1986 Corsair F4U-1

The Corsair F4U-1 was my second attempt at building a model airplane. The first had been a rubber-band powered Cessna 150 that came to a bad end when my cat thought it was "interesting." This is a Guillows kit that was fairly easy to build, even for the amateur I was at the time. Rather than using the fabric skin that came with the kit, I decided to use very thin balsa, making it heavier but stronger. I built it as a "control line" flyer and put a big motor in it. But after the hundreds of hour I put into building it, I could never bring my self to fly it.

1996 Golden Hind

Golden Hind was Sir Francis Drake's famous ship and seemed like a good choice for my next model. The kit is by Mamoli and was fairly well supplied. I did have to make many of my own parts since the delivered ones were just junk. I begain construction sometime in 1996 and took forever to complete, working only a couple of hours each night after work. I also discovered (invented) a better way of making the rigging and think the result looks much better.

1992 Spray

In about 1992, I had just read "Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum when I found a kit of Spray by Laughing Whale. The parts were very good quality - laser cut and nice wood. I though about Mr. Slocum as I constructed this model. The history is quite interesting and worthy of its own blog, so I'll stick to the model construction. I though it would look good with sails since the scale was not so far off as to make the cloth look stupid. So I sewed a suit of sails from starched cloth with small guage brass wire sewn into the edges to keep them straight.

1988 Le Hussard

My first attempt at building a wooden ship model began in about 1988. I purchased an Artisania Latina kit of Le Hussard a French naval training vessel. I was displeased to find that many of the parts were poorly cut and/or ugly in some respect. The instructions were also vague and incomplete. But I kept working - making many of my own parts as necessary - tucked away in a converted closet in our condo in Emeryville. Construction was completed several years later and the finished model is okay I think (for a first attempt).