Wall O'text intro.

[sheepsail]

I miss the TRMA.

 

It wan not a site I visited often.  Perhaps once or twice a month.  The last thing the world needs is another model of the Titanic.  I did however enjoy the modeling process, along with research involving support ships such as the Nomadic and the CS Mackay-Bennett.

 

My real passions are watch making and pipe organ building. Those are the forums I mostly follow.   I also have a side interest in volcanoes. 

 

Years ago I worked for Apple in the Imaging division.   I was one of the people known as a Postscript Guru.  I got to know everything there is to know about that printer language.  

 

I even use Postscript as a general purpose scripting language.  I tested fonts, the command line backchannel, and the color imaging operations.  The language can parse anything.

 

When I was in school in the 1970s, I found a book on how spacecraft cameras work.  By chance in one of the non Apple contracts around 1995 I worked for a company that acquired Itek.  The company what made the cameras for the 1960s and 1970s era spacecraft.

 

Not exactly a model ship, I did in the last decade modify a card model of one of the Mariner class spacecraft to represent Mariner 9.  Which is my favorite.  I downloaded nearly 8000 images, which are difficult to read do to data loss and obsolete file formats.  Quite interesting to see images no one has looked at in over 50 years.

 

When I was little I did a lot of card modeling.  Usually the 'Mayflower.'  We visited the site and the ship in 1967, when I was about 7.  I remember I liked to put them into bottles. Usually Orange crush, which had clear sides.  Was really disappointed when we got back to the hotel room and the maid had cleared all the bottles.   Back then it was much easier to recover the deposits as the bottles were washed and refilled.

 

I also collected cathedrals.  These however take up a lot of space.  St Peters sat on top of the refrigerator for years, till the apostles got quite dusty.   It got to the point where I simply let them sit in their flat packs.

 

Two writers I really like are Charles Dickens, and Nevil Shute (Norway).  I have all of their published works.  Jane Austin also rates as I have all her stuff too.  Bit of a romantic I guess.

 

For forty years, I have been involved with the Dickens Christmas fair.  Also the Northern California  Pirate festival.  My education is actually in Film and theater.  I designed sets and stuff for the Big Renaissance faire held in Northern California (Black point.)  We had a full size mock up of the Golden Hind as one of our stages.  (I re-did the Lord Mayors gate house, when the prior one collapsed.)

Nevil Shute wrote a book every Modeler/Miniature mechanic should read.  It is called 'Trustee from the  Toolroom.'  Such is about Sailing ships and small steam engines.  Even Petrol Engines.  This gave me a real interest in scratch building stuff.

 

There were not a lot of Dickens Fairs in the 1990s.  I found myself, as part of the group running Science Fiction conventions.  Even back in the 1980s I would wear my Victorian dresses and watchmaker loupes.  Eventually this became something called steampunk.  The word comes from some novels written back then.  I was one of the first people to re-enact Ada Lovelace.  (really Ada King, nee Byron)

 

I think what I really collect is information.  Over the years I have collected almost everything public about the Antikythera mechanism.  As well As Babbage's analytical engines.  My real passion is the mechanical automatons by the Jaquet-Droz what can write, draw and play musical instruments.  There are also tiny mechanical birds the size of postage stamps what play mechanically.  I collect these as well.

 

Image processing lead me into the world of Photogrameritry.  Which is recovering data from multiple photographs.  I also acquired a rather good CAD program back in the 1990s which I still use.  This is a subject unto itself.  I have spent years messing about with obsolete code drivers and such.  The mathematics behind this are complex and I barely scratched the surface.    To this effect I collect old photography equipment 3D camera stuff and recently since no one wants them APS cameras.   I also have a Photo CD film scanner, and started to make a Holographic projector, until I found the former.

 

I have a full woodworking shop with some metal working tools.  Everything to build a pipe organ.  I also became active in the local Makerspace, what is in an industrial area.  They have the usual 3D printers,  Along with Welding equipment, CNC machines, and my favorite an industrial Laser cutter with about a 1 meter square bed.  Can only cut about 1/4 inch stuff.  There is a lot one can do with that thickness.

 

I built a vacuum forming press for one of the pipe organ projects (to replicate the plaster grill molds.)  

 

I considered making model airplanes. Like the ones Neville Shute wrote about.  I joined some of the modeling sites to download plans of his planes.  None of these were like the TRMA.  Most of the builds seemed to be one and done.  Copied from old magazines and such.  I really want to do some of the merlin engine craft like the spitfire, and the mosquito.  Few people realize these were mostly built by women.

 

The plane though I really want is an Airspeed Oxford, which Shute(Norway) and his partner (Tittle) designed.  Like the cathedrals, and the mariner 9 spacecraft, these would likely up space and collect dust.  I have enough projects for 500 years or more.
 
Somehow into all this mess enter the Endurance.  Yes, that ship.  I sort of mixed up Franklin and Shackleton at first.  A pole is a pole, right?  The Dickensian ships were a bit tubby for my taste.  But the lines of the Endurance, (along with the Aurora, and discovery are beautiful.)  

Somewhere along the lines I found one of the MSW endurance blogs in 2020 or 2021. Which showed all the laser cut parts.  There were also additional notes showing how to fix some of the details.

 

I squirreled all this away in my vast collection of data.   When the ship was actually found, I went to my steammodel folder, only to find I had restored a backup from 2013 over it and all the images were lost.  A reverse image search lead me back here.  I am seriously considering bulding this from the redrawn lines I found here.

 

One book I really liked was called 'The wreak of the Sagwina.' By Keith Robinson, who wrote a lot of popular JA books.  This one was probably the least popular in the school library, but I found it quite interesting.  By chance the Dickens sets were stored in the old Mare Island coal sheds.  More chance last year our maker booth (laser maze)  was in front of self same shed with a huge banner of the Sagwina above it.  (another subject unto itself.)  So this ship is also high on the wish list of models to build.  Someone here started a model, it seems like it was never finished, although it is marked so. 

 

Before the Titanic was found I would have said that the Andra Doria was the most well known passenger ship sinking (at least outside war, since the Lusitania was a war casualty.)

 

Joining MSW is something that has been in the background ever since I became TRMA homeless.  I have been reading it for many years, and some of the regulars actually feel like aquantances.   I sort of intentionally avoided these forums , as there are too many ships.  The best thing though is to choose a few ships to focus on and do one's best to ignore the rest.

 

Edited 7 hours ago by sheepsail
fixed capitalization

[GrandpaPhil]

Welcome!

 

If you like steampunk and card, I would recommend Orel’s line of kits.  They have a phenomenal selection.  They are mostly in 1/200 scale.

Edited 7 hours ago by GrandpaPhil

[Keith Black]

SS, welcome to MSW. Glad to have you aboard. 

[Jim Lad]

Hello, and a warm welcome to the forum from "Down Under'.

 

John

[druxey]

Interesting bio. It ticks off many of my boxes - Dickens, Babbage and Lovelace, Shute, set design (may harpsichords substitute for organs?), steampunk, and, of course, ship models. You've come to the right place, apparently! Welcome indeed, sheepsail!

[Knocklouder]

Bob  M.