- Joined
- Feb 1, 2025
- Messages
- 1
- Points
- 3
Just joined Ships of Scale but my first entry to model ships was in the 80s which makes it nearly fifty years ago. A neighbour gave me a couple of partly-built hulls of HMS Unicorn by Corel and La Candaleria by OcCre after asking me if I was interested in finishing them - all this was totally new to me but I have always enjoyed building things, e.g., a few canoes since I was very young, so I took on the job. I finished the Unicorn during my spare time over about a year - being bare-rigged it was fairly straightforward and I enjoyed the experience. Fortunately I did quite a bit of surgery during my working life as an academic, so I acquired a couple of pairs of jeweller's forceps and two haemostats (artery forceps) which were essential for tying rigging etc. Then, with moves, work, holidays and all that stuff, I carried the fairly complete hull of La Candelaria from shed to shed for 30 years! In about 2014 I decided to finish the damn thing, so I set to and during the next 12 months I finished it and made up a perspex box to keep the dust off. It now sits in our front hall and is admired by many of our guests who are not model builders so don't pick out any faults - fortunately there aren't too many.
Having returned to modelling, but not being willing to spend about $500 or more on a kit, I decided to make a model of HMB Endeavour from scratch, as close to 1:40 scale as possible. Having done some wood-turning in my retirement, I used my lathe to plane the spars with a skew chisel, and made all the dead-eyes and cannon on the lathe. The planks I cut from western red cedar on my 14" bandsaw ( with a solid piece of angle-iron clamped to the stage as a guide it worked pretty well to rough-saw 5-6mm x 1mm planks) and soaking them in water I was able to bend them around the bow of that very bluff-bowed vessel, a former collier. Two years later I finished the rather mammoth task and because it was big but quite good-looking it warranted a quality perspex box made by a local firm City Plastics who did a great job of the joints. Alas $320!! Being too big for our house, I donated it to a local private school where I was volunteering. As far as I know it still sits in the prep school library.
For fun in between times I have done two small scratch builds. One is a Viking galley and the other PS Industry, a "snagging" boat used on the River Murray to remove snags or trees which had fallen into the river.
Recently I have gone back to modelling, having finished Artesiana's La Pinta earlier this year and now finishing Corel's Half Moon which I purchased from a former modeller and is dated 1977. A future plan is a scratch build of the Mayflower complete with sails, probably to a scale of 1:50 or thereabouts.
As a reasonably fit and active 81year old, I play lawn bowls, still get up ladders to clean out the gutters in my daughter's house and repair cracks in the interior walls, and take our small dog for regular walks. Fortunately I was wise when I was 24 and married the right woman who has provided me with support over the past 56 years to indulge my hobbies and feed me regularly.
Cheers
Tim
Having returned to modelling, but not being willing to spend about $500 or more on a kit, I decided to make a model of HMB Endeavour from scratch, as close to 1:40 scale as possible. Having done some wood-turning in my retirement, I used my lathe to plane the spars with a skew chisel, and made all the dead-eyes and cannon on the lathe. The planks I cut from western red cedar on my 14" bandsaw ( with a solid piece of angle-iron clamped to the stage as a guide it worked pretty well to rough-saw 5-6mm x 1mm planks) and soaking them in water I was able to bend them around the bow of that very bluff-bowed vessel, a former collier. Two years later I finished the rather mammoth task and because it was big but quite good-looking it warranted a quality perspex box made by a local firm City Plastics who did a great job of the joints. Alas $320!! Being too big for our house, I donated it to a local private school where I was volunteering. As far as I know it still sits in the prep school library.
For fun in between times I have done two small scratch builds. One is a Viking galley and the other PS Industry, a "snagging" boat used on the River Murray to remove snags or trees which had fallen into the river.
Recently I have gone back to modelling, having finished Artesiana's La Pinta earlier this year and now finishing Corel's Half Moon which I purchased from a former modeller and is dated 1977. A future plan is a scratch build of the Mayflower complete with sails, probably to a scale of 1:50 or thereabouts.
As a reasonably fit and active 81year old, I play lawn bowls, still get up ladders to clean out the gutters in my daughter's house and repair cracks in the interior walls, and take our small dog for regular walks. Fortunately I was wise when I was 24 and married the right woman who has provided me with support over the past 56 years to indulge my hobbies and feed me regularly.
Cheers
Tim
