What's your favorite model to build?

I forgot I did the America Yacht twice myself.  I have one that survived the flood, but boy them flags is sure messed up!

Jake

I'm currently building my second Revell 1:196 Constitution (the first one was thirty some years ago).  I'm building this one as it is currently restored and plan to build another one back-dated to its 1812 configuration. 

 I also have a second Revell Arizona waiting, along with a set of GMM photo-etch.   

I'm having a lot of fun (with occasional frustration!!) with the 1/720 Italeri HOOD.Adding the GMM brass has certainly polished what is already a very nice kit.

 I have the 1/350 Tamiya KGV waiting next.GMM brass and Lion Roar barrels will make this a beauty!!

I got addicted to models when I was in elementary school.  I have no idea how many times I built the various Revell kits in what I used to think of as the "$3.00" series - the Santa Maria, Bounty, Constitution, Victory, Flying Cloud, etc.  I'm sure most, if not all, of the ones I built would look absolutely awful to any of us today, but they sure were fun - and educational.  I'm not at all sure I ever would have gotten interested in history if it hadn't been for models. 

I built my first Revell Cutty Sark (actually I think it was the bastardized version in the "Thermopylae" box) when I was in about the fifth grade, for a neighbor lady who wanted to turn it into a lamp.  She paid me the princely sum of $5.00, which seemed like a vast amount of money.  I built Cutty Sarks and Thermopylaes for several other people under similar conditions, for similar rates, during the next few years.  In retrospect, I'm not at all sure they got their money's worth.

I agree generally with the favorable comments about that old kit; it represented the state of the art in 1959, and still holds up pretty well (if you can find one).  I must say, though, that if I were in the market for a Cutty Sark today I'd start with the Imai/Aoshima kit.  It's smaller than the Revell one (1/125 scale, an almost perfect match for the wonderful George Campbell plans on 3/32"=1'), but in many ways better detailed and certainly more accurate.

I wouldn't want to pick one favorite kit; I have pleasant memories of lots of them.  The old Revell H.M.S. Victory got me acquainted with Nelson and the Napoleonic Wars, and of course I experienced waves of youthful patriotism when I built the old 18" Constitution and read about the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812.  And that old Flying Cloud was a beauty.  I also have a warm spot for some of the old Airfix kits.  Their Cutty Sark is actually quite nice, their H.M.S. Prince has the potential to be a spectacular model, and the "carved" detail on the Airfix Wasa can easily stand comparison with anything Heller ever did.

At the moment, courtesy of our good friend Jake and his stock of antique kits, I'm working on the old, 1965-vintage Revell Golden Hind.  I didn't think I'd ever build a sailing ship model based on a plastic kit again, but when this opportunity arose I couldn't resist it.  That's another kit that, in my opinion, deserves the label "classic."   Those were the days.

Jake

   My favorite has been the Imai Spanish Galleon (built four times ) and Imai Santa Maria (building my third one now.) I like to make my ships look like worn wood and these two fit the bill.Plus the fit is great.

Rod

I know what you mean, if I was not rying to finish the Chebec by October, I'd jump right on the Golden Hind, Thank You Again!

Jake

I would have to agree that the Revell 1:96 Cutty Sark has been an absolute joy to build.  I mean, I have the Heller Soleil Royal which is exquisite.  But for some reason, I set it aside so I could put my focus on the Sark.  It must be it's detail, while at the same time being so easy to build and paint.  It's very straight forward and has some of the best and easiest rigging instructions I've seen.  Hats of to Revell for this kit.  I only wish that this kind of work would return.  I would love to see Revell make a Victory, La Superb, or really any of the old ships of the line in 1:96.

But really, for me, this forum has brought the enjoyment back for me.  Without Finescale, I don't think I would have jumped back into the hobby.  There are so many people here that have shared their expertise and helped me get better at what I do.

So with that, any kit I do is my most enjoyable as long as I've got the forum to turn to when I get stuck.

On another subject, how hard is it to find the Thermopolae from Revell in 1:96?  It would be a great companion build to the Cutty Sark.

"What's your favorite model to build?"    You didn't specify, so my answer would have to be, any laser cut building kit from GCLaser........OK, so I'm periferally connected, and do some of their "Beta builds".

I've actually had some enjoyment kitbashing the Lindberg "North Atlantic Fishing Trawler", and the ship from the new "King Kong", looks like it might be buildable from the lindberg trawler.  is the "Louis Arthur", a freelance, 137' coastal freighter in 1/87 scale.

Grymm - before you start looking for a Revell Thermopylae, be aware that it's another one of Revell's notorious marketing scams:  it's essentially the Cutty Sark kit in a different box.

Revell changed the figurehead (the Greek soldier in the Thermopylae kit admittedly is a beauty), changed the color of the hull from black to green, and changed the shape of the poop deckhouse.  They also deleted the deckhouse between the main and mizzen masts, and replaced it with a"cover" for an enormous hatch, which is completely spurious.  (Apparently they needed something to fill the slots in the deck where the tabs on the Cutty Sark's deckhouse bulkheads went.)  They deleted the main skysail yard (wrong; if I remember correctly the Thermopylae had skysails on all three masts), and altered the arrangement of the lower deadeyes slightly.  (The Cutty Sark's lower deadeyes are secured to the pinrails inside the bulwarks; those of the Thermopylae sat on top of the bulwarks, with iron chainplates outside the hull.  Revell made the change rather half-heartedly; the too-wide pinrails are even more conspicuous on the "Thermopylae.")  That's it.

In reality the two ships looked similar from a distance of a mile or so, but were different in several significant and conspicuous ways.  The bow of the Thermopylae had a round forefoot, rather than the sharp angle of the Cutty Sark's.  The Cutty Sark's stern is unusually bulky for a composite tea clipper of the period; to some eyes it looks almost out of scale with the rest of the hull.  (That powerful, bouyant  stern was a key to her success in the Australian wool trade.)  The Thermopylae had a much more delicate stern, with a sharp slope in profile, much more typical of a British tea clipper.  There also were some big differences between the two ships' rigs.  The Thermopylae had a "patent reefing gear" on her main topsail - a mechanical gadget that rolled the sail up like a window blind.  There's no hint of that mechanism in the Revell kit; it uses the same spars as the Cutty Sark.

Revell made some beautiful kits all right, but frequently fell prey to the quest for the almighty dollar.  The most gross of its distortions of history probably is its "H.M.S. Beagle," which is just a modified reissue of its H.M.S. Bounty.  (The real ships resembled each other only in that each had a hull, a deck, and three masts.)  The Revell Seeadler, which we discussed on another thread recently, is a modified reissue of the Coast Guard training ship Eagle.  And the Revell American clipper ship Staghound is a hideously distorted perversions of Revell's earlier, and mighty nice, Flying Cloud kit.

As I've ranted before in this Forum, this sort of stunt is the equivalent of selling a slightly-modified B-17 kit in a box labeled "B-52."  About the best thing that can said in Revell's defense is that it isn't the only company that's perpetrated such scams over the years.  Heller may be the worst offender; some of the things those French designers did as a means of camouflaging recycled hulls are downright laughable.  And at least one of the HECEPOB (that's hideously expensive continental European plank-on-bulkhead) wood kit companies has emulated Revell in trying to convince innocent people that the Beagle looked like the Bounty.

Let the buyer beware; these companies are far more interested in making money than in reproducing history.  Those who are interested in scale modeling are well advised to avoid the aforementioned kits.

CORRECTION:  As soon as I hit the "post" button this afternoon I started having doubts about my memory.  This evening I looked up the Thermopylae in David MacGregor's The Tea Clippers, and confirmed that I made a couple of goofs in the above rant.  Revell was right on one point:  the deletion the main skysail yard.  She didn't set any skysails.  She did carry Colling and Pinkney's patent reefing gear, but on her main topgallant; she had double topsails on all three masts, like the Cutty Sark.  (Interestingly, her original sail plan called for patent reefing gear on a single mizzen topsail as well, but somebody added a mizzen lower topsail in red ink.)  She was also fitted with a mechanism called Cunningham's Patent Brace Winch at the foot of the main mast, to control the braces of the fore yard.  The running parts of the fore braces apparently were made out of iron chain, with the hauling ends running through sheaves in the bulwarks, across the deck, to the winch at the foot of the main mast.  The Revell kit, of course, contains no hint of any of this gear.

Revell did, for some reason, remove the studding sail booms from the "Thermopylae" kit.  That's wrong, of course; she set studding sails on her fore and main masts, like practically all the other tea clippers.

MacGregor's book also includes a lines plan, which shows a noticeably different hull form than that of the Cutty Sark.  In addition to the very different bow and stern profiles I mentioned earlier, the Thermopylae's cross-section was rounder, with considerably more deadrise than that of the Cutty Sark.

The bottom line remains the same:  what's in that Revell box isn't a scale model of the Thermopylae.  It's a slightly modified Cutty Sark with a green hull.  Buy a Cutty Sark kit, spray the hull green, and you're almost as close to reality.

Wow- I've rarely built any more than once - not for lack of desire but lack of time. One of those is the Revell 1/96 Constitution, I'm still building it two and a half years after I started it. I can tell you that it is my favorite, but also the most frustrating model I've built. There's been a lot of conflicting information regarding how it looked, and I've made mistakes and compromises along the way. Still, I am proud of the work I'm doing.

As for past models that I'd like to build again, there's quite a few. I built the Revell Mayflower (more properly the replica ship Mayflower II), and after having visited the real thing, I'd like another crack at it. That model is a wonderful representation of the real thing; even the rigging plans are quite good - except for the shroud/ratlines, which I would throw away now.

I've had poor luck with the 20th century ships I've tried. Looking back,I actually enjoy reading the stories about the ships more than building them. For example, the WW II cruiser USS Pittsburgh lost its bow in a storm (I think), and had to sail backwards to safety. The model was one of those notorius early Revell flat-bottomed kits, with no likely resemblance hull-wise to the real thing. I built the German "Blucher", and thought it was a decent model. I haven't tried any 1/350 models from Tamiya or Trumpeter yet. I need to improve my plastic and photoetch skills first.

As for subjects outside of ships, I'd like to get a crack again at some old classic car models from Revell Monogram. The word "Classic" is applied too loosely these days - the word used to mean something, but just like the word "awesome", it now means much less. Monogram's line of Classic car models that I've built include the 1930 (or was it 1929) Packard Boattail Speedster, 1939 Mercedes Benz 540K supercharged, and the 1940 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet, all part of the old Harrah's classic car collection. Just thinking of the beauty of these cars makes my knees weak. I did not have an airbrush back then (~35 years ago), but oh, how I'd like to do them again, now that I do have one! Ditto for my WWII airplanes, most especially my 1/32 Spitfire and a 1/72 B24 Liberator.

Finally, my other current build is one I'm working on with my kids - Skilcraft's "Visible Man". I built one for the school nurse back in my elementary school days, it turned out pretty well, and as far as I know, it still sits in the Nurse's office there. It's a great educational build.

Jose Gonzales

My favorite ship model was the ITC U.S.S. Oregon, followed by the Revell U.S.S. Olympia, and then the Revell RMS Geat Eastern and the Aurora Graf Spee and ITC's "Fulton's Folly". The best modern battleship I have enjoyed building was the Revell U.S.S. Arizona. The hull and float planes are very nicely done. I really liked the way they went ahead and molded many of the kits in various color plastic back then. It cut a lot of time otherwise spent in painting.

The nicest ship model kit I ever built was the very old Revell U.S.S. Forrestall (carrier). I really liked the nice little scale model jet aircraft.

The most impressive were the twin kits the Japanese battleship IJN Yamato and it's sister carrier IJN Shinano. These were about four feet long each. The main deficiency about the Shinano kit was it's lack of aircraft with the kit, but since it was sank in Tokyo Bay right after being launched, maybe I should not expect much more.

As far as building a single subject more then once, I did both the Pyro and Lindberg versions of the Monitor and Merrimac ships, as well as building the Revell U.S.S. Oregon twice and both the Lindberg and the Revell Bismark kits.

My least favorite kits were Airfix, due to very low quality, followed by Revell's Polaris submarine series (when you installed the insides, the hull halves would not go together). Funny,I wound up building this one twice, because when I complained to the factory about it's problem, they sent me a whole new kit.

Oh well

  Tom T

jgonzales wrote:

As for subjects outside of ships, I'd like to get a crack again at some old classic car models from Revell Monogram. The word "Classic" is applied too loosely these days - the word used to mean something, but just like the word "awesome", it now means much less. Monogram's line of Classic car models that I've built include the 1930 (or was it 1929) Packard Boattail Speedster, 1939 Mercedes Benz 540K supercharged, and the 1940 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet, all part of the old Harrah's classic car collection. Just thinking of the beauty of these cars makes my knees weak. I did not have an airbrush back then (~35 years ago), but oh, how I'd like to do them again, now that I do have one! Jose Gonzales

How about the Monogram SJ Duesenberg and the Lindberg 1929 Mercedes SSK roadster as well as as a nice kit of the Aubern Chord or the '32 Delage (you know, the straight-eight with four side-draft carbs)? I believe that it was Monogram or Revell that did the Delage.

Ever been to Harrah's in Reno?

  Tom T

Unfortunately, no, I haven't been to Reno, but I saw pictures of the collection in a big book many years ago at the library, and I have been to the Four Queens hotel in Las Vegas, where there is a nice collecton on the roof. I heard that Harrah's had gone through bankruptcy a few years back and had to sell most of their car collection, but that they had subsequently started rebuilding the collection again.

Does the slang term "doosey" (e.g. it's a doosy, meaning it's huge or a whopper, or something like that) derive from Duesenberg? just curious. No, I haven't built the Doosy, but I did build the 1937 Cord. Mercedes built a whole series of SSK roadsters over the years - my favorite, though is that 1939 540 SSK, I think the culmination of the previous models. No spare tire or rumble seat in the back, just the spare on the side and a circular trunklid - that car is the epitome of elegance, and the most beautiful car ever built, imho. I'll have to look up the Delage to see if I built it or not, but from your description, I don't think I have.

Jose Gonzales

jgonzales wrote:

Does the slang term "doosey" (e.g. it's a doosy, meaning it's huge or a whopper, or something like that) derive from Duesenberg? just curious. Jose Gonzales

Yup. The SJ was the first street legal luxury sedan that could do 0-60 in 10 seconds without changing a gear!

It had a supercharged in-line eight cylinder engine with a 32 valve dual overhead cam hemispherical combustion chamber head,  that should still on display in a nice chassis in the basement of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

When they sent a team to do a Le Mans race in Europe, both cars had their radiators knocked out during the race, but the driver of the second car decided not to turn the engine off and finished the race, going on to victory, using the large oil sump's capacity to cool the engine alone.

The old phrase was "It's sure a Doozey".

OK?

  Tom T

By the way, I did Harrah's in Reno back in the '70's when the centerpiece was a totally restored Ford Tri-Motor passenger plane. Overall, as others told me, his basic car collection was too much. You actually got sick and tired of seeing them before you could get through them all.

Being a member of the "AACA" Antique Auto Club of America http://www.aaca.org/  Great web site by the way.

I had to respond to this information, the term of " it's a Dusey" is the correct term and spelling.  But it refers to the quality and speed of a product.  It has never been really changed to it's a doozy, but as things go, it was changed to cover all things that were made of quality.  The big 3 wish they had something that would had lasted so long.

Jake

AACA member #G9611

Big Jake wrote:

Being a member of the "AACA" Antique Auto Club of America http://www.aaca.org/  Great web site by the way. Jake AACA member #G9611

OK, Jake, then here's a trivia question for you:

I had an uncle that restored and kept a couple of Ford Model "A"'s in mint condition, and would drive them annually in the parades in Tyler, Texas.

He told me about a little known charistic that was appearantly unique to Ford that made them much more common, and desirable to restore then, say a Chevrolet or a Buick product by GM.

Oddly enough, this is a very "foundational" (hint-hint) difference between Ford and GM products made back then.

What was this difference?

Something this basic shoujld be a "piece of cake" for an AACA member who spells "Deusey" right.

For bonus points:

1. Where did the Volvo get it's name from? This one is interesting since it involves three manufacturers, two of which still have a car with their names on them.
2. How did the Jaguar XKE come about, and what was it's direct predecessor, and why was it not successful?
3. How and why was the Corvette Sting Ray developed?
4. What was the first passenger car made with a radical innovation for it's time: Four Wheel Brakes and why was it not a success? This one involved a famous American name, associated with a very famous race car event.

  Tom T

P.S.

Did you know there was an engineer who modified his Ford Model A by installing a flash steam boiler/engine package in his car and literally went around "stomping" Duesenbergs with it back then?

I ain't into Fords, but ask me a questions about the GMC V-6 And I'll put you to bed.  BTW, we gotta get back on point.  Those monogram classics are still a work of art.  The '36 benz' even has grease fittings on the drive train. Those are great models.

Did you know that Ford's wife made him change the Greyhound hood ornement to a goose on the 1934-35 model year, because  the greyhound was a male with the correct attachments, the public complained and a slump in sales followed, he put the greyhound back on, "Nuts" and all.

Jake

I respect the man who knows his limits Jake.

Actually the difference between the classic Ford Model A and it's counterparts made by GM involves more being privy to the main headache of restoring GM classics then a knowledge of Fords, that is, the fact that they continued to make their frames out of wood while Ford initiated the steel frame with his production models.

In the 40's, my dad's family had a used Pontiac, and since it had a wooden frame, the body tended to "get loose" over time (the wooden frame's attachments carriage bolts tended to wallow out over time) and so every time they hit a bump, the entire body shook so much, the entire gang would chant Pontiac's slogan while laughing "You can't beat a Pontiac".

In terms of restoration, this means for antique GM products you literally have to go out and find oak beams that will hold up under the stresses of motoring on modern highways. As a result, the Model A's tended to "stay in the family" longer, while GM products were sent to the junk yards, as they do not need something so basic as a new wooden frame to restore a Ford.

If  you carefully inspect any of the Monogram classic car models, you will see the wood graining clearly molded in the 16 cylinder Cadillac's frame, for instance. That car had a funny story about changing the back plugs.

Did you know that Ford was one of the last to go to hydraulic brakes? This was because back then, whenever a new feature was introduced on any of his cars, he insisted on testing it himself. As it turns out, in the initial test run, the car had the freak occurance of blowing a wheel cylinder, and since that meant he lost all braking, he put a stop to the program.

On the flip side, Duesenberg was the first Le Mans class racing machine to use hydraulic brakes.

Since it looks that you as I built the kit, do you remember what the "K" stood for with the '39 Mercedes 540K?

For bonus points, do you know where the popular "SS" or "GT" designations for European sports cars came from?

  Tom T

ooh- oooh-oooh- I know the "K"!

K stood for Kompressor-the german word describing the supercharger on the engine:)

the SS, well that one I don't know. "GT" stands for Gran Tourismo.

Jose Gonzales

T_Terrific,

Since you're n BR maybe we can get together I live in Lacombe, just down I-12 from you by 60 or so miles.

Jake

I really think you would have fun coming up here Jake.

We got one big local hobby store and not one but TWO Hobby Lobby's.

I can be available most weekdays and maybe a Saturday.

Just send me an e-mail.

  Tom T

jgonzales wrote:

ooh- oooh-oooh- I know the "K"! K stood for Kompressor-the german word describing the supercharger on the engine:) the SS, well that one I don't know. "GT" stands for Gran Tourismo.   Jose Gonzales

Hey Jose, the SS is a little trickier.

Beleive it or not, the best sources traces it to the Swallowtail Sidecar company, as owned by William Lyons.

In 1922, a young motorcyclist by the name of Bill Lyons joined sidecar builder William Walmsley to form the Swallow Sidecar Company in Blackpool, England.  Their stylish, distinctive aluminum sidecars proved popular.

He then ventured into doing various sportcar types and it was at the 1931 London Motor Show that Lyons entered the market with cars of his own.  The SS-I and smaller SS-II had side-valve 6-cylinder and 4-cylinder engines from Standard but Lyons designed the innovative chassis.  Long, low styling complimented with a leather and wood interior would become a Lyons' trademark, even then. 

The company name changed to SS Cars Ltd in 1933 when production of Swallow cars stopped.  In 1935, Lyons introduced the streamlined SS-I Airline Saloon and the SS-90.  But it was the SS Jaguar 100 with its overhead-valve engine that would be the first to bear the Jaguar name. 

And then he went on to make the Jaguar series of cars and the rest is history.

It is interesting to note that "SS" became synonamous with very sporty cars, so along the way, even Merceces named their '29 model the "SSK", "K" being for "Kompressor", or supercharger as we know,

The GT designation was a post-war-Autobahn designation, meaning that the car was suitible for "Grand", or 100 mph touring.

Funny how we got a Pontiac named the GTO with no clue or connection to it's meaning

As for the last quiz, the answers are as follows:

1. Horch, Audi, Volvo, literally meaning"Listen", "I Listened", and "I Roll"
2. XK-SS, a street varient of the "D" racer, was a failure, since it had no passenger comfort.
3. From Chevrolet's attempt to make a copy the XKE Jaguar.
4. The Rickenbacker, founded by the famous WWI ace and race car driver Eddie Rickenbacker. The concept of four wheel brakes was killed by negative advertising by Ford who claimed a car with front brakes would spin out of control.

If you want more info on these, feel free to ask .

  Tom T