Why do we model?

[JacksonMcG]

Hello all; I am an amateur modeler and grad student writing an MA thesis about maritime modeling across time--Egypt, Greece--and now. I am interested why, from a philosophical and psychological perspective, model-making is so enrapturing--what sorts of desires it plays upon--and why it seems to seize on ships in particular. I would love to hear from anyone about any insights or thoughts they might have! 

 

Jackson!

[ccoyle]

Welcome aboard, Jackson!

 

You might have to dig around with the help of our search function, but we have had similar discussions many times in the past. For me personally, I build for several reasons:

• I love military history. Conflict seems to simultaneously bring out the best and worst of human behavior and is therefore endlessly fascinating.
• I have always enjoyed putting things together, especially miniatures, ever since I was a kid.
• I simply like the looks of finished models, especially ones that draw the viewer in to examine the myriad details.
• I build primarily in card, so I kind of enjoy working with a particularly niche medium in an already niche hobby.
• Model building is relaxing -- except when it isn't (modelers will know what I mean by this).

Good luck with your research!

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  1.)  I've always been a tinkerer (and formerly a manufacturing engineer).  Modeling is a way to tinker any time of day or year, and is portable to a fair degree if downsizing is in my retirement future.

 

  2.)  It reminds me of working on my kid-sized bench building models alongside my dad building larger models on his adult work bench.  It is a hobby I did until my late teens, when higher education and 'life' took over - and something I have returned to in old age.

 

  3.)  I've always been a 'knowledge junkie' as well with history, and its been non-stop learning ever since finding the MSW forum.

[hamilton]

Great question - my PhD was taken in social studies of science and technology and I have always had an interest in the processes of innovation as social processes - that is, how is it that social, economic, cultural or political priorities guide design and development decisions that result in particular types of technological systems or devices. This was not what primarily led me to model ship building, but it is a very significant aspect of what drives my continued interest in/pursuit of it.

 

Also - I come from a family of visual artists among whom I stand out in having absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever. Model ship building has been the only way I have been able to to connect with this aspect of my family "culture", if you want to call it that, and I take great aesthetic pleasure - mostly in the work of others who are well in advance of me in terms of technical skill! - in the craft. Though I can't achieve the magnificent results seen in much work on this forum, it is fun to challenge myself in this way.

 

Finally - when I started this craft (in 2009) I had just finished my PhD dissertation, bought my first home, had our first child, and was in the midst of building an academic department at a relatively new university here in Canada. All of this prompted me to stop actively pursuing what to that point had been my primary creative work - playing music in working bands. There was no time for this any longer, but I needed some form of creative outlet in my life - I grew up in the maritime provinces of Canada and spent much of my young life on boats - lobster fishing with my granddad in the Northumberland Straights and sailing in the Bay or on the lakes with my dad. I've always though that no product of human ingenuity was more crazy, beautiful, and awe-inspiring than the ocean-going vessels of the age of sail. I can think of only a handful of other technologies - rail, telegraph, printing press, sound recording - that are as significant in shaping and expressing the values and dreams of the modern world. It feels like a privilege to be able to investigate, explore and render that history in some small form.

hamilton

[ClipperFan]

31 minutes ago, JacksonMcG said:

Hello all; I am an amateur modeler and grad student writing an MA thesis about maritime modeling across time--Egypt, Greece--and now. I am interested why, from a philosophical and psychological perspective, model-making is so enrapturing--what sorts of desires it plays upon--and why it seems to seize on ships in particular. I would love to hear from anyone about any insights or thoughts they might have! 

 

Jackson!

@JacksonMcG welcome to ship modeler's central! In an attempt to contribute to your research, I will share part of my own ongoing remarkable journey. For the past several years, I have been a member of a remarkable group of dedicated craftsmen who have built two of the most accurate miniatures of Donald McKay's final California Clipper Glory of the Seas. Our years long investigation into the true appearance of this remarkable vessel caught the attention of Arina @TheAuthorsDaughter. She introduced @rwiederrich to her dad, Michael Mjelde, the world's foremost authority on McKay's longest lived clipper. He generously shared his decades long research with us. Eventually, this intense research allowed @Vladimir_Wairoa to generate scale accurate scratch-made bulkhead kits to construct a 1:96th scale and 1:72nd scale replica of this beautiful ship. While I haven't built a model in years, I contributed 1:96th scale accurate reconstructions of deck fittings and her entire hull. That's from her bowsprit and lovely figurehead to her aft spanker boom. Since the ship was 265 feet long with approximately 65 foot bowsprit, that's over 3 feet at 1/8th inch equals a foot. Both Rob and Vlad's finished models are in the 1851-1900 scratch build logs. Rob's in particular has some of the rarest photos of this incredible ship shared with us by Michael Mjelde. As for my involvement, I have made an email friend of Michael Mjelde, a dream come true. My first of hopefully three installments on our project was published in the Winter 2023 Nautical Research Journal. Even more remarkable, just this past Summer, my wife and I were able to visit the new home of "The Lady." She's the stunning original nearly 8 foot tall figurehead which graced this clipper's bow. 

Sadly, the ship herself couldn't be saved. A true loss for humanity. By building models of her, we can visualize what these spectacular vessels originally looked like. 

[Baker]

I went to technical school and learned to design and build molds.

I graduated in the early 80s, but due to the general economic crisis, no one needed an inexperienced mold builder.

It became assembly line work at general motors and ford.

 

So building plastic and later wooden models was my salvation.

[GrandpaPhil]

Modeling relaxes me.  
 

I chose ship modeling in particular because I went to a maritime museum 30 years ago as a kid and decided that I wanted one of those models.  
 

30 years later, I am still building them.  
 

I really enjoy the challenge.

 

Like Chris, I also predominantly build in card because it works well for me, is lots of fun, and is relatively cheap.

 

Plus, I had a LOT of fun building my first card ship (the Prince de Neufchatel) after reading a tutorial on this website by Ab Hoving on scratch building from card.

[Glen McGuire]

Hey Jackson!  What an interesting thesis you have chosen.  I hope you will share it with us after its completion.  I got into ship modeling just a few years ago at probably an advance age for a beginner (60).  For me, the initial attraction of ship modeling was the challenge of building something that look so complex and intimidating with curving woodwork and an infinite spiderweb of lines running everywhere.  I’ve always liked to build things, and a wooden ship model seemed like the ultimate challenge.

 

After buying a kit and completing my first ship, I stumbled upon a ship in a bottle (SIB) kit that looked like another level of challenge.  Although I’m not a mechanical engineer like Snug Harbor Johnny above, and many other builders on this site, my dad was a mechanical engineer and I think I’ve got a bit of his ME blood in me.  I successfully completed the SIB kit and began doing SIBs from scratch.  I really like the engineering aspect of SIBs as you have to devise a mechanical solution for doing what looks impossible - folding masts, twisting yards, scrunching sails, and fitting the assembly through something it looks like it won’t fit through.  

 

I also love the fact that there are so many unique ships with incredible stories behind them.  From majestic ships that were the centerpiece of some of the most consequential battles in wartime history to ghost ships with an eerie, unexplainable past, there is an endless list of great subjects for us to model and add a small piece to their legacy.  

 

On a more personal note, as I started doing these SIBs, something happened and I found it quite interesting.  Creating my SIBs brought out an artistic side that I never even knew I had – nor did anyone that’s known me knew I had.  The most common reaction from friends and family that see my work is a head scratch and “you did that??” 

 

So the word you chose to describe this hobby of ours – enrapturing – is perfect.  I am wrapped up in this because I like to build things, it’s incredibly challenging, there are so many fascinating ships with incredible stories, and it brings out things in me I didn’t even realize were there.  There’s one other aspect too, and that’s the joy and amazement we get to see in others (particularly children) that look at our work.  I cannot think of a more satisfying hobby than ship modeling.

 

Thank you for your interest in our endeavors.  Again, I hope you can share your thesis with us after you are done.  Best of luck to you! 

[vaddoc]

Oh, so many reasons

 

I have itchy hands - I HAVE to have something to keep them occupied and a boat guarantees years of work

Working with wood is so nice and the tasks along side like rope making etc are very rewarding

Boats are so beautiful but also so challenging to built - there is not a single square thing on them

You can build absolutely anything. And is a bit easier than building the real thing. I work in large scales which makes errors larger and increases the challenge

I do not like the melancholy that sets when a model is completed but this is balanced by the excitement of what to build next

Makes you a better person and you learn a tremendous amount about everything and anything  - certainly you master patience in all its forms and expressions.

 

Vaddoc

[vaddoc]

8 minutes ago, Glen McGuire said:

Again, I hope you can share your thesis with us after you are done

Please do!

[Keith Black]

 Jackson, welcome to MSW. We build ships so that we might contemplate our naval. Glad to have you aboard. 

Edited 23 hours ago by Keith Black

[KLarsen]

The main reasons I build models are:

I like how I'm able to bring something I only have a mental image of into a real object. These days I only do scratch building from plans and have to interpret those and create a mental object of the ship, then start cutting the wood and actually build it. It's very satisfying to then see the final object realised.

I build with wood because I like working with it and it is challenging; you need to know how to cut it the right way, it is not like plastic that can be cut any way you want.

Also, I love the colour and finish of the wood.

Why ships? Probably because I have a romantic view of them, there's something timeless and beautiful about wooden sailing ships. I build both civilian and military vessels but am mostly interested in Mediterranean ships from the earliest times till around 1800. The look of the ship is more important to me than its history. I'd much rather build a model of a completely unknown merchant ship than the HMS Victory.

And lastly, it's relaxing! Sometimes when building I get completely absorbed and don't even know what time it is.

[mtdoramike]

Well after building well over 100 models over the past 30 years, I still don't have a clue.

[ClipperFan]

38 minutes ago, mtdoramike said:

Well after building well over 100 models over the past 30 years, I still don't have a clue.

Well, well, well that comments going to go a long way in helping this poor fellow write his thesis...  😉

[JacksonMcG]

Hi everyone,

 

Thank you for welcoming me and for all your interesting (and funny) responses! I will happily share the finished thesis with the community; I would be very interested to hear everyone's thoughts (--though that it is still a long ways away!). I am also curious to notice in many responses--here and elsewhere, as well as in my own personal experience--how often an interest in model-making is related to childhood, and how integral the image of the father seems to be in the mind of the model-maker. I received my own first model kit from my father and I have cherished that memory ever since; that is almost certainly why I continue. Sometimes I think of modeling almost like a memory-palace, bringing back memories? I wonder if you all have any thoughts on ship-modeling as a tradition or right of passage passed between fathers and sons—what it might mean, or what to make of it?

 

Jackson

[Wawona59]

Welcome to Model Ship World Jackson. 

 

What an interesting philosophical question. I was introduced to building models by my dad over 60 years ago.  He could take a box of balsa sticks and some tissue paper and make something that could fly.  Later, he showed me how to build balsa and tissue models. I was hooked.

 

I've been fascinated by history from a young age.  All of the models that I've built were of real subjects that I would research with the help of a librarian.

 

When my dad got a job at Boeing in the mid-60's we moved to Seattle, where I became interested in aviation history (anything built by Boeing at that time) and maritime history. I visited the Lumber Schnoor Wawona in 1966 and I was hooked on Sailing ships.

 

Ships have affected our daily lives in the past and still do today.  Ships transport the food we eat, clothes we wear, goods we buy, etc. etc. and also transport the goods we produce to other countries.   They help protect our country's interests in times of war or conflict.  They can take us to destinations we've never been to.  They have been vital throughout history for economic growth and exploration.

 

So, why do I build models?

 

1.  Keeping in touch with history.  Every model I build is of a subject that I research.  I have a couple of models on permanent display at the Seattle Museum of Flight.  These required considerable to get correct for a museum display.  I have several memorable projects I've built over the years.  I've given several of my models away to kids who expressed in interest in the history of the model.  My signature below includes models involving Seattle maritime history that are on my short-term build list. 

 

2.  Satisfaction and sense of achievement.  I never build anything just "out of the box".  Most of my models require a lot of scratch building.  It's a pleasure working with my hands and using my brain to create something unique.

 

3.  Pleasure working with wood.  All of my ship models are made out of wood primarily using hand tools.  It's truly a pleasure working a clear piece of hardwood with a newly sharpened hand plane or chisel.

 

4.  Relaxation.  Modeling is mental therapy for me.  When I turn on some classical music (Baroque) and work on a model the problems and stress of the day seem to fade away, at least temporarily.

 

Looking forward to reading your thesis when you are finished.

 

WELCOME ABOARD!

  

Edited yesterday at 09:34 AM by Wawona59

[mtdoramike]

14 hours ago, ClipperFan said:

Well, well, well that comments going to go a long way in helping this poor fellow write his thesis...  😉

Why do you think you are writing a thesis? To explain to old goats like us why we do what we do.

[Michael Mash]

Your question triggered some thoughts.

 

Why do I model?

 

It shows me that despite my age, I am really still a kid.

There is a thrill in inventing new ways of doing things.

It is gratifying to know, my current project is better than the last, but not as good as the next.

The struggle for perfection is motivating, though I will never get there.

 

Regards,

Mike

 

[hamilton]

For me it was my mum - she is a kind of artist-scientist - always experimenting with new materials, methodologies, skills and approaches. Her art practice varies, but she done sculpture (large-scale metal), has worked with sausage casings to make garments (a wedding dress, a kimono), and lately she's gotten into taxidermy, mummification, tanning, etc. (She gave my son a taxidermied bat as a birthday present when he was 10). As I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum, she worked as an artistic director for a theatre company and also knows how to make incendiaries and pyrotechnic concoctions (Halloween was always fun, but slightly tense at our house...) - truly she is a Jill of all trades. She also paints, is a photographer, makes ceramics and jewelry - she can pretty much do anything! My dad is more cerebral and nature-loving - I followed him there, including in a passion for sailing. But the modelling comes from my mum, 100% - she seems to have a boundless energy and passion for making and building things and she has never been shy to help us and encourage us (the "kids" - I'm 53, so the term hardly applies anymore except when I'm feeling grumpy) in whatever projects we've had going on (except the pyrotechnics, which, for my brother and I as boys, was probably a good idea). Even now that she's in her 80s, she is still very active - she just received a medal (one of 30,000 handed out around the Commonwealth on the occasion of King Charles' accession) for artistic merit and achievement. She is my inspiration for sure - from her I learned just to go for it regardless of how difficult, complicated or just plain weird it might be. The one thing she can't do, unfortunately, is wood carving - otherwise I'd be commissioning her! Also cooking.....my dad is also the chef in our house and ruled the kitchen like a dictator - while my mum's love of experimentation is great for her creative work, it tends to produce uneven results in the kitchen.....no offence intended, mum!

hamilton

[rcmdrvr]

Modelling has always been a part of my life.  I started building model airplanes when I was about 10.  Hand lanched gliders and rubberband powered craft were always spread across my dad's garage workbench.  Next came control line models.  How many folks remember the Thimbledrone .049 engine.  When I hit my 20s I graduated to radio control and for the next few years I spread hundreds of dollars of balsa wood chips across the local flying field.  As I got older the models got bigger.  Also, the hobby began to change.  The old balsa kits began to disappear and ready built planes became the standard.  While I loved flying, building had always been my real motivation.  I loved turning a box of balsa into a flying machine.

 

As model aircraft building began disappearing; I turned to plastic models of airplanes.  Learning how to use an airbrush to paint and weather a model did a pretty good job of filling my need to model.  About ten years ago I attempted my first wooden kit of a sailing ship after visiting a local maritime museum.  It took more than a year to build but was a great challenge and I loved it.  I then dived into wooden ship models building quite a few.  Some were even nice enough to display in the house.  During these years I stumbled on this site and enjoyed the building and community.  While roaming around the internet I also found the model warship site and was taken by the models displayed, especially those in waterline presentation.  They were also models of more modern ships for which I had a greater interest.  Also, there was a sense of movement and excitement that static models do not have.  I built one, and while it did not turn out well; it was an enjoyable build and got me to strive to do better.  To this day I have a few waterline ships under construction.

 

Well, that is a history of my modelling life.  Why do I do it.....I have no idea; it is just a part of me.  Someday I hope to get good at it.

[JacquesCousteau]

Very interesting, informative responses to a worthwhile question. I recently wrote a little about this in the first post in my Lancha Chilota build log (link in signature), but to expand a bit, there are several things that motivate me in this hobby.

 

I've liked making things since I was a kid, when I built dozens of plastic airplane models and then tiny whittled models of age-of-sail warships. I stopped when I went to college, but picked it up again recently, at a point in my life when I suddenly had more free time (there is a light at the end of the thesis tunnel) and also began to explore other hobbies. While I'm currently taking a carpentry class and quite enjoying it, part of what I like about modeling boats is that I can do it at my desk without needing a full wood shop. I find wood to be a wonderful medium to work with. It's a lot of fun to shape, especially to get a complex curve out of straight strips. I also find the work relaxing and almost meditative in how you end up focusing on one tiny thing at a time. It's a challenge, and it's fun to try out new methods and to see how your craftsmanship imporoves. In this way, it's like other hobbies, such as painting or dancing.

 

Modeling also provides a very different way of engaging with history than I'm used to. When not making tiny boats, I'm an academic historian (at least until humanities and social sciences programs are fully defunded...) who works mostly with the methods and perspectives of social history. For me, scratchbuilding a model, especially of a "traditional" workboat, provides an in to start thinking about a lot of historical questions. How a boat type developed can say a lot about the spread of ideas and technologies, as well as about changing economies. The way that people built boats, the physical work done on them, and the question of ownership can tell us a lot about how people related to their means of making a living. (Not for nothing, many of the works of history I've most enjoyed reading, like Peter Winn's Weavers of Revolution, are deeply grounded in their understanding of how the nitty-gritty details of work shape broader social and political developments). And the way that boats can get taken up as cultural symbols can tell us something about the development of national and regional identities. So, modeling a workboat can help me to understand how people lived, worked, and understood some of the broader transformations of the past centuries. There are limits to what model building can tell, of course--it's most directly about working out technical issues, and can't in itself fully answer these broader questions. But it can get me started thinking about them. And there's no rule that I can't sidetrack my own build logs with long digressions along these lines. I've enjoyed not just the build, but the research and writing posts as another mode of thinking about history.

 

That said, why boats and not, say, trains or cars? I don't think it has anything to do with my parents, as nobody in my family is particularly nautical (or has been into models, for that matter). Ultimately I think it comes down to personal aesthetics. Something about a wooden boat--maybe the curved hull, maybe the organized chaos of the rigging--appeals to me in a way that other objects don't. And I think it appeals to a certain buried romanticism in me, to see in a boat a sort of freedom (even if, historically, they generally meant anything but that). So, modeling allows me to combine my historical interests with the act of creating and building something that I find aesthetically appealing.

 

Good luck with the thesis!

[Nirvana]

JacksonMcG, first of all Welcome to Model Ship World.

 

I am really intrigued by your choice of thesis of "Why do we model"

For me it is the feeling of creating something from reading a plan to visualize the final item to execute the model.
I got in to modelling at a young age when I got my first plastic model from my father of the morning of Christmas (24th), I was 6 years old.
Dad helped me to certain degree and once the evening came, I was so proud of myself to show a completed model.
It wasn't painted, but that was the start for me. So, from one point of view, building models might be the cause of being able to put things together.
Another point, when building a model, I can distance myself from all the seriousness that is happening around us on daily basis - maybe my Zen zone.
 

Over the years and many builds, I still find the great feeling of seeing a pile of wood being shaped and formed into a nice-looking model.

 

Good luck with your thesis!

[palmerit]

I'm new to this hobby.

 

I made models as a kid in the 1970s, and really liked doing it, but I grew up in an era where you needed to put childhood passions behind you. (I also grew up loving video games - as simple as they were back then - but I had to put that aside too because of similar societal pressure to "grow up"; it wasn't really until a generation later that adults playing video games really became a thing. I eventually got back to playing some video games.) 

 

I've always been intrigued by models and dioramas. I would seek out sections of museums and get lost in the details. I also have a friend whose father was an artist and one of his media was hand-crafting small detailed dioramas on a variety of subjects.

 

I'm a busy university professor - scientist, educator, department chair - and never really had time for hobbies. My wife is also a professor, but she has for a long time been a quilter, since our days in graduate school. I think it was a combination of our youngest finally going off to college, many of my childhood friends starting to retire, and considering my own retirement in a few years, that I started to think about things I could spend what little free time I have that wasn't just trying to do needed work around our house.

 

(I also decided to learn to scuba dive recently after learning that it's something you can do with a head full of gray hair and good health apart from some creaking joints - it also helps to finally have a bit of disposable income with the kids out of the house, and it makes for a nice way to get the kids to want to spend some time with you on vacation, especially when you pay for part of their trip.)

 

I think I'm drawn to models also because I've long been passionate about history. I almost majored in history in college but then realized I was more interested in reading about history than doing the work of history. People are often surprised when they come to my house and see the bookshelves filled with history books and not (my field) psychology and neuroscience books (the same is true of my audible library on my iPhone).

 

Over a decade ago, I inherited an old (1960s or 1970s) unbuilt model ship (solid hull) and was intrigued at possibly working on it, but like many models of that time, it basically was just a set of plans with no instructions. At that time, I found this forum and poked around a bit, but did not have the time - or the money - to really be able to pursue it. (I may someday get back to building that solid hull model now that I think I know what to do.)

 

It was actually a trip we took this summer to Maine that got me back to thinking about this hobby again. In addition to seeing all the boats around Maine, we stopped at Bluejacket Shipcrafters on the way to Acadia. It was there and then that I decided to just get a model to work on, hooked back onto this forum, and decided to buy the Vanguard Sherbourne. With my youngest in college, I also now had a place to work on models more easily (well at least until winter break when he's back home). Now I've seem to have gone "all in".

Edited 17 hours ago by palmerit

[No Idea]

Hi Jackson and welcome to MSW

 

I have a simple story - many years ago I was in a stressful job and quite frankly it made me not the nicest of people to be around.  My Uncle Ray who built model ships told me to chill out and build a ship.  He suggested that a change of job and hobby would do me good.

 

He suggested a kit and I bought it there and then - I also changed jobs.  The rest is history.

 

Probably the best advice I have ever had and it changed everything for me. I became absorbed in model ships and have been trying to better myself in this hobby ever since.  If I'm not ship building I'm thinking about it - what more can I say apart from  - cheers Ray  

 

 

[Tim Moore]

I build models to escape, to occupy my busy hands and mind. It gives me something to do where I am only answerable to myself. The process is important to me, and I get a sense of accomplishment, although, like a jigsaw puzzle, I only rarely bother to look at them when finished. The historical association is also important, getting to know and appreciate the subject matter. 
Nobody in my family or close to me ever built models, so for me there is no familial association or trigger. 

[aliluke]

I'm an architect by trade. I have always loved drawing and model making. I have made many models of buildings that I designed both in physical form and on the computer. It allows me to to test the aesthetics of what I am designing. Computer modelling is now very sophisticated with programmes like Rhino, Grasshopper, Revit, Enscape and SketchUp and physical modelling has been supplanted by 3D printing. So the use of the hands in architecture is now confined to a keyboard. Having started and spent the majority of my career on a drawing board with a pencil, I miss the physicality of drawing and building cardboard models but marvel at what we can achieve on the computer.

 

I made plastic models when I was a kid. Took a break in my teenage years and returned to it in my twenties. Since then (I'm now in my sixties) I have always had a model on the go be it a building, a plane or a ship. I'm always driven by the aesthetic of the subject. So for a while it was the crazy racing planes of inter-war years and then the equally crazy planes of WWI. I also enjoy researching the history of the things I make. Wooden ships have the most appealing aesthetic for me. They are, unlike my architecture, curved and flowing. They are imbued with history and become beautiful objects in miniature.

 

Why do I make physical models? Mostly for meditation, partly for using my hands on something other than a keyboard, partly for learning the history of the subject and finally for the challenge of assembly. I can't say I completely prefer wood over plastic but I certainly like the greater sense of challenge in turning a bundle of wooden strips into an object that curves and flows. I also prefer the smell of wood! It is the making more than the outcome that drives me to keep modelling but I do like the object that is created and knowing it came from my hands.

[Rik Thistle]

Jackson,

 

Another aspect to modelling, which is a very absorbing hobby, is the ability to discuss/share projects with others eg this forum.

 

I think the 'internet' has added a whole new dimension to the matter as one is now able to retain the individualism of the build whilst immediately discussing it with many others from many lands.

 

Richard