What fired your interest in model warships .

[Dave Wooley]

Just as a follow on from DrDull and his very pertinent questions of how and why Bill Waldorf and other scratch builders on this board got started in building model ships. I think we could have some really interesting answers. For myself it was being brought up close to the shipyard were most of my family and my wifes family earned their living. And spending lots of my own spare time down by the river watching ships and going to launches, which in those days were fairly frequent. But for me the spark that ignited my interest was being introduced to the display models in the Liverpool City Museum and seeing those fabulous builders models. I just wanted to build one my own . Incidentally I was eight years old at the time and the spark is still there to this day. My very first warship was a carved wooden model of HMS Liverpool, very crude , scale incidental but it was all mine.
Dave Wooley

[Rob]

I used to love looking through the gate at Laird's when I was a kid. I remember well Sovereign Explorer being launched and the trouble they had with her.

Also, travelling across the river on the ferry boat or standing at the end of Eastham Ferry watching ships go into Ellesmere Port docks or up the Manchester Ship Canal.

I also used to love going to either Liverpool Museum or Birkenhead art gallery and looking at the models.

The first warship I remember visiting was HMS Ardent which visited Birkenhead docks in about 1980 or 1981 (I think).

I can't remember what the first ship I built was, but I think it was a 1/1200 Heller kit of Arromanches when I was about 8. Hopefully, if I found this kit again, I would make a better job of it now.

Cheers,

Rob

[Filipe Ramires]

Hum, well...my hometown is 10 km away from the coast and 80 km north of Lisbon more or less. Still, most of my family were either former Army guys or aircraft fans. Not sure how exactly I got the taste for ships. Perhaps after visiting the Maritime Museum at Lisbon and also when got my early interest in WWII which took me to study naval battles being River Plate and Hunt of the Bismarck the very first ones. I guess the names Bismarck and Hood got quite early into my head. I do recall hearing my father...when I was a very young boy (some 10 years old or so) that he recalls shortly after the war ended (when he too was a kid) that the name Bismarck was almost like still a menace and that the british had a lot of work to got her sunk. Myself being created within a family of modelers and history-geography fans soon I got the bit. First for planes and tanks and then ships when I got more involved in studying WWII and finding how big naval battles could turn and how meaningful a ship could be.

[Victorious]

I too spent my childhood, not far away from Liverpool, in Southport. I used to go to Liverpool quite a lot (only 1/2 hour on the train) and then catch the tram to Pier Head, to ride on the Docks Overhead Railway, which ran alongside all the Docks, locally known as the Docker's Umberella, beacase you could walk under the overhead railway, without getting wet, if it was raining.

I am going back to the 1950's, when Liverpool was still a major port and accross the water at Birkenhead, was the famous Cammell Laird Shipyard, where in 1953, the 3rd Aircraft Carrier Ark Royal was built. I remember it as though it were yesterday.
I joined the Royal Navy when I was seventeen and my interest in ships grew ever more.

I starting building plastic Airfix and Revell kits of most of the warships that were available and also built a carved wooden model of the tea clipper Cutty Sark.

I have had many interests over the years and only got back into ship modeling about three years ago, building mostly kits for radio control.
I joined my local Model Boat Club and now I am retired, I find I have lot's of spare time to devote to my new found hobby of building warships for radio control, as I just love sailing them.

After building several kits of various kind's, mainly civillian craft, I got the urge to have a go at a Submarine. I purchase Robbe's latest model, a Type XX1 German U-boat which since completing twelve months ago, have had lot's of pleasure out of it.

I then came across this web site and whilst browsing through the Features section, came across Ron Horabin ( The Admiral ) who had just recently built the U.S.S. North Caroliner. I was absolutely bowled over with this model and when I found out that Ron lived in Runcorn, which is not too far from me, I rang him and arranged to visit him.

Ron by this time had just started building the Iron Duke and after he had shown me all his other models, I wanted to build one of these beauties for myself.

I had never attempted a scratchbuilt model before and after Ron had shown me the basics, I was well and truly hooked and several months later, I made a start on building H.M.S. Marlborough, mainly, so I could follow Ron's lead, and follow his methods whilst he was building a ship of the same class.

I think I made a wise move by choosing this model, as it has been a good learning exercise and by keeping most of Ron's photos, I have a quick reference, should I need it. So far I have made a few silly mistakes, but nothing that could not be put right and this has been part of gaining some experience.

Since then, I have started on my second build and this time I am on my own, but with all the experience I have gained in such a short time, I am able to fathom out how to follow plans and Victorious, is now on the building blocks. I bought the hull for this model to save time, but it has proved to be a much bigger job than I had inticipated, as it is not 100% perfect and I have had to chage quite a few areas of the hull to resemble the plans I am working from.

Once I have completed these changes and got all the hull framing and strengthening peices in place, I will be laying it up, until the Marlborough is completed.

Scratchbuilding your own models is far more enjoyable than building from a kit, becase you are making everything yourself and the more you do, the more you acheive. For anyone out there, who has not tried building a large scale radio contolled model, then give it a try, there is lot's of help out there on this forum and they will only be to happy to help you.
I started this way and it is the best thing I have ever done. The more you learn, the more you will enjoy it.

The icing on the cake, building in this scale, you get to sail your pride and joy into the bargain.

Geoff

[ScottOram]

I think that fact that I am in the Navy has fueled my love for ships, not so much being stuck on them, but the beauty of them.

My first deployment was aboard USS CONSTELLATION (CV 64), This ship hold special meaning because my grandfather (retired master chief) had sailed her from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1961 to San Diego, And I sailed on her on the 21st and final deployment in 2003. She was decommissioned shortly thereafter in her 41st year.

The advantage I had was that I had unlimited access to the ship so I had hundreds and hundred of detail photographs and a working knowledge of the layout of the ship. I have chosen the 2003 cruise as the timeframe. This was also the last deployment of VF-2 with F-14s and VS-38 with S-3s

So when I returned from deployment in 2003, I started on my first scratchbuilt. And what a challenge it has been. Three years, $2,500.00USD and two more deployments, I am about 70% complete.

What have a learned? like all of us I have learned a 100 times how not to do something, or a better way to do something. My belief today is that my second project will be light years better than my first.

[MichelB]

I can point no real physical influence other then being an aquarius, but aquarii don't believe in astrology, so that doesn't count. A love for ships was just hardwired into the system, I believe. I grew up in the landlocked Limburg province of the Netherlands, not much ships around. We did have some impressive dredging equipment floating around in the gravel pits near by, maybe those towering, rusty, un-elegant barges sparked something? I probably got my first ship model around the age of 5, it must have been those small-scale Gorch Fock and other tall ship models. I also got the Revell "Gouda" Eastindiaman pretty early. After several years dabbling in the dark arts of flying things, I got hooked on Tamiya waterline models, when they started showing up at the local vendors'. But, at the same time, someone installed a copy of Civilization on my parent's PC, and that meant the end for my modelling for the next ten years or so.

[seaphoto]

My Dad and two of my older brothers were in the Navy - I think that laid the foundation. Seeing the first issue of Scale Ship Modeler was the real inspiration to get deeply invovled in large scale model shipbuilding for radio control, and for the better part of 30 years, I haven't looked back. The first 8 years of that magazine were incredibly influential too many folks I know, and it is a shame it went downhill and eventually faded away.

Kurt

[Neptune]

Well at the age of 3, I built my first submarine "caugh, caugh" model, it was made of DUPLO, and as far as I can remember it, it was generally a box shape with a propellor on one end, windows in the sides and of course a tower on top. Guess my parents should have seen it coming back then and stopped me! Alas, they didn't... I made plenty of ships with lego afterwards, my first "real" achievement being a "cruiseship of 1m", at that time I was only 1m20 tall, so that was big to me.
After that, I got my real WWII book, got fascinated by the pictures of Bismarck, Graf Spee, Hood and damaged Nagato. Read a lot those days, after that my first "modern warship" was seen in a book of Norman Polmar and Norman Friedman, it was the SHeffield, quite a shock, no big guns anymore! But missiles, got fascinated by missiles and ships then.
From that book I also learned to know some Soviet designs and started looking around, our library had some good books back then, and the internet became available to me. Then I built a 1/100 Kara class and after that an even more ambitious 1/100 Kirov model with my LEGO blocks. Those were probably the largest models I have ever built!!!!
I also started my first plastic kits in those days. Then after a few years I found this forum, which fuelled my interest even more. Now, by seeing all those R/C ships, I even started my own first try in R/C! with gradually largening interest in scratchbuilding and detailing touches to my earlier kits. Probably when I graduate I will start a big R/C merchant ship kit.
(as during my fascination, I got into that direction for education too, if you have to spend your time at school, you can at least make it more fun by involving the ships can't you?!!!).

I was also a good swimmer, so always involved in water, and I live near the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal which has some "large" ships too, and often I had to wait in front of the bridge, while those ships were passing!

[MichelB]

I was also a good swimmer, so always involved in water, and I live near the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal which has some "large" ships too, and often I had to wait in front of the bridge, while those ships were passing!

My aunt's place - no. 1 holiday/weekend destination during my youth- was very close to the Ghent-Terneuzen canal. I remember seeing some of those big ones moving through, indeed waiting in the car for the bridges to come down again. That too must have made an impression...

[Bill Waldorf]

I started out on my model building carrer at the age of seven in the late 1950's. Oh, how I remember all those great old Revell, Aurora, Renwal, Monogram, Lindberg, etc. kits. Mostly aircraft is what I started in many years ago. At two points in my life I had fairly big collections, 40 plus models and now all have gone into history for one reason or another. Don't know what happened to most of them, or I don't remember. At some point, I got kind of bored with kits. I remember a time when 1/24 a/c scale were huge! Not so now. I started then to build ever larger scale a/c from Guillows balsa wood kits. This was my first introduction to the world of scratchbuilding. If any of you have ever looked at these Guillows kits, they are basically a framework with a bunch of vacformed parts. Then, Have at it!!! They take a long time to build. As far as ships go, I guess my first was the Lingberg Blue Devil DD, at 1/125. You all know the kit. I built it over 25 years ago and is a bit crude, but still acceptable. I still have the original, and the batteries are still in it. I sailed it once on a preprogrammed pattern which comes with the kit. I remember losing one of the props! This kit really sparked the start of interest in ships. After a few years without any modeling ,I picked things back up again. I did some model RR stuff, layouts, etc. After a couple of those, I got back into ships and started back up again, with, among other subjects, the 1/200 Yamato. I hungered for bigger yet. That is how I got into what I am doing now. The first scratcbuild was the USS Gambier Bay in 1/72. Some of you may remember that one. That was about 5 years ago. Since then there has been the IJN Soryu in 1/144, the USS Kalinin Bay in 1/96, the USS Wolverine in 1/72, and now the USS Indianapolis in 1/96. I really like carriers because it combines my love of aircraft with the real joy of doing carriers. On the other hand, the Indy has been a lot of fun too. The gunships such as cruisers and BB's sure have a lot of stuff on them. I hope to continue to build large scale ships, and to produce more hi-quality replicas. The next project after Indy will be the IJN Hiryu. The combination of doing plastic kits at first and then going into the scale balsa aircraft stuff was a good primer for what I am doing at this stage. I am happy doing ships, the love of the a/c is still there. More to come.........Stay Tuned!!

[bill_II]

Started out building aircraft models when I was a kid.
Read the books "PT-109" and "Sink the Bismarck".
Built those models and was hooked!
Saw other models like Graf Spee, Four Piper Destroyer, U-boat, etc.
Built those models...Read their stories...Too cool.
Never looked back!
Warships Rule- Aircraft Drool.

[middle_watch]

I used to build model aircraft as a kid (can I say that?) but I could never decided if I should have the wheels up or down. So one day I bought a model ship instead, then found out I had the choice of waterline or full hull - grr!

I got hooked anyway and built just about every Airfix warship there was, and then various Japanese manufacturers who started about then. I lived in Huddersfield, which is probably the furthest possible point from the sea you can get in this country, but I became fascinated with the ships I was building and eventually joined the Navy, the first time I ever saw a warship for real was on the Torpoint Ferry on the way to Basic training in Cornwall, then it was like Christmas, we had a Navy in those days still!

I never lost my fascination and still build models (Prince of Wales at the moment) but I always wanted to scratch build my own.

[H.A. Baker]

Personally I don't really know, though it may have been reading about Ajax, Achilles & Exeter taking on the Graf Spee when I was at school in the, well a long time ago. When I think of it it does seem odd, as I spent twelve years in the Merchant Navy. Strange but true.

HAB

[Andy G]

I've always been a creative person, I think. But I squarely blame Bob Symes-Schutzman and the TV show "Model World" shown on UK TV back in...urmmm...<i>my youth</i>. Remember it? Each week he enthusiastically looked at airplanes (they crash), trains (terribly boring) and so on...and then they showed a very stand-off scale Leander class frigate, which I knew I wanted. I don't know <i>why</i> I had to make one, but make one I did. I saved up my pocket money for months to buy a 2-channel 27MHz Sanwa radio, which cost me a massive �50.

With family connections to the Warspite, I made two of them - one a (oh god) scaled up copy of the Airfix kit. Must have been 1/200th scale. Rough as old boots, but not without some charm. A few years later I made another at 1/144th scale using card for the hull which I glassed over. By the eighties, and studying in Newcastle when the Illustrious was launched, I bought some Jecobin plans and made an Invincible, a Cleopatra and a Resolution, but my heart was stuck in the naval history from earlier in the century, and I made the Lion at 1/100th scale having been highly impressed by a 1/100th scale Lutzow that had appeared in a Model Boats magazine. At this point I stopped and (forgive me!) flew slope soarers for several years. Take it from me: they <i>do</i> crash.

Ten years ago, fascinated by the form, I made a 1/32nd scale glassfibre hull of the "Susan Constant" from the Anatomy of the Ship book, and that series of books fired me again. I bought the Dreadnought book shortly thereafter, and having lived with it for some years I realised that it often called to me from the bookshelves. Unable to get it to shut up, I'm now starting to build her: I've eight frames (of thirty) still to cut, and may well detail the build on this website once I'm more underway.

Andy

[dpreul]

There are two answers to this question for me, (Passion and Money) I first started model=building at age 6or 7. I don't remember. It was quite easy for me seeing that both my dad and my brothers hobby was model-building. their interest was aircraft. Dad - WWII and Bro - Jets. My brother was the biggest influence in creating within me the passion for model-building. I was always striving to be as good at model-building as him. BTW my Bro is 10 years older than me and enlisted into the Airforce when I was 9. So I was kind of on my own except for the little bit dad helped me with. By the time I was 14 my interest turned to Armor and 54mm Military Soldiers, but I still built some A/c along the way. By the time I was 18 I had about 8 or 9 IPMS Regional 1st place Jr winners. I got married at 22 - divorced at 32. By that time I must of had 50 - 60 models in my collection until the divorce when the X bounced all of them off of the fireplace hearth and put them in trash bags for me to pick-up. It took me a while to recover and start model-building again - about 8 years. Married for the second time to a manic-depressant. I didn't know at the time. 6 years into the marriage I started back into model-building but this angered my wife. It was taking to much time away from her, so I left her and moved into my brothers house in Annapolis about 11years ago. He suggested going down to the Naval Academy Ship Model Club meeting, so I did. Bob Sumrall asked me if I was interested in building a 1/192nd scale Gearing for one of his clients. He had a lot of the parts already so I said sure, why not. BTW I met and had been living with Jeanne for about 6 mths at this point. After the first model I quit my job and have been building for clients ever-since. Note: Money. Pretty boring but thats it I have to look back and laugh.
Don Preul

[Kiwimedic]

Mine starts way back and it is in the genes.
The captain of the Achillies was my Grandfather!
My mum was a Wren Officer in WWII.
My father was an Officer in WWII on Anson (When she was first commisioned.) Escort Carrier Atheling. Motor Gunboats out of Arbroath or Montrose. Midget Subs, trained in X Craft, MFU's etc. Interesting information on a veritable who's who of that sort of thing from the war.
My father even spent a night in a hamock on the original Philomel which was tied up as an accomodation ship in N.Z.
I of course joined the navy and spent time on a River Class minesweeper. (1975) - a tripple expander, positive pressure boiler. (Some of the best nights sleep I have ever had in a hamock in the Boon Docks.) and still make a living from the sea.............. working offshore dive vessels,construction vessels, drill rigs,platforms etc.
When I was a child it was little bits of wood with copper pipe stapled underneath with a bend up at the back to creat "Rooster Tails"
Then came "Battleships". They were 4" X 2" by about 4 foot long road marker pegs that had accidently fallen over! Hee Hee!
Not to count hundreds of other warships of some sort of description.
My friends and I would purchase a plan of a warship from a very thick plans book from England.(Cannot remember the name of it) Using Postal Notes.
Our woodwork teacher we were only 10-12 years old would cut the frames out for us from old "Tea Boxes" These boxes were made out of a wood that was brilliant white in colour and was very light weight. He had an electric jig saw (WOW) All of a sudden we had 4 or 5 models roughly the same. I must say though I had only one electric motor and that was put in each model as I used it. Rudders and propellers were home made!
If it was made of thin brass or copper sheet it was not safe from us. You could not buy any fittings.
(I have just shown my age ................. They were the good old days.)

[Pieter]

My interest was first sparked by a book called "The Ship" by Bjorn Landstrom when I was just able to read, at the age of 6 or something. Did a first scratchbuilt in the form of a 20 cm long catamaran shaped out of two halved from an old broomstick that I maneged to sail across a lake near my parent's house. This was when i was 9 year old. Got my first Tamiya Suzuya a few months later but also got a Matchbox (remember Matchbox?) Boeing P-12 so i turned to the dark side, with ship models as an also-ran. I did did my second scratchbuilt when I was 12 as a project in Highschool, doing the vessel illustrated in number141 and 142 in Landstrom in 1/35-ish as a possible vessel of missionaries to the Netherlands in the early middle ages. Materials used were cardboard, wood and paper.
I was deeply on the dark side by now ( The Empire Strikes Back had come out when i was 11 -:) ). I even studied aerospace engineering for a few months (That's how i came to live in Delft) before turning to a real univerisity and two real studies, political science and philosophy. I only turned to shipmodelling again when I graduated in 1995 as I wanted to have a hobby which had nothing to do with my job as a social worker. And the concentration required for ship modeling has a way of getting your mind away from other peoples' problems.
BTW, Michel, Neptune and me share the same area where we were first subjected to the sea and ships. I grew up in a village on the other side of the Western Scheldt estuary, about 10 km north of Terneuzen. I remember cycling to the estuaries' edge when one of those huge container vessels was aground and watch all those tugs trying to pull it off.

[Neptune]

I DID NOT PUT THAT SHIP AGROUND (just to let you know ), Michel does your aunt still live there? Must be in Terneuzen or Sluiskil then?

[Francisco P. de Nanclares]

Well, for me being Navy as was my father, the passion for ships came quite early but, to tell the truth, I began building wingy thingies. I was about 9 then, quite crude building skills (I distinctly remember my father trying to get me doing some, well ANY, sanding on my models!). Then I quit and years after that I joined the Navy. Becoming a pilot fueled again my love for modeling so I cranked up building a collection of Navy helos (which I still keep), but then, years after I quit flying and went back to warships, I "saw the light" and started building ships. That was some five or four years ago, and then I came across this site, which I keep coming to everyday since and enjoying even more as time passes by.

Thanks to Cadman, Sean and everyone of you who make this the greatest site regarding warship modeling.

Pachi.

[MichelB]

I DID NOT PUT THAT SHIP AGROUND (just to let you know ), Michel does your aunt still live there? Must be in Terneuzen or Sluiskil then?

Neither did I! Btw, she still lives there, at Terneuzen. She used to live down in the polder in a backward little place called Hoek, just south of the DOW plant (my uncle worked there.) It was the middle of nowhere, and quite exotic for someone from the more densely populated Limburg.
Oh, the nostalgia...