Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Working-with-your-hands Wednesday

 

11 comments:

Spiny Norman said...

Amazing. These have always impressed me. I've seen some where the hull is wider than the bottle opening, and the whole thing had to unfold precisely, with the deck unfolding down into place after the hull unfolds, then the masts rise up. Building a realistic sailing ship model is tricky enough, but making it fold up and unfold inside the bottle is beyond my (former) abilities.

I stuck to small dioramas featuring super-detailed scale model airplanes (I even had photos of 2 published in Fine Scale Modeler). Since the late 1980s, you could get accessory laser-etched brass super-detail kits for specific model kits from different manufacturers. I haven't had time for any of that in decades, though. I have a 1/32 scale Spitfire Mk V kit, with the super-detail accessory kit, and a decal set for Don Blakeslee's RAF Eagle Squadron "kite" he used to fly 6 sorties over Dieppe. It's been sitting on the shelf in my office, staring at me, for 30 years.

Paco said...

Model building is a cool hobby. I'm not sure my eyes are good enough for fine detail work anymore, though.

Spiny Norman said...

Mine either, sadly. So Col. Blakeslee's Spitfire will continue sitting on the shelf. :^(

rinardman said...

It's not my eyes, so much as my patience. I bought and assembled lots of plastic models when I was a kid, but I never had the patience to really take my time and do it right. So most of them turned out less than impressive because I'd build one in a few hours, instead of a few days. Parts not lined up properly, decals just slightly askew, paint looking like a ten year old had done it....oh, wait, I was a ten year old! :)

ck said...

My models were never perfect, even when I could see. My model building failings have followed me through life. Instructions? Bhaa, "look these two pieces fit together" , and off we go!!

Paco said...

The decals were almost always my downfall. I'd put them on upside down, or tear them, or they'd go all wrinkly on me. Still, model building is a lot of fun. Spiny, you don't have a link to a photo of one of your dioramas, do you?

bruce said...

Yeah I always put them together right away, impatient to see the model's shape.

My friend who had the patience and made beautiful airplane models has spent a lifetime on motorbikes, taking them apart and re-assembling, customising. I guess with the patience he learned on model kits as a kid.

Spiny Norman said...

I wish I knew. The slides must be somewhere in the storage room somewhere (transparencies were required for reader submissions). I have boxes and boxes of photographic stuff... thousands of photos and slides. I had copies of the magazine issues, too, but haven't seen them in years.

None of the models or dioramas have survived over the years (I was still living at home, and I had a 3-4 year-old sister who was the cause of the demise of most of them - she thought they were toys). I still have my airbrush, though, and the little tins of British Humbrol hobby paints, which must be solid by now.

I do remember what they were of: a Grumman F4F Wildcat in "Battle of Midway" markings with a bit of carrier deck as a base, with a crewman waving it off for takeoff (I had the prop spinning in the photo and it looked pretty convincing), and a French AF Curtiss Hawk 75 (export version of the P-36) in a rather wild camouflage paint scheme (it was hard to reproduce, but I liked how it turned out - yeah, applying the decals requires some practice; the surface needs to be wet enough to "float" them off the backing then painting over them with a matte clearcoat to hide the edges). Curiously, both of those aircraft were powered by the same Pratt and Whitney R-1830 radial. Both were much more successful in combat than they should have been, considering they were "obsolete" by 1940-41 - which is the main reason I decided to model those.

Spiny Norman said...

The FSM magazine issues were in 1981 and 1983. I once tried to find them online, but no luck.

I did find an image of that French Hawk 75 just now: here.

rinardman said...

...yeah, applying the decals requires some practice; the surface needs to be wet enough to "float" them off the backing

That was the mistake I made, till I figured it out. I would force them off before they came loose from the paper on their own, and then they would immediately stick to the model, before I got them in the right place. If they were good & wet, you had a few seconds to position them correctly before they stuck.

BTW, I don't think the nose art (or aft fuselage art) on that French Hawk 75 would pass today's wokeness test.

Jonah said...

My first model, for which I pestered my Dad for the money, was a demolition derby car. He looked at what I bought and could only laugh and shake his head. I wish I still had it, apparently a thing now is for modelers to take regular car models and turn them into derby cars.