Although I have been following the forum for some time now, I have never posted anything. I live in Orillia, Ontario, which is just over an hour north of Toronto. I work as a judge but I have recently semi-retired at age 70.I have done model kits since I was 8 or 9 years old but law school and career got in the way of my hobby, which I continue to love. It has only been in the last few months when I have had some time that i have been able to get back to it. I have numerous unfinished kits that I started over the years and i am working on finishing them up and maybe looking at some of the kits in my stash.
My tastes are somewhat eclectic, and although my first love is the sea and the ships that sail upon it, I have also enjoyed building aircraft and autos. Jack of all trades and master of none, I expect.
I have recently completed one of those kits, one that everyone I am sure has heard about, the Artesania Latina starter kit of the 1805 Swift Baltimore Pilot Boat. I literally purchased this kit in Ottawa in the late 1980s and worked on it on and off over the years. It feels really good to finish the job after all of those years, but it was my first wooden kit and I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot in building it. I also got a lot of great ideas from building logs on this forum which I studied as I completed the project.
I am inserting some pics of the completed kit.
I am going to move on to a Billings Boats kit of a ChrisCraft runabout from the 1930s. It's motorized, which is a new challenge. Again, something started and not completed.
from sunny Manitoba 