I feel pitty for a certain mr........ (wooden shipmodel kits)

I'm not familiar with Mr. Sh...., but I think I need to make a clarification regarding that article in the Nautical Research Journal.  I didn't write it; the author was a friend of mine, the late Dr. Charles MacDonald.  He was a Professor of English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, an experienced modeler, an avid collector of nautical books, and, for some years after his retirement, editor of the NRJ.  That article is more than twenty-five years old now but, unfortunately, just as valid as ever - if not more so.

My general attitude toward hobbies and hobby products is that every hobbiest has every right in the world to pursue the hobby as he or she likes.  But I have three major complaints about the HECEPOB companies. 

One - their marketing practices are deceptive.  A quick look through the catalog of Model Expo (the biggest HECEPOB distributor in the U.S., I believe) will reveal numerous kit descriptions that have scarcely anything to do with reality.  We're told that Frederick af Chapman designed frigates for the British Navy, that the Mayflower was "Columbus's flagship," that H.M.S. Beagle had the same hull lines as H.M.S. Bounty, and that Mamoli's version of H.M.S. Victory is "so accurately detailed that your model will have the same number of hull timbers as the original."  (That last claim is especially obnoxious.  I don't know whether the manufacturer or Model Expo was responsible for it, but it's an outright, bald-faced lie.)

Two - as anybody who's ever worked in a hobby shop knows, HECEPOB kits drive far more people out of the hobby than they bring into it.  They entice naive people (with deep pockets) by means of glitzy boxes and glorious, romanticized descriptions, but when the purchaser opens the box and tries to assemble the kit he's usually disappointed and frustrated.  The combination of incompetently-researched, ineptly drawn plans, hopelessly vague instructions, irrational construction methods, shoddy materials, and crude fittings usually makes the newcomer give up.  (It must be admitted that, statistically, the percentage of model kits in general that ever gets finished is alarmingly small.  But the problem is especially serious with wood ship models.)

Three - some people do seem to get hooked on HECEPOB kits, and, after building a couple of them, often acquire attitudes that I find intensely irritating.  At least one other web forum (in which I no longer participate) majestically restricts itself to wood ship models, as though there were something holy about wood as a modeling material.  Any post that relates to plastic gets deleted - but anything about those hideous HECEPOB monstrosities is welcome.  I happen to think that no hobbiest has any business turning up his nose at any other.  But many of those modelers seem to have only the vaguest notion of what scale modeling is about - and, as is obvious from this section of the FSM Forum, many plastic modelers understand the subject thoroughly.  Among the HECEPOB fraternity, though, anybody who dares suggest that Revell's rendition of the Cutty Sark looks more like the real ship than any of the wood kits can expect to be labeled a blasphemer.

I always feel obliged in discussions like this to emphasize that generalizations are unfair.  I'm sure there's quite a bit of variation in the quality of HECEPOB kits.  At least one of those manufacturers, Amati, seems to have seen the light recently, and is introducing a line of serious scale kits under the name "Victory Models."  (The designer of that series, as I understand it, formerly worked for Calder/Jotika, and clearly knows what he's doing.)  I hope that series is a success, and that other companies will follow Amati's lead. 

I love working with wood, and I hope more people will discover the pleasures of building wood scale ship models.  But I refuse to regard wood as the sole "legitimate" modeling medium, and it galls me that so many manufacturers, in the name of making money, are foisting such masses of overpriced junk on the public - thereby, in my personal opinion, doing far more damage to the hobby than they do good for it.

Sorry for my error regarding that article in the Nautical Research Journal. I understand & subscribe your arguments. Mr. Sh... (abbreviated in order not to hurt him, as it's a small world), wrote an extensive carvingcourse which on itself is just a fine achievement but I only the deplore the object he demonstated us, the Sergal SOS. You will find him often on the Seaways Yahoo group.

Max.

jtilley wrote:

At least one other web forum (in which I no longer participate) majestically restricts itself to wood ship models, as though there were something holy about wood as a modeling material.  Any post that relates to plastic gets deleted - but anything about those hideous HECEPOB monstrosities is welcome.

Do you mean www.drydockmodels.com? I've visited this site many times looking for information on various ships, and though there are some interesting discussions on their forum, I am very discouraged from registering and posting there due to their attitude towards plastic models. If it weren't for this I would certainly be a regular contributor there.

I'm guessing that a lot of this attitude towards plastic kits derives from a lack of knowledge of the subject. If your only knowledge of plastic sailing ships is, for example, memories of building crude 1960s Pyro kits or the tiny Airfix "ship-in-a-bottle" kits, you might be tempted to dismiss them all as cheap toys. I didn't realise the sheer variety of plastic sailing ship kits available, and how good some of them were, until I relatively recently became interested in the subject (as the range of kits currently available at retail is tiny, even in Europe). The nasty vacform sails and injection-moulded shrouds and ratlines included in most kits don't help, either.

Plastic sailing ship models also require a fair amount of work in painting and finishing to make them look convincing. Most plastic sailing ship kits will look flat and unconvincing (IMHO, anyway) if painted exactly according to the kit instructions; even if you don't want to add weathering, techniques like drybrushing and washes are necessary to make surfaces look like wood rather than painted plastic. Whereas a wood and brass model looks beautiful simply with a coat of varnish, even if its paint scheme isn't strictly accurate.

Who was it said, plastic is 20%build 80% paint? Anyways plastic sailing ship models apply to this too with the exception of the rigging. I have a love hate relationship regarding plastic, in that when the plastic kit is poor quality I wish I'd scratch built it to begin with. I took art courses for a few years and the instructor and my fellow students asked me why would I want to build someone elses work? which is a legitimate question. Also the paint on plastic can wind up to be something like painting on a 3D canvas if you want to highlight certain aspects of the modelas in figure modeling for example.

 I'm under the impression that wooden models are built more for their decorative value than their historical accuracy. I don't think there are that many people out there in the general public that really care about the historical value. Here on these forums though its a different world, and rightly so.

Those of us who love to build ,build for the sake of building. For me its the build ,when its finished I often give them away or sell them. Selling a model gives me great incentive to build and the reason is not the money but to produce something for someone who is appreciative enough to part with a buck for the product.

Theres a lot more to this philosophy but maybe later.

This has been a great thread, because for some reason I just started getting the Model Expo catalogs, looked at all the pretty, glossy pictures, and started thinking, Hmmmmmmmm ...

HECEPOB was a term unfamiliar to me until today, but now that I've learned it, I will be looking at that particular catalog with a fresh perspective. That, and the fact that I have a poverty-level modeling budget.

In response to reklein's post - I'm at least 90% in agreement.  I would point out, though, that there's a whole world of wood ship modelers far beyond the pale of the HECEPOBs.  The latter, in my opinion, represent the worst the hobby has to offer.  I've made this analogy before:  ship models built from HECEPOB kits (acknowledging, again, that there undoubtedly are plenty of exceptions) are to scale ship modeling what Lionel trains are to scale model railroading - or balsa airplanes built from Guillows kits are to scale aircraft modeling.  It's certainly true that only a tiny fraction of the general public cares about scale accuracy in ship models - but that's equally true of aircraft, armor, and railroad models.

There's little doubt that some - indeed, most - of the very finest examples of scale sailing ship modeling in the world are wood - built from scratch.  Such publications as Model Shipwright and the Nautical Research Journal are full of the work of master modelers, who most emphatically are more interested in accuracy than in the decorative aspects.  A wood model built from scratch by a serious scale modeler is quite a sight - the finished product of a lengthy research project, as well as a demonstration of artisanship.  I have no hesitation in asserting that the best works of modelers like Donald McNarry, C. Nepean Longridge, and Harold Hahn also qualify fully as works of art.

It also should be emphasized that there are some mighty good wood sailing ship kits out there.  Model Shipways, Calder/Jotika, Bluejacket, and A.J. Fisher all understand what scale ship modeling is about - and make some first-rate products.  Their levels of quality and sophistication, like anybody else's, have changed over time; the earliest Model Shipways kits, for instance, aren't quite on the same standard as the most recent ones.  But all of them represent a genuine effort to produce genuine scale models.

Reklein has made me aware of another reason to be mad at the HECEPOB companies:  they're damaging the reputation of the hobby among othre modelers.

That mfsob hadn't encountered the word "HECEPOB" isn't surprising; I proudly claim credit for inventing it.  I figure if the people on...that other web forum...can invent words (like "TallShip"), so can I.

That mfsob hadn't encountered the word "HECEPOB" isn't surprising; I proudly claim credit for inventing it.  I figure if the people on...that other web forum...can invent words (like "TallShip"), so can I.

   As a retired Navy CPO, my first descriptive of these kits was nowhere near as polite as "HECEPOB". Thankyou for a word more socially acceptable.........and no, I won't speak  that descriptive here.