Dan Vadas
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Danny~
You've been most encouraging! Thank you.
I wasn't quite a skilled or talented as you to build anything like those Revell 36-inch models right off. My first model, Mayflower, was a small Revell kit. Many more small ship model kits followed before I was daring enough to take on Cutty Sark. My story on beginning Cutty is interestingly much like yours! My mother and I were browsing a local hobby shop in the Los Angeles area (where I lived when growing up) when I spied the Revell Cutty Sark model sitting on a high-up shelf. Price then was $13 US. I begged my mother to buy the kit for me, but she told me I must either save my allowance or possibly God would provide the money. I was extremely disappointed, believing I would never be able to save up that much money.
As we were leaving the store, I spied a $10 bill on the sidewalk right outside the store! I handed it to my mother, but she told me the right thing to do was to bring it into the hobby shop and give it over to the clerk until it was rightfully claimed. Problem was, the money was on the sidewalk between the hobby shop and another shop, so our dilemma became which shop and which clerk, and who, in Los Angeles, might be honest enough not to pocket the money for themselves. Just the same, I handed the money over to the clerk. When I did, he unexpectedly reached up to fetch the model kit off the top shelf and hand it to me asking, "Do you have another three dollars?" which I did.
To this day I've wondered if my mother didn't plant that $10 bill somehow for me to see!
Was your Charles W. Morgan a Model Shipways kit? Was it overwhelming for you to open the box as I did, seeing all those discombobulated strips of wood and packaged metal fittings? How did you move past that feeling?
I purchased a vintage copy of a planking book online several weeks ago. I suppose once I work up the courage to finally dig into building a wooden model, I'll learn by doing as I always have in the past.
My questions about brittle wood in my older kits still puzzles me.
Ted
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Hi Ted,
"To this day I've wondered if my mother didn't plant that $10 bill somehow for me to see!"
Yeah, seems a little odd eh
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My Charles Morgan was a Artesania Latina kit, back in the day when they were a fairly good company making good kits - predating the Asian-made ones. The instructions were no better than most kits - they expected you to know the basics of wooden kit building, which I didn't, so yes it was a rather daunting looking task at the time. But as I love a challenge I jumped in head first
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You needn't have wasted your money buying a planking book - all the info it contains and more is available FREE on this site. Have you seen THIS article? (click on the link) Open the appropriate section you want.
Similar thing with Hobby Shops - they are nearly all on-line now. I buy nearly everything I need on Ebay.
What were your questions about "brittle wood"? If you can't bend dry planking strips without snapping them straight away, then it's most likely too old and will need to be replaced. Soaking them in water may help.
Danny
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