One of the projects we’re involved with at Radii is the new World Trade Center 2 tower. Along with a few smaller models, there are also these large scale, translucent models on display. More photos here on Instagram.
Every year for Wonderfest, there’s a group build challenge. This year the task was to go to one of the dollar stores, spend $20 max on parts, then make something out of it.
On my first trip, I spotted an almost-disk-shaped clear Christmas ornament, grabbed it, then walked around until I spotted a pencil sharpener. The two together gave me Star Trek vibes, so I ran with that. It was a couple of months until I found suitable “engines”, which are some sort of travel vacuum tube/bottles for makeup. At this point I’m less than $10 spent.
Other than the dollar store finds, I’m using two clear domes that I had in the “cool shapes” bin, a contact lens container, and some clear resin rhinestones that are self-adhesive. I’m sticking those anywhere the hull looks too plain, or where I want to indicate laser emplacements, navigation lights, sensor pods, etc. To attach the dish to the body, and the engines to the body, I drew and printed appropriate looking connectors.
I’m basing this on some of the ships at the Starfleet Museum website. They have a lot of cool, retro Trek designs that depict ships from the 22nd century up through the original Star Trek series.
This will be the U.S.S. Hoboken, because it’s where I live, and because I looked up to see if any Trek ships had been named Hoboken, only to discover that not only have no official Trek ships carried the moniker, but no real-world ships have, either.
Two weeks left to finish this. As you can see, it’s all primed and the base coat of my “starship gray” has been applied. Now to cut stencils for portholes, registry, name, etc.
I’ve added the Joe Johnston Concept B-Wing model page to the website. This was one of my first completely scratch built projects that I did. To say I’m happy with how it turned out would be an understatement. You can see the full write-up by clicking on the photo, or by clicking HERE.
I’ve added a detailed build log of the USS Enterprise (CV-6) model that I built a few years ago, from the 1/700 scale Academy Models kit. Check it out HERE.
An overnight work trip took me to Charleston last week. I wasn’t left with a lot of free time, due to the short nature of the visit, but I was able to grab some local barbecue and beer, and visit one historical artifact I’ve wanted to see for decades. This is one of the 11 inch Dahlgren guns salvaged from the Union ironclad USS Keokuk during the American Civil War. After the ship sunk following an attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederates salvaged both of her valuable guns and used them in the defense of Charleston for the rest of the war. This gun still sits on the battery in the south of Charleston. I wrote a piece about the salvage operation some years back, for the New York Times’ “Disunion” series that ran during the sesquicentennial of the war, which you can find linked on my WRITING page. I also built a model of Keokuk herself, which you can find HERE.
I’ve been working, off and on, on the Armory Models’ USS Monitor kit. The kit is a first: a 1/200 scale Civil War ironclad in injection molded styrene. Armory Models is a company based in Ukraine, that uses short-run molds to make unique model kits.
I’ll start posting occasional build updates as I get to them. In the meantime, I did a full in-box review of the kit for Modelwarships.com, which you can see HERE.
Continuing to migrate the content of my website from the old Dreamweaver to the new WordPress. I’ve started adding the Writing page content.
I’ve started adding items to the Model Making page. Very much a work in progress. Once all of the “classic” items are up, then I’ll start adding the dozen or so models I’ve finished over the past five years that I never added to the site.
This website looks a bit stripped-down at the moment. I’m in the process of cutting over from an old hosting company that wasn’t keeping up with the times. Truth be told, I wasn’t keeping up with the times, either, as the majority of the website was done via Dreamweaver. I’ve moved the WordPress bit to this new host, and will now start migrating all of the content from Dreamweaver to WordPress as time allows.
Stay tuned…
My day-job at Radii was mentioned in an article in The Architects Newspaper. The publication covers things… well… architectually related. The piece is specifically about the world of architectural model making in the New York City region, where Radii is a major player. The article can be read HERE.