spring. And you will not have started a single new kit — which, frankly, is the best present you can give yourself in December.