Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 7:36 am
Posts: 681
Location: Vigo, Spain
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Hi Tom and all again,
I have been thinking about this remarks from you:Fliger747 wrote: For my Missouri and Alaska I made masters and cast the rest. Today I would print them! But it is a tour de force of traditional building to make them all by hand and yours are quite authentic. Perhaps the most dedicated hand fashioner on the forum is Song, who would make his anchor chains by hand in wood! I suppose we spend more time about fretting about the job than it actually takes. Actually, I have always thought that the old traditional way of modelling IS modelling; what we do nowadays is a different category.
And Tom, what you say of our common friend Song...Fliger747 wrote: Perhaps the most dedicated hand fashioner on the forum is Song, who would make his anchor chains by hand in wood! ...Is exactly my own feeling. I remember my grandfather whenever I take my X-acto blade. He did MODELLING, with capitals, and his modelling started virtually choosing a cedar or a fir log, and making the model afterwards with very basic tools, little else than scraps of wood and his pocket knife. I have seen only one of his hulls (that for some reason he had discarded for firewood) that he presented me with when I was say 9-10, and have distinct memories of how fine the lines of the bows were. I finished this hull as my first model ever; don´t ask me what I did, and better cry bitter tears with me over the sad loss, that would be nowadays the center of my modelling vitrine.
He devoted his last modelling years to build the traditional fishing boats of my village La Guardia, the so called "gamelas", in ca.1/20 scale, selling them to add something else to his retirement pension. The construction of these ships was very simple, and therefore very easy to model.
This is Grandpa in say 1966, building one of these gamelas:
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He died completely blind in 1979, so this specimen, that he built in 1969, was one of the last, if not the very last, that he ever built.
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It was a present to a granddaughter, that was in due time, some months ago, presented back to my mother, to whom it belongs at the moment. It was displayed in the open air in a sitting room for over 50 years, so I made a careful cleaning and restoration, and had a glass case made for it.
There are some little mistakes in the paint and other clues that make me think that Grandpa had already lost much of his eyesight by this date.
I can only imagine what my grandfather would have been able to produce had he had all the technological advances and modern stuff that we enjoy today.
But IMHO true modelling will always be the same, from scratch, what means making your own stuff. It is a common place all around the world to build a model OOB, and improve it with lots of PE´s and aftermarket elements, what actually would be more OOB if they came already together in the same box, as it is already a common place too. This is obviously acceptable, because this is a hobby, and it is supposed to produce pleasure, and not everybody would be willing to spend years in a row building the same ship, and to see a ship, your ship model, finished is one of the highest pleasures that I myself know.
But honestly, scratch building is way easier than many modelers think. I have made it for years, with at least interesting results.
This is the old 1/125 Revell U-boot VII-B, that I built in 1991, with some scratch built elements, the most obvious of them, the Flak 20 mm.:
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This Flak was built using these very basic elements:
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Which were exactly these ones, minus the yogurt container for the shield:
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And we will always have the stretched sprue, that will never be enough praised nor appreciated.
The mack of the French frigate Tourville, made with only stretched sprue:
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And a very, very basic 1/400 Heller Elbing class torpedo boat, with only streched sprue and yogurt container again, way before I discovered Evergreen:
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It can take longer than buying lots of built or ready-to-build stuff, but it is very easy to do, and goes for nothing at all in price. the level of satisfaction is also different, I could say, and here is the essence of modelling.
If you guys, Tom, Hank and many others, are printing your own stuff after learning the process, designing your own elements and setting them together to build your own ship, this is for me 100% modelling from scratch, and a path that my grandpa would be probably willing to follow as well. After all, he also bought his logs, because he was first a sailor, and then a carpenter and shipbuilder, not a lumberjack cutting his own trees after being a gardener and growing them in his property.
Heresy, heresy, I know... And I will lapidate myself before anyone cast the first stone saying that no, as I do not build my own hulls, I do not consider myself a true modeller.
Believe me, when I find the way to build my own hulls, I will devote the rest of my existence to build my own ship, SNS Cataluña, the Knox-class frigate I served in in 1984-85, one of the best periods in my life. 1/144, with painful detail.
Happy modeling and nice going from across the seas,
Willie.
_________________
Amen dico tibi, hodie mecum eris in paradiso (Lk 23,43).
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