a new era in ship model building

Bob, Maybe you should change the title, to something like merchant ships, steam and the era, the title really tells you what is contained on the site, also merchant ships period not only steam, but sail also. JUST MY OPION Don
 
Bob,if you bring a few guys only and they start some build log I can promote them on Sos facebook page and see we can can spark some interest there too.Igor Capinos has been looking for ships like yours for a long time ,he just commented on one of your ships on facebook.
 
I doubt if they would be interested, as they are all together on the Facebook group, and all are interested only in merchant ships, they would not come here to a section that does not change from one year to the next. I have done my very best with it, but it just does not work. SOS is essentially a forum for ancient sailing warship models, mainly kits and it is unreasonable to expect that anyone will want to change.
Bob
 
There is a surprisingly sizeable population of model builders, both scratch and kit, which is interested in the historic record and info. There are also many who prefer the tactile sensation of print over electrons.

I totally agree the back story and history of what your building is an important part of all this. I recall a letter Harold Hahn received from publishers. In short the letter was a rejection saying all the history is interesting but a publication on model ship building has limited space so we are NOT interested in the research and historical back round we want the "how to" part of the article. with E publishing you can actually ramble on and on without the worry of cost and printed space. So those who like the feel of paper well get over it that is going away.
 
Bob what if the SOS section on merchant ships was considered an E library of information a resource. That way facebook people can come on over and use the material. Sure you are the main guy supplying that information but hey so be it. you don't see anyone adding information to the steam vessel topics but yet model builders check in and read all about it.
 
Bob, Dave REMEMBER your topics are fairly new especially to this forum, give it a chance as people need time to learn, then ask questions, asking questions is the key to expanding the topic, YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE or it becomes stagnat like you have said, maybe people in your group would like the FACEBOOK PAGE OF NBM for a start, I join a lot of these do not contribute much as of yet but the topics interests me and I learn, maybe start on a topic of ancient, and the age of sail merchant ships then progress to steam, many INTERESTING MERCHANT SHIPS IN THESE eras, does not hurt to try. Don
 
like micro beer brewery or artisan breads model ship hobby publishing will come to micro e-publishing bob, your doing it and so is bob
Hunt and so is Winston MSB journal. cost killed printed magazines and journals but we are not counting museum, historical society or non profit groups their members are footing the bill for printing ships in Scale has or had no such money for support it was down and dirty fighting cost vs profit and paying the bills. There are a few micro interest groups within the hobby merchant ships, steam tug boats, steam warships, work boats to name a few what they need is a central depository or digital library were interested members can go to purchase Epublications or general information. This exist now but these groups are scattered across the cyber landscape.
 
what category are steam mail ships in? that is an unknown micro group

WOW! bob you are getting a lot of views blew steam ships out of the water
I am not going to tally up the numbers but at a glance your a rock star in model ship building


don is right it takes people time to find you, humans are not like dogs who can sniff out what they want instantly we take a lot of hit and miss and where is that. The search hours I spent so far on the Mississippi went way past counting.

much of the people don't talk they are just looking, and don't say oh thanks I was looking for that info they just move on.
 
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I am not a subscriber so I don't know I heard from a customer of mine they are gone maybe within the last 30 days

maybe someone can confirm the rumor because at this time that is all it is a rumor
 
I agree with all but still love my books spead all over the place. No need for electricty, power etc. Read it in bed, the small library, the deck. Spead it out for all to see Yeah. Sorry , even though I'v been IT for 40 yeards, I'm not a fan of the ebook, Its not right that companies charge the same for physical or digital copies and expect YOU to print it. Dooling over giant plans & photos does not compatre to an Ipad view or oops the the battery went flat just as you wre reading something. Magazines I agree are one the way out. The problem is nothing new and repeated info. Its a shame caused I loved my local newsagent and partworks each week, comic books to peruse etc. it was an adventure. now I can do it is 10 minutes on the web, but theres no magic, no presence, no feel of the page under your fingers or the weight of th books belaying the knowledge inside.

On another note entirely.

MOST importantly I think that other forums need to keep up with SOS. They are becoming stale with the same build, same make over and over with very little variation.( Maybe its the Admins and the restrictive attitude.). I have not been here long ( 2 years) and the breadth of information , variety of kits and open freindlness with no barriers is the backbone and joy of this forum. Bring on all SHIPS & Boats of All levels and makers from the mini bottle to the fast movng RC ocean racers all in between. Plasic, paper, wood, metal who cares, SHARE SHARE SHARE.
 
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Most of my books, and I have some, I bought 10 to 15 years ago, at a time when the internet was not so full of information.
I still love the printed books very much, as you can recognize by my book reviews.
Nevertheless I use also very much the web to get information for a certain task or subject.
The biggest problem with the web is the massive mass of information, and you have to know about the quality of the resource.
It is taking a lot of time, to find the quality information and sorting out the wrong information getting also in the web.
Newbies in our hobby have an additional problem, due to the fact, that they are sometimes not realizing what is correct and which info is wrong.
Because of this problem, forums like SOS can help them very much to sort it out or get immediately or in short time a hint or even the complete infos.
And the more experienced modelers can help others.....
 
I bought a book not to long ago on a model ship subject and paid a pretty penny for it $90.00. I bought it as a research source and once I got that information the book now sits on a shelf Actually the book was just a fancy printed build log which I could have gotten for free.

I do have a large nautical book collection I collected over 40 years. My thought back then was these books, some long out of print, will be worth something, an investment. Well, not so book dealers pay almost nothing for them unless they are very rare.

years ago I volunteered as a librarian at a library in a maritime museum. Because of limited space the library would go through the storage where people donated book collections. First to go into the dumpster were all the journals and magazines, I thought why trash these so I asked if I could have them, thinking I could sell them. I amassed a large collection of NRG journals and Ships in scale and other publications. not only could I not sell them I could not even give them away. Finally I did what the museum library did and tossed them all into the dumpster.

E books vs the printed book

I stopped buying and collecting book years ago storage was getting to be a problem. Most of all any research I do I try to use prime sources and not articles or "pretty coffee table books" they are for the most part based on 2nd and 3rd source information. Publication I do use you can not find printed books so I search university libraries and digital collections of rare and out of print books like these for example.
mail steamers.JPG
naval gunnery.JPG
 
there is a huge difference between reading books like a good mystery novel or a classic book that you can sit in your easy chair and read, then there are reference and text books which are research material. Books tend to cover one subject like "the galleon 1590 or tug boats, merchant ships, war ships of ??? period. If you want to model a Spanish Galleon a book on English frigates will be of little use. I realized I would have to build one big general library on wooden ship and that would be very expensive. Now I pin point the exact information in the digital libraries. My digital library is 10 times the size of my printed library and I can fit all of it on a thumb drive I can put in my pocket.
 
I do have a number of old books that have been scanned. But the greatest disappointment is that in most cases, when I come to a fold out plan, the scanner has not bothered to open it out and scan it lengthways, but just scanned it as still folded, in other words, it appears as a blank page. Here in the UK, because of an almost complete lack of interest in merchant ships, most of the big libraries sold off all their old technical journals long ago. Fortunately, I was able to build up a reasonably large collection of them, and am now fairly self-contained as far as research goes. This is an enormous 1931 Lloyds Register of Shipping with a 12 inch ruler alongside. It is 5 inches thick. Got it for £80.
Bob Lloyds Regiser 1930 (Large).JPG
 
I do have a number of old books that have been scanned. But the greatest disappointment is that in most cases, when I come to a fold out plan, the scanner has not bothered to open it out and scan it lengthways, but just scanned it as still folded, in other words, it appears as a blank page.

I have come across this many times but the way I see it is at least I have "something" to work with in some digital publications fold out plates are not included.
 
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