This is a first for these pages: a light-hearted look at the craft from a modeler’s wife.
When colourful swear words pour out of the workshop, Monika Cybulska makes tea and asks, “Everything alright in here?” One day the question came the other way. Her husband asked, “Any idea how to plug this hole?” She thought of nail gel.
Continue reading “A Modeler’s Wife POV: UV Gel for Scale Windows”Ron Neilson took a commission to restore a model of the 1885 America’s Cup yacht Puritan. Nearly five feet long, built at 1/2 inch to the foot (1:24). It arrived filthy. An auction listing pointed to Massachusetts. The builder’s name was already gone. Neilson puts it in the early-to-mid twentieth century, not a kit.
The restored model was donated to the Corinthian Yacht Club Historical Society in Essington, Pennsylvania. That is as far as we can take the story here.
Continue reading “Restoring the Sailing Yacht Puritan”James Norton usually picks his own subjects. Then his brother Patrick sent a few photographs of Galway hookers — na hucaerí — and suggested he build one.
These boats once carried turf, or dried peat, to the Aran Islands. They almost vanished by the early 1970s, when natural gas replaced peat. They are pleasure and regatta boats now. Norton had a closer reason to take one on.
Continue reading “Building a 1/32 Scale Galway Hooker, Part 1”
