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Forums or books?

U

ubjs

Joined
Sep 5, 2018
Messages
145
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88

I've been thinking about this about how to best get good advice and tips on model boat building.
I'm starting to lean more and more towards books being better than forums. One problem with forums is the same as with social media in general. It's easy to spend an hour or two reading on a forum and it also becomes unstructured.
If you read a book, you've probably chosen it. The book is probably about a limited part of shipbuilding. A book also has the advantage that you can put it on your bookshelf and expect it to stay where you put it!
Trying to find something you've read on a forum takes a long time and sometimes I don't succeed at all.
I think I'm going to limit my forum reading significantly and spend my time building my models instead.
I'm also going to stop writing build logs. I've tried writing those and asking questions in them but the response is very poor.
It's better to ask a question in your own thread, you get significantly more answers.
 
Hi there……. I think all ways of collecting knowledge has a part to play, often depending on the topic, an individuals approach and the help that is available.

I started on SOS with some enthusiasm and got side tracked for two years! I have learnt it takes a little while to build up a nucleus of support and it will be interesting to see how this develops second time around. However some members have already rewelcomed me and reached out with advice..

My collection of books has expanded both modelling as well as sea faring history. However they seem to be generally from a bygone age and the forums give top tips with new materials and techniques.

Having replied to you I do agree it comes down to getting in the workshop and fathoming out how you make progress and corrections as you advance your project. I reassure myself that the enjoyment is on the journey and not racing to the finished model.
 
Not living where I can join a ship model club, I enjoy SOS as a ship modeling newspaper. I read it to find out what’s happening in the model ship world. I also enjoy the social aspect; communicating with other model builders. I find relatively little useful on improving my model building techniques as I don’t build models from kits.

Quality ship modeling books can be very useful, but I disposed of mine a number of years ago having absorbed what they had to offer.

Roger
 
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