old stuff

[rjccjr]

Hi All;
These photos date back to the late seventies through the eighties, before the tremors started. Having gotten fed up with inaccurate commercial models of the time and the fact that the selection of ships was very narrow, the only way that there was to get a model of a famous ship that no one ever heard of was to dive into scratch building. There isn't a lot of difference between the design of a card model ship and one of these. Though my preference is for waterline models, several of these are full hull. In those days getting enough information to design a ship was a nightmare of frustration. Good clear photographs were not readily available, not to mention way beyond my meager financial resources. Back then, the internet was a thing of the future and most of these models required plans drawn by hand. The Suwannee was a converted oil tanker and the plans were drawn as an oil tanker having the flight deck attached. There were a few commercial plans around at the time, but they were usually full of inaccuracies and not always in a convenient scale. It was a stroke of good fortune when a friend loaned me a set of drawings from the booklet of general plans for the USS Craven. Even so it took a great deal of staring of photographs to figure out how to do the trunks that lead into the stack.
Regards, rjccjr

[FRD]

Interesting subject matter...

[rjccjr]

Hi All;
For those of you who patiently check in from time to time here are a couple of strange birds. Before you say "What the hell is that?" yes the first one is a real aircraft. It was Russia's closest thing to a useful heavy bomber, the Yermolaev YER-2. There weren't very many, but were heavily used during World War II. It is 1/72 scale by a company, of which I've never heard. The other plane is a Lockheed PV-1 Ventura. What is unusual, is that it is a 1/48th scale Koster vacuform kit. Not too many were sold and fewer were built. Bill Kosters kits were not for the faint of heart and if you didn't follow the instructions carefully, you were inviting a lot of trouble. The good news is that they were very well researched and by far the most accurate representations of the subject aircraft. Bill was frequently frustrated to see a build-up of his kit on the cover of injection molded kits, which he did not design. He was a real gentleman and never pursued such issues.
Regards, rjccjr

[rjccjr]

Hi All;
Here are two photos of a Hudson River sloop. The models were built around 1985. The larger is a prototype, used to figure out how to build the one in the 25 Watt bulb. There is a dime in each photo to give you some idea of the actual size of the models. Both are scratch built in styrene plastic, sails included. Most of the time when you see a ship in a bulb there is a diagonal scar indicating that the screw jacket was removed to get the model into the bulb. This one is intact. The model was built outside of the bulb, then collapsed, slid into the bulb, and erected inside. You can imagine how tight the fit was getting it through the jacket. Though a bit foggy from outgassing of the putty inside, it has held up very well for thirty seven years.
Regards rjccjr

[Michael Mash]

Your paintings look very good. I notice you have two areas of interest: Nautical and Space/Planetary. A detail that caught my eye was the painting from Oct 10, 2021 of a landscape from possibly a moon of a ringed planet. In the painting, in the lower left is some type of “alien?” space vehicle? Fascinating.

p.s. Quite a trick getting that boat into the bulb!

[rjccjr]

Hi All;

Here is something that you don't see every day. This is a Polish destroyer named Wicher II(ex Russian Skorii). It was scratch built from sheet styrene and any other material that would work, in 1988, and photographed yesterday. The techniques used to develop this model are very similar to the models designed in card. Card modeling requires far fewer tools than this did and doesn't require airbrushing equipment. It did hold up pretty well for a thirty five year old model.

Regards, rjccjr

[Philip]

Sublime modelmaking. Yet despite the many wonderful features there are on the ship itself, it was the base that caught my eye the most.

[rjccjr]

Hi All;
Here are two 1/35 scale model tanks. The first is an M-60. The second is an M-60A1. I was a teenage platoon leader. The three rings on the gun barrel stand for third platoon. The M60 was my first tank in Germany in 1963. The A-1 version was issued about six months later. Notice that the turret is much larger. It was a much improved version. Oh well, tanks have turrets too. They are awfully cramped. The Army was trying our a short barreled fifty caliber machine gun, which fit inside the the cupola. It was a disaster, so they welded a post outside and we went back to the old long barreled M-2. It was interesting to see the same weapon on M-1 tanks during The Gulf War, which tends to prove the old axiom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Regards, rjccjr

[rjccjr]

Hi All;
These are acrylic paintings, done in the 1970s and 1980s. They were sold or donated. Just found them in an old scrap book.
Regards, rjccjr

[rjccjr]

Hi All;
This is a case of what you are seeing isn't what you are looking at. It looks like a Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk, buts it's a 1/72 scale kit and spare parts bash from the 1980's. The parts are from quite a lot of old kits. Rather than come right and tell you the parts, it's more fun to guess what the parts are.
Regards, rjcjcjr