Scratch-Building - Do You do it ?

Hi ;

You sound like a fellow I used to work with  . I would build " Mobe- Master " trucks ( for moving mobile homes and he would build the Mobile Homes and support vehicles From Scratch .

    At one time we had Four Internationals and four Chevy diesel rigs ( All Scratch-Built and their Mobile Home loads ) . It frightened the naysayers away , that's for sure . Especially in the scale - 1/20 !

I scratchbuild a lot (hence my screenname) usually because I'm into an almost non-existent subject where manufacturers provide kits. I build fire apparatus, and police emergency vehicles among the typical aircraft and armor.

My preferred medium is styrene sheet, metal, wood, & modelling clay.  

I've always aspired to be a scratch builder, but unfortunately am not.

The farthest I get is to scratch some detail from bits of plastic or metal, and occasionally I can reproduce a part that got lost or just looked too horrible to begin with.

I've never scratchbuilt an entire model but I've made some of my own parts, either for detailing or because the kit parts weren't good. Right now, I'm building Minicraft's Rolls Royce Silver Shadow kit and the lights are so bad I'm having to make new ones.

I agree ;

I found ,many years ago, that scratch building something that should be there , but wasn't ,  was very satisfying. What happened with many ships for instance was very simple .They didn't make it in plastic !

So , I started copying paper models ! There are so many more Non-Military ships in paper and yes , sizes too . The nice thing is when I do  a refrigerator ship from the fifties the comments range from compliments to " where did you get that ?"

This is what for me makes it fun , The same applies to planes and vehicles and yes , even armor

     Tanker-Builder.

I say to myself that the next build will be simple and OOB but that seldom happens. I end up adding wires, lines, switches or whatever I see that will enhance the details. I save electronic components like resistors, wiring, small weird parts, mechanisms from machinery, watches, etc to be later used as individual details. I also use plastic sheet, stretched sprue and tubing to fabricate parts. I enjoy the scratch building aspect of modeling.

I scratch build by necessity, so to speak.  

I bought several air models made in the 70's and the cockpits in all of them where very stark, so I added to the interiors using bits of strip, tube and sheet styrene, simply for my own enjoyment and as a challenge.  I found that I really enjoy doing this scratch building with fiddly little parts and it has made my modeling skills improve across the board.  

I found a wealth of onfo on 1 of my favorite aircraft ( P-47 Thunderbolt ) here recently and am looking forward to attempting my first engine wiring project.

Thanks to this and other modeling sites, the ideas and how to ,are readilly available, and I have copied many tips and techniques from the "pro's " who willingly give up their secrets here.  I am gratefull for the knowledge  and expanding my interest in an already great hobby.

I don't think anyone is born with the abililty to scratch build- it is a learned skill.  One way to pick up the skills is to buy a kit for an old wood "solid" model.  There are old kits available on eBay, or a few companies who build replicas of these old kits.  The fuselages were generally sawn to profile and planform (side and top lines) and had to be rounded out with a carving knife.  Once you build a few of those, you will aquire the skill to completely scratch a model from plans.  

Sounds like a good article for FSM!  Hummm!

I've scratch built a few things over the last 40 years - mostly radio control ships.  I generally use aircraft and light ply, bass wood, balsa wood, mahogany, brass, copper, styrene, and PVC pipe.  I scratch built models of all three ships I served on in the USCG: Columbia River Lightship (WLV 604); USCGC CONFIDENCE (WMEC 619); and USCGC VIGOROUS (WMEC 627).  Most of the building of CONFIDENCE and VIGOROUS was done while I was stationed aboard VIGOROUS.  

I've built a 1:32nd scale model of an 80' Elco - PT-188.  The torpedoes were made from Estes rocket nose cones (aft end) and some plastic florists (test) tubes (forward end),  The twin .50 machine gun tubs were made from PVC pipe couplers.

Working from plans in a WOODEN BOAT MAGAZINE plans catalog, I made a model of a 16' Gentleman's Runabout.  The wheel was made from brass stock with a mahogany rim,  

www.rcgroups.com/.../showthread.php

I used a couple different plans sets in different scales to build USCGC HAWSER.(WYTL 65610) in 1:32nd scale.  I  used some model railroad fittings on this model.  O, HO, and N scale brake wheels became dogging wheels, spot light control, and valve wheels.  The model took 1st Place at the Toledo Weak Signals Show last year.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1303940&pp=10&highlight=65%27+WYTL#post15982778

I've done a couple of clones of the lindberg "neches" tanker out of sheet styrene by gluing .040" bulkheads onto the keel plate. Glued large flat plates into place then hand curve smaller plates were the hull rounds over by the bilge keels & stern. All piping was made from .040" square strips then hand rounded before cutting & gluing in place.

My 1/144 scale ships are all scratch built using balsa for framing & .040" plastic for skin. The biggest model is hms warspite at 52" long & the smallest is an ocean going tug at about 20" long.

I've bought about 15 revell 1/426 scale arizona's to use the hull after being cut & modified plus some of the main guns to buld all the old battleships from the arkansas to the west virginia during different time periods of ww2. Have the pennsylvania mostly done but not painted in her mid1945 configuration. The new mexico has the hull done but no prop shafts, decks cut & glued plus superstructures mostly built. The nevada & oklahoma hulls have been shortened, decks cut & glued plus some of the nevada's 1945 superstructure built. All these have or will have hollow torpedo bulges just like the real ships did.

Right now i'm working on rebuilding 6 1/400 heller surcouf t-47 destroyers. 4 are t-47s in various configurations as all gun, flagship, tartar & asw. 1 is being rebuilt as a t-53 type all gun destroyer & the last as a t-56 asw configuration. All new decks & superstuctures plus some scratch built main guns but also using original parts like stacks, fire directors, main guns & torpedo equipment.

I used to do it much more than today. My first was to follow an article about building a new nose for the P-36 to make it into an XP-37, I carved Balsa, sealed it with Model Airplane Dope as my sanding sealer, and "bake molded" a clear canopy from some plastic draped over a carved wooden buck.  I did progress to entire aircraft, but, when I got to the wheels back then, I needed something more solid than balsa wood,,,,,so I sawed "wheel blanks" off of an aluminum rod, I sanded and filed on those discs until I had a tire and wheel with a depression in the middle.

Just about the time that I got really serious about all of this,,,,,I turned 18 and joined up,,,,,then I had enough money to just buy all the kits and conversions I wanted. So, for a good long while, my scratch skills set dormant, with some of the quickness being lost.

Now, today, I want more versions and weapons than what are being offered in plastic and resin, so I buy the aftermarket stuff,,,,,,,,and scratch build a lot of the more unique weapons that I want. Being able to start with an aluminum tube or plastic tube or rod, and all of the other shapes we can get now that we couldn't back in 1968 has helped a lot. (an old memory for some of you,,,,early gray Plasti-Strut couldn't be glued with the Model Shop glues we had back then, only Plasti-Weld worked on it,,,,,then the newer "hot" cements came around and I think the plastic formula was changed)

It is a big boring list for people that don't need the stuff, but, almost every US aircraft carried a Practice Bomb Rack* since 1960 or so,,,,,,and no model company has ever released one for sale. There are about 20 "no brainer" things like that, all of them have to be scratchbuilt. (*Not the same as the Practice Bomb Carrier Pods)

I bet TB and Don see "something" in ordinary shapes as they walk around in the non modeling part of their lives,,,,,,I still do,,,,,,even drinking straws look like incredibly tall gun tub shields if you stand them on end, lol.

Rex

I have been a big fan of AM for years, but I have still found the need to scratch a few small bits here and there. Then at the end of last year I built an He 111Z and despite the large PE set I had for it, the rear compartments looked empty. So I decided it was time I took the plunge and scratch built the complete compartment is each fuselage.

Overall, I was really pleased with it and didn't find it as hard as I had expected. I did find it was more time consuming that adding PE, but there was a lot of satisfaction there, even though I knew it wasn't 100% accurate. Since then I did a lot of scratchbuilding on an 88 Flak gun.

While I doubt I would go to the extreme of building a complete kit, and I won't give up the AM, but if I felt a kit needed that bit extra, I would defiantly do it again.

I have to confess that scratchbuilding is totally beyond my abilities

I do scratch build.  The main reason is that I want to model subjects for which there is no kit available, or no decent kit, i.e., Boeing 307.  Especially, I do not find a kit in a scale I want.  Occasionally I scratch build a ship because I find large ship kits just way to expensive.  I am not going to spend 200 to 300 bucks or more for a static scale ship!.  Since there are lots and lots of ship plans available, and the materials for ships are not expensive, I save a lot of money building a ship from scratch.  For instance, my favorite ships to model are great lakes freighters, big 600 or thousand foot ships, and I do them in 1:192 (a popular ship scale.

When I build almost anything from scale I use wood for most of the material, with some styrene and some brass (and even some resin castings).  I guess I use wood because it is cheap, and I learned to model in the wood era, before styrene kits.  In those days scratch building was much more popular than it is today.  Many model magazines had plans for scratch builders almost every  issue.

Now, I do sometimes scratch only parts. I am doing a Boeing 307, scratchbuilding the fuselage, but using kit wings and tail, modifying the necelles to eliminate the turbos.

Alright now , who lost that enter keying after each paragraph ? I did not forget this time honest . I even double clicked it . When I checked it before posting the spacing was gorgeous , what gives ? Sorry if you get headaches folks .