Queen Frederica by Mike P - FINISHED - RESTORATION - Cruise Ship model

[Mike P]

I just completed restoring a model and would like to know what a fair price for the work would be.  I will post the photos in the

progression of repairs. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Mike

 

 

[druxey]

Well, first, Mike, how many hours' work was involved?

[mtaylor]

I'll add... don't forget material costs... wood, paint, etc.

[ccoyle]

The original looks like it endured a lot of varnishing! I like the look of the restored bits.

 

Cheers!

[yvesvidal]

Fantastic resurrection work. 

Yves

[shipmodel]

Hi Mike - 

 

I agree with the others that you are doing a great job with the restoration.  That's the good news.

The bad news is that it is not likely that you will ever be paid a reasonable return for your work.

 

Having done dozens of restorations, the most important commercial fact I have learned is that once the model is repaired, the repair cost is folded into the value of the model.

Imagine that you have a wrecked 1975 Dodge Charger.  You spend $10,000 worth of time and money fixing it back up.  It then becomes just another used car worth about $6,500.

Most times, unless the model itself is of high intrinsic value like a bone and ivory POW model, the repair will not pay for itself.  

Your model is a very nice example of an ocean liner model.  But it has some simplistic details and is not a model of a famous ship.

At this point in my career I do not repair models without a firm contract for the repair work itself.  I leave any subsequent sale to the client.  

 

I'm happy to discuss this further if you contact me at shipmodel@aol.com or phone at 718-855-1720

You can even come to the next meeting of the New York Shipcraft Guild in downtown Brooklyn next Tuesday, March 10. 

Contact me for the details if you are interested.

 

Sorry to be the bearer of unwanted news

Be.st of success to you.

 

Dan

[Mike P]

13 hours ago, druxey said:

Well, first, Mike, how many hours' work was involved?

Thanks for the reply I’d say about 200+ hours and $275.00 in materials plus $220.00 for the display case.

[Mike P]

1 hour ago, shipmodel said:

Hi Mike - 

 

I agree with the others that you are doing a great job with the restoration.  That's the good news.

The bad news is that it is not likely that you will ever be paid a reasonable return for your work.

 

Having done dozens of restorations, the most important commercial fact I have learned is that once the model is repaired, the repair cost is folded into the value of the model.

Imagine that you have a wrecked 1975 Dodge Charger.  You spend $10,000 worth of time and money fixing it back up.  It then becomes just another used car worth about $6,500.

Most times, unless the model itself is of high intrinsic value like a bone and ivory POW model, the repair will not pay for itself.  

Your model is a very nice example of an ocean liner model.  But it has some simplistic details and is not a model of a famous ship.

At this point in my career I do not repair models without a firm contract for the repair work itself.  I leave any subsequent sale to the client.  

 

I'm happy to discuss this further if you contact me at shipmodel@aol.com or phone at 718-855-1720

You can even come to the next meeting of the New York Shipcraft Guild in downtown Brooklyn next Tuesday, March 10. 

Contact me for the details if you are interested.

 

Sorry to be the bearer of unwanted news

Be.st of success to you.

 

Dan

 

[Mike P]

Thanks for the reply Dan and may I add your builds are amazing. I get the message as I build r/c airplane models and have won some awards  at the WRAM show and Toledo Exspo with hundreds of hours work on them plus hundreds of dollars in materials and equipment at the end of the day if I were to try and sell them I would be lucky to get the cost of materials for a 1/4 scale model. I’ve come to realize that it’s all about the journey in researching and building scale models and the cost equals the satisfaction of the finished project. I spent 200+ hours and about $275.00 in supplies plus $220.00 for a display case and charged $2800.00 for the restoration I was curious as to transactions. Happy Purim 

[Mike P]

Thanks to everyone who replied this is one wonderful web site. Mike P

Edited March 3, 2020 by Mike P

[druxey]

Wel, Mike , that translates to roughly about $11 per hour. If you were doing this as a full-time professional in New York, I doubt that you could live off that. However, as a part-timer it's nice pocket money! Also, the owner got a very nice end result.

[Mike P]

Thanks for that druxey I was feeling kind of overpaid since modeling is so rewarding to me for so many years. But put that way since nothing you pay for it seems is less then $100.00 per hour these days I’m now feeling short changed just kidding. It was well worth the experience and the client was happy with the results. Thank You Mike P

[Bob Cleek]

I'm glad you got the $2,800. I doubt the model, nice as it may be, would bring anything near that. 

 

The market for ship models is an interesting phenomenon. Everybody likes looking at them, but few buy them. With very few exceptions, the market demand for models simply doesn't support their production, nor even their conservation. Perhaps this thread is as good a place as any to explore and discuss the reasons for this and what modelers might do to increase the value of their works. It's not that everybody does it only for the money, but as they say, "Money talks and .... walks." I really don't think the art form gets the respect it deserves.

 

I recently had an interesting conversation with a client of mine who has spent a lifetime working in the high-end art gallery business. He was admiring the models in my office and, while he knew little about ships and boats, recognized the quality of the work, commenting that he considered it art. (Such as it was.  ) I asked him why there were only a handful of galleries in the US specializing in ship models and, as far as I knew, all of those also sold maritime paintings. His explanation gave me a new understanding of the market for ship models as art. 

 

He explained that, generally speaking, wealthy people spend large sums on fine art because it is a way that they can advertise their wealth without being too crass about it and, given that the asset can be expected to appreciate in value over time, do so without cost. As he put it, "They buy art because they can't hang their stock portfolio statements on their living room walls." He went on to explain that it is the buyer's perception of the value of the artwork that sells it as much as it's the attractiveness of the work itself. He noted that he can sell paintings of little or no real artistic value all day long for amazingly high prices if the artist is "known." One of Winston Churchill's paintings recently sold at auction for $2.8 million. That price wasn't about the quality of the painting! My gallery owner friend explained that it's not unusual for a customer (he calls them "clients,") to tell him that they are looking for "something blue" of a particular size that "will go well in the living room" in a particular price range. Only a few more sophisticated collectors will express an interest in a particular artist, style, or period.  The key to the price point, however, is about what it says about the purchaser. It's only a small segment of the market who are truly knowledgeable collectors.

 

He also noted that most people don't have the knowledge required to recognize a good ship model from a poor one, himself included. He said, "I can see the work that goes into these and recognize they are good ones, but how good, I have no idea." (And lucky for me. They aren't that good.  ) He observed that oil paintings generally command higher prices than other media because people who don't know art seem to perceive oil paintings are somehow "real art" and "the best." One point he made hit home, "Ship models tend to be hard to display, particularly in homes. Everybody's got walls to hang pictures on, but a ship model is often so large that it becomes the focus of a room. Where to put them becomes an interior decorating problem, which is why they aren't very popular with the women." As for galleries, he said that there just wasn't enough of a market for them to justify the overhead of the gallery space. "You can easily fill a gallery with top-end ship models, but if the product doesn't move, you aren't going to be in business very long."

 

It's my own observation that as technology has evolved, the interest in "all things maritime" has waned. There is still a certain cachet in coastal areas. If you have a fancy summer place on Nantucket, you've got to have a gold leafed carved eagle over the front door, a "lighthouse basket," few marine paintings, and a ship model or two... and your interior decorator will make sure you do. That's a pretty small market niche, though, all things considered. There was a time when half the people in some of our largest seaport cities would turn out for the arrival of a new clipper ship or the launch of just about any large vessel. The interest just isn't there like that anymore. Those events have been overshadowed by air shows, NASCAR racing, and football. Our younger folks are glued to a video screen playing interactive games. In a sense, I can hardly blame them when I watch the traffic coming through the Golden Gate. The modern "generic" super tankers, container ships, and monster "high rise hotels laying on their sides" that pass for passenger liners these days  really aren't that interesting or beautiful. (In terms of "eye candy," the USN has nothing tdday that can hold a candle to an Iowa class battleship.) I grew up with a father who worked as an accountant in the steamship industry all his life (as did I during summer vacation in the days when your father got you a summer job whether you wanted one or not!  ) I can't remember ever not being infatuated with ship models, which were everywhere in San Francisco "back in the day." The Maritime Museum was full of them, as were the lobbies of most of the office buildings in the downtown financial district where my dad worked. Today, we see our maritime museums relegating the world's great collections of ship models to basement storerooms and remote off-site warehouses in order to free up space for "interactive exhibits," because video games contribute more to their admission fee receipts than ship models do. It's no wonder people don't value what they don't know anything about.

 

I believe ship models are truly an art form which has been practiced for as long as mankind has taken to the sea. It's now "threatened," if not "endangered" with extinction. Building kits of the same few vessels over and over again by a few "old pfarts" only prolongs its "last illness," I'm afraid. In the current vernacular, what it seems we need is more effective "outreach." I'm not sure what that looks like. Maybe getting PBS to run a show about ship modeling would generate some interest, like that fuzzy-haired bearded guy's long-running show did for oil painting. Is there anybody "famous" who's into ship models? (How long has it been since we had a President who had a ship model in the Oval Office?) Maybe there's hope in the "Makers' Movement." Who knows?

 

What say ye?

Edited March 3, 2020 by Bob Cleek

[druxey]

Well stated, Bob. The art world is a funny business indeed. And the ship model world not much different! However, Mike is a happy part-time restorer with a happy client, so all is well with the world. (Oh, how I wish!)

[tkay11]

It's possibly true that the fashion for buying models made by someone else for home display is waning, but I can't remember throughout my lifetime ever having been in a home where someone has done just that -- apart from the simplified models bought at seaside stores and LEGO pirate ships and the like.

 

Then there are plenty of people who have to make models of modern yachts and ships for the manufacturers and their excessively wealthy clients and governments -- as has been the case for centuries. Just recently druxey posted a picture of the most marvellous silver yacht model for auction at Sotheby's which sold for £10,625.

 

However, I keep hearing that ship modelling itself is dying out, that younger people are not interested, etc. How true is this? It would be good to have some figures as otherwise such statements may be based on localised subjective opinion. It's not that I disagree, more that I don't know the statistics across the whole range of activities that would include ship modelling.

 

From what I understand, ship modelling fora are growing rather than decreasing in size; in Eastern Europe the competitions still thrive (and card modelling is very popular); and there's a constant influx of people who have just retired and who try to find a hobby that is stimulating intellectually as well as practically in addition to giving satisfaction over a long period of time.

 

In addition there are a whole host of professional model makers who work for a variety of different media at many different scales due to the constant demand for period films and tv shows. The skills and tools available to the model maker are unparalleled and new techniques are evolving all the time along with the need for new skills -- especially with computer programmes of a variety of types. Techniques used even in the 1990s have also evolved with the new ideas, the greater sharing of build logs on the internet, and with the available tools which need the parallel evolution of different complex skills.

 

Do we have any statistics (global, national or local) to show whether ship model making (of whatever period) is waxing, waning or simply stable, and among which types of population?

 

Tony

 

 

[Mike P]

8 hours ago, shipmodel said:

Hi Mike - 

 

I agree with the others that you are doing a great job with the restoration.  That's the good news.

The bad news is that it is not likely that you will ever be paid a reasonable return for your work.

 

Having done dozens of restorations, the most important commercial fact I have learned is that once the model is repaired, the repair cost is folded into the value of the model.

Imagine that you have a wrecked 1975 Dodge Charger.  You spend $10,000 worth of time and money fixing it back up.  It then becomes just another used car worth about $6,500.

Most times, unless the model itself is of high intrinsic value like a bone and ivory POW model, the repair will not pay for itself.  

Your model is a very nice example of an ocean liner model.  But it has some simplistic details and is not a model of a famous ship.

At this point in my career I do not repair models without a firm contract for the repair work itself.  I leave any subsequent sale to the client.  

 

I'm happy to discuss this further if you contact me at shipmodel@aol.com or phone at 718-855-1720

You can even come to the next meeting of the New York Shipcraft Guild in downtown Brooklyn next Tuesday, March 10. 

Contact me for the details if you are interested.

 

Sorry to be the bearer of unwanted news

Be.st of success to you.

 

Dan

 

[Bob Cleek]

1 hour ago, druxey said:

Well stated, Bob. The art world is a funny business indeed. And the ship model world not much different! However, Mike is a happy part-time restorer with a happy client, so all is well with the world. (Oh, how I wish!)

Oh yea, and Mike did a really nice job on it. Dealing with the detail on smaller-scaled steamships isn't easy!

[Mike P]

Gentleman thanks for all the feed back I was just lucky that a friend sent this client to me who had a Scentamentil attachment to the model. I told him he could purchase a cruise ship model on e bay for 5 or 6 hundred dollars brand new but he wanted his restored. I’ve been modeling since I was 10 years old and built Just about every kit Comet Models, Sterling Models, Scientific Models as well as Dumas models over the years. I just used the kits as a starting point and did the Reasearch on project to make it mine. I’m posting some photos just for your entertainment there all R/C and I could post Video of some if anyone likes. Hope this is ok.  I do realize that this 

web site is for historical ship model builders which I’m inspired by and plan to learn from. Thanking you all in advance. Mike P

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Mike P

[Bob Cleek]

54 minutes ago, tkay11 said:

It's possibly true that the fashion for buying models made by someone else for home display is waning, but I can't remember throughout my lifetime ever having been in a home where someone has done just that -- apart from the simplified models bought at seaside stores and LEGO pirate ships and the like.

I don't dispute that it was never a great number of people who did so, but there were once more collectors (as opposed to those of us who build and display our own at home) than there are now. Ship models were once a fairly common "presentation gift" exchanged between gentlemen and heads of state (these sometimes being distinctly different classes  ) and were frequently seen in executive offices. John F. Kennedy was a well-known ship model collector and famously presented Nikita Khrushchev with a model of USS Constitution as a state gift.

 

1 hour ago, tkay11 said:

Then there are plenty of people who have to make models of modern yachts and ships for the manufacturers and their excessively wealthy clients and governments -- as has been the case for centuries.

All things considered, this is a rather limited area of endeavor. I'd hardly say there are "plenty of people" involved in it. Unfortunately, being quite familiar with these types of models, few possess the level of detail and complexity of execution that is required to elevate them to the level of "art." Most of the "modern" models of "modern" vessels are as sterile as their prototypes. That said, bespoke models are produced, but, they are relatively far and few between. The cost of doing one well usually exceeds the client's desire to spend what it is worth to compensate the builder adequately. Consider the skills and experience necessary to do the craft work necessary to build any sort of model. In today's marketplace, a worker capable of doing it ought to command at least $100 per hour. Have you checked how much your plumber charges to come and fix a leaking sink lately?

 

1 hour ago, tkay11 said:

However, I keep hearing that ship modelling itself is dying out, that younger people are not interested, etc. How true is this? It would be good to have some figures as otherwise such statements may be based on localised subjective opinion. It's not that I disagree, more that I don't know the statistics across the whole range of activities that would include ship modelling.

I don't know the actual statistics, either, but I'm not so much talking about how many people are building models as I am how interested the marketplace is in sustaining building models as a craft and art. I do know that here in the US, the teaching of any sort of "manual arts" or trade skills in secondary schools, which was once commonplace, has all but ceased to exist. Consequently, few people under the age of forty even know how to hold a hammer. I find myself not infrequently telling adults "lefty loosey, righty tighty" to which they react in amazed enlightenment, having never been apprised of the concept!

 

1 hour ago, tkay11 said:

From what I understand, ship modelling fora are growing rather than decreasing in size; in Eastern Europe the competitions still thrive (and card modelling is very popular); and there's a constant influx of people who have just retired and who try to find a hobby that is stimulating intellectually as well as practically in addition to giving satisfaction over a long period of time.

Well, ship modeling forums never existed before, so their growth can't be taken as an indication of much of anything. This, the preeminent and most popular ship modeling forum on the internet, has 35,359 members as of today. That's 35,359 members in the whole world. Based on the World Population Clock as of this minute (or so,) the membership of this forum represents .000000455516 of the world's population. I was surprised and gratified to learn, through this forum, that there were avid ship modelers in Eastern Europe. I can't say this is because that is anything new, but rather only that our improved international communications systems make it possible to know what others are doing. It would seem that they are "ahead of our curve" in terms of the quality of their work, as well, but I can't be sure of that. Perhaps we are only hearing from the "cream of the crop" in that respect. Who knows? Far be it from me to dissuade them, though. I've learned much from them. As for interest, though, the days when gentlemen came home from a day at work and relaxed by building models are long passed. Television killed that, along with "the art of conversation." Look no farther than the tremendous interest in "model engineering" that once existed in the UK. The Model Engineering expositions that once drew thousands are now a thing of the past. Those of us who are old enough to remember a world without the internet remember when every city neighborhood and village had it's own "hobby shop." In the US, at least, most of us are hard put to find a "brick and mortar" hobby shop anymore. Those that do exist serve a broadbased clientile, addressing all sorts of hobbies from doll house miniatures to radio controlled toy cars. If it were not for internet marketing, we would be unable to source ninety-nine percent of what we require to build ship models today. Most of the small businesses (Syren ship models and Byrnes Model Machines being good examples) would not be able to make a go of it without an internet-based marketing model. Modeling is not alone in this respect, of course.

 

1 hour ago, tkay11 said:

In addition there are a whole host of professional model makers who work for a variety of different media at many different scales due to the constant demand for period films and tv shows. The skills and tools available to the model maker are unparalleled and new techniques are evolving all the time along with the need for new skills -- especially with computer programmes of a variety of types. Techniques used even in the 1990s have also evolved with the new ideas, the greater sharing of build logs on the internet, and with the available tools which need the parallel evolution of different complex skills.

Not as much of a "whole host" as you might think. I have some first-hand experience with the entertainment industry. I live in "Lucas-land" and knew some of those "host of professional model makers" you mention who did the early Star Wars and other movie model-making. Most of the skills they had to offer have been rendered obsolete by "CGI," "computer graphic imaging." The entertainment industry is not about art. It's about profit. CGI is far less expensive, and, frankly, far more advanced, than the old stop-motion-model special effects technology. The movie industry model shops have been a thing of the past for quite some time now. What you see on the screen is not the result of hand-crafted modeling skills, but rather of the magic created by computer geeks who probably don't know the difference between an Xacto knife and a butter knife.

 

No question about it, we have access to a huge amount more information than we ever did before the internet and we have the ability to communicate with others way more than we ever did before. For years and years before the internet, many of us built models without knowing another person who did. That makes the learning curve less steep, but it really doesn't indicate anything about the number of modelers or the state of ship modeling in the world. 

 

 

 

[Bob Cleek]

3 hours ago, tkay11 said:

Do we have any statistics (global, national or local) to show whether ship model making (of whatever period) is waxing, waning or simply stable, and among which types of population?

Probably not. The problem is a lack of a data baseline. Model kit sales data doesn't tell us much, given that so many kits are never built for however many reasons. I think the question of model valuation and making any sort of money building and/or restoring models isn't about how many people are building models, and especially kits, but how many are selling models and how much is being paid for them. I'd hazard the guess that many other types of crafts, if not art work, aren't much better compensated than ship model building. As with a lot of "crafts" and "hobbies," making money at it is often a far more sure thing selling the shovels to the miners than striking gold digging for it. If you want to make a living in a gold rush, sell shovels, rather than digging for nuggets. Still and all, that seems to be a tough row to hoe as well from the indications given by some of those MSW forumites who try to make a living at it. Just look at the difficulty of finding milled wood suppliers. They've all gone out of business for one reason or another and nobody's picked up the gauntlet to replace them. I suspect it's because there's more money to be made for less work and hassle flipping burgers at McDonald's or working as a Walmart greeter.

 

But again, the question is this: "Why is a unique, top-quality scratch-built model made of the finest materials which is as historically accurate as possible, in other words, a "masterpiece," not marketable for anything remotely close to what would compensate its builder with reasonable compensation commensurate with the time, skill, and expertise reflected in the finished work? Only the top one percent of the modelers are capable of this level of work and yet nobody wants to pay them a living wage to do that work. The best they can do is to write a book about how they did it or market a kit that makes it look easy for somebody without their skill to build the same model and hope to make something on that.  It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Bob Cleek

[Bob Cleek]

2 hours ago, Mike P said:

Gentleman thanks for all the feed back I was just lucky that a friend sent this client to me who had a Scentamentil attachment to the model. I told him he could purchase a cruise ship model on e bay for 5 or 6 hundred dollars brand new but he wanted his restored. I’ve been modeling since I was 10 years old and built Just about every kit Comet Models, Sterling Models, Scientific Models as well as Dumas models over the years. I just used the kits as a starting point and did the Reasearch on project to make it mine. I’m posting some photos just for your entertainment there all R/C and I could post Video of some if anyone likes. Hope this is ok.  I do realize that this 

web site is for historical ship model builders which I’m inspired by and plan to learn from. Thanking you all in advance. Mike P

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful collection! I particularly like the wall mounted display platforms.

 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this forum is for ship models of all kinds (and even models of other things occasionally.) RC models are just another sub-set of models. (And an interesting one, too!) Thanks for sharing your collection!

 

BTW, does "Radio-controlled Barbie" actually really water ski behind that runnabout?  

[mtaylor]

  I too like your collection and the display of each.

 

To answer Bob a bit.... he's right.  Any kind of ship model or related are allowed... we have everything from scratch wood/metal/plastic to just about every kit in our logs section.  As an aside, we also have an area for "non-ship models" in the shore leave area.

 

Judging purely on raw numbers of members here at MSW along with various forums in Russian, France, Germany, etc.  I'd say that model builders are a pretty good sized group.  As for places like China, Asia, and others places, the hobby seems pretty robust overall.   I should note that we have builders from all over the world here at MSW.

 

 

[Mike P]

Edited March 4, 2020 by Mike P
Add text

[Mike P]

Thanks for the kind words Bob here’s the Barbie skier I built it for my grand daughters sometime ago as there both out of college now. You can not see it in the video but the driver waves her left arm and the other ones head moves with the rudder input. Mike P

 

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Mike P

[Roger Pellett]

There was a ship model building blip in the 30’s and 40’s probably encouraged by a lack of more expensive options during the Depression and later WWII rationing.  The hobby was also promoted by at least one author (E. Armitage McCann) writing how to do it articles in Popular Mechanics.  Since the war, Americans have become obsessed with entertainment and the celebrity culture surrounding it.  The evening national news networks spend in my opinion an enormous amount of time covering the entertainment industry, including themselves, while ignoring more accomplished “doers.”

 

The alumni magazine of my alma mater, The University of Michigan, devotes a huge amount of space to graduates in the arts and entertainment fields while ignoring the accomplishments of graduates from its large and highly regarded engineering school.  For example, Kelly Johnson, Director of the “Skunk Works” that designed many of the groundbreaking high performance post war aircraft was a Michigan Engineering graduate whose accomplishments are ignored.

 

Since few are interested in the ships themselves unless they star in movies few are interested in models of them regardless of their quality.

 

That’s just the way it is.  For most of us it is just a hobby.  That doesn’t mean that we cannot be personally satisfied producing beautiful historically accurate work, and if when we are pushing up the daisies it is consigned to the dumpster we’ll be none the wiser.

 

Roger

[Bob Cleek]

10 hours ago, Mike P said:

Thanks for the kind words Bob here’s the Barbie skier I built it for my grand daughters sometime ago as there both out of college now. You can not see it in the video but the driver waves her left arm and the other ones head moves with the rudder input. Mike P

 

 

I love it!

[Mike P]

Roger your 100% on the money As for Clarence “Kelly” Johnson and his skunk works the man and his team were national hero's and his SR71 Blackbird Just one of many the innovations needed for a mark 3+ Aircraft from titanium to high temperature lubricants had to be invented for this project which advanced all future designs. Mike P

[yvesvidal]

2 hours ago, Mike P said:

 Just one of many the innovations needed for a mark 3+ Aircraft from titanium to high temperature lubricants had to be invented for this project which advanced all future designs. Mike P

Was it really invented or simply reverse engineered from outer terrestrial technologies?

 

Yves