[QUOTE=dropzone]
I think we have a winner! That stuff would make great ballast, small enough to fill the cavity but not able to fit through poorly matched and filled joint. And since it was already used to simulate track ballast by train modelers it was likely that a kid would have some.
And devilsknew, Aurora models were made in the USofA so there was no Chinglish involved, though its Brooklyn origins could account for a schmatz suggestion.
[/QUOTE]
Hey, maybe that is it!
I am certain that (a) I would have had absolutely no idea what “chicken grit” was as a kid (I wasn’t a regular modelmaker–these kits appealed to me because of the horror aspect (I was into graphic gory things and those were pretty gory for the time period) and probably because they were cheap and I could get Mom to buy me a couple, rather than the model-making aspect, and (b) I might well have extrapolated “chicken grit” to “chicken fat” in my ten-year-old mind.
I can’t be certain, of course, but this does sound very plausible.