Hello all
Well I suppose it is time I came out of the closet and announce my presence to what appears to be a very talented cliental of ship modelers. I have been lurking for a while and trying to decide if I wanted to continue safely lurking, or risk embarrassment by jumping into the water so to speak.
While I am not truly new to modeling, I have not really done anything for the last fifteen or twenty years or more. I started out as young kid building cars, then plastic aircraft, and eventually settling down to plastic ships. I continued with ships, primarily twentieth century warships, but also did a number of sailing ships over the years, all of them plastic kits.
I then took a break to go on an extended vacation to southeast Asia for Uncle in the late 60s-early 70s and when I came back became involved in putting my life back together with a few more jumps and starts than I care to admit, so it was a few more years before I found myself in a position to take up modeling again.
I started with plastic models again but soon migrated to RC vessels and became involved with a number of others and even started a local club, (That is still very active after more than 30 years). At this time I built for myself, for others, or in a few cases with others, a number of ships, all RC. Some were kits, others kit conversions, a few scratch from plans, and even a few modified plastic kits to make them usable for RC. Some of these ships were HMS Storm King from plans, USS Panay from Navel plans and Plans from Underhill, (I believe), a few tugs, fishing boats and other assorted vessels like ice breakers and even one submarine. In other words whatever struck my attention and could be built for RC. I had no discipline and used whatever was available for construction. The Storm King as an example was made from plywood that had been part of an old doghouse, Styrofoam from various sources, covered in spackle, sanded to shape, fiber glassed and then used gasoline to dissolve the Styrofoam! Some more doghouse and some scrounged plastic realtor signs and even s section of drainpipe that happened to be the same diameter as the funnel in the plans and much to my surprise it started looking like the ocean going tug on the plans. Even though I built this ship for a friend I still have it as he died not long after and I kind of inherited it and the trophy that it won two years in a row as it had always been kept at my house and I would transport and maintain it for him. The same kind of thing kind of happened with the Panay. Basically a few boards with everything that did not look like a gunboat cut away and a few plastic houses stacked on top, (Made from the same realtor signs).
Anyway you get the idea, unlike the people here who dedicate themselves to masterpieces of exotic wood and adhere to time honored construction techniques, I have for the most part been involved in unsupervised modeling for most of my life.
A few years back my life again took some unexpected turns and not only again took me away from modeling but also made some things physically difficult or even impossible. I also started another family, (Adopted two grandsons as babies) and am just now looking at getting back to possibly building ships again. At first I thought of restoring some of the ships from the old days, but after years of storage, a couple of moves, and in one case the shelf where several of them were stored in the basement collapsed from five feet off the floor and sent all of them everywhere! Most of them survived better than you might suspect. I guess being built for the rigors’ of RC use they were tougher than I suspected, but restoration was not really what I was looking for.
So that brings me to where I am now. Third family is now getting to the point that they do not need constant supervision. I am now retarded and no longer have a viable carrier that needs daily attention, but thanks to some planning that did go OK; I do have a retirement that keeps things together enough that I don’t really mind not being gainfully employed. While a few surgeries and other issues somewhat keep me from being the person I once was, I am still capable of pursuing a slightly less demanding version of my old hobby. It is my hope to start building some of the kits of sailing vessels I have accumulated over the years. I have several vessels supposedly from the late 18th century that I have on hand that were either given to me, were a great buy at the time, or struck me as nice in a hording kind of way. My primary interest falls in the US colonial/revolutionary period. Mostly smaller vessels like Brigantines, Brigs, and Schooners that would have been used by the American Colonials against the British or even a little later in the Barbary wars. After reading around here and of course doing some research as well, it turns out that ALL of the kits I own are either not really American, not accurate representations of the vessel they claim to be, or just poor kits that have little building value from what I read here. While I am not totally against building from scratch I also have not found “THE” ship that I want to build that fits my interests. Also I am not completely certain where my skill levels lie and I want to try a “something” that is a little less challenging but still in my interest area to see if I have what it takes to become a disciplined ship modeler. Following that guideline I have already started a Constructo Brig Sentinel that I hope will turn out good enough to give to a friend for his next birthday. Why they call these “beginners” kits is beyond me, everything in them is below par and in order to make anything even a beginner could be proud of requires considerable effort. Fairly soon I also intend to start one of my Brigantine kits, at this time I am leaning toward the Mamoli Blue Shadow only because it is the most generic brigantine with a quarterdeck that I own and therefore should lend itself to bashing into something more refined and recognizable as possibly a colonial privateer.
I also have restarted my research on another vessel that I will build fairly soon. A number of years ago I read a book called “The Cruise Of The Lanikai”. This book was an offshoot of my research on the Panay and Yangtze river gunboats and captured my attention.
In the opening days of WWII a young Lieutenant was given command of an antique schooner in the Philippines and told to prepare her for war! Instead the Japanese invaded and his original mission became redundant. He was then able to get permission to set sail and do his best to avoid capture by the advancing Japanese army, navy, and air force! He and his crew managed to run at night and hide during the day and stay just ahead of capture for over 3000 miles through the South Pacific all of the way to Australia! Ever since reading this book I wanted to do a model of the Lanikai but of course there is virtually no information on this ship even though it turns out it served in the US Navy in both WWi and II, was featured in a movie in 1937. And spent the remaining part of WWII after her voyage in the Australian Navy! So, after deciding that the only way to build this ship would be to work backwards from the few photographs available and try to come up with hull lines that would work. With my limited abilities I am almost there and I think I have generated almost all I need to build the Lanikai and be able to call it scale instead of scaly. If I do indeed get there soon then this will become another build I will be doing.
So that is about all there is that is even remotely interesting about me and hopefully I will be making progress on the above stuff and with some if the input I have picked up here and hope to in the future as well, be able to produce a few credible models that will not be a total personal embarrassment in the years I may have left.
Lou Magnabosco
