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Model Making: Serious Fun for the Not-So-Young
| Article
# : |
12964 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1987 |
1,779 Words |
| Author
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Tom Nugent
Tom Nugent teaches journalism at the University of Maryland
in
Baltimore. His works include Death at Buffalo Creek,
published
by W.W. Norton. |
On a recent weekday evening in suburban Washington, D.C., a forty-four-year-old U.S. Defense Department analyst named Ken Robert jumped happily to his feet.
"The blue ribbon!" roared the balding, wild-eyed builder of model airplanes, whose entry had just snagged first place in Washington's annual plastic-model competition, "I can't believe it!"
The crowd of plastic modelers, about fifty of whom had gathered at a Rockville, Maryland, junior high school for the 1987 Washington-area competition, swirled and jostled around the scarlet-hued North American TR-6 Texan airplane that had just landed Ken Robert first prize in the "special category" of scale replicas.
"Nice going, Ken!" boomed Robert's friend Mike Fleckenstein, a computer operations manager for the federal government. "You did a hell'uva job on that one, pal." Then, while Robert danced euphorically around his winning model - the mob closing in for congratulations - the graying, bespectacled Fleckenstein, who currently serves as president of the Washington chapter of the International Plastic Modelers Society (IPMS), did his best to describe the world of model building:
"You can see what it's done to us," cried the enthusiastic builder of scale-model airplanes and ships. "He's gone bald - and I'm already gray!"
Once upon a time, the art of model building - creating scale replicas of airplanes, tanks, and ships - belonged to children. Legions of eager boys saved their pennies to buy the latest kit box of brightly painted parts for Spitfires, Cobras, and Flying Aces, gluing them together, one at a time at the kitchen table, and hanging them on a string from the ceiling.
In that earlier, simpler world the kits cost only ninety-nine cents and the primitive models - balsa wood, at first, and then various forms of bright, molded plastic - consisted of only a few basic, press-punched sections that rarely fitted.
But like everything else in our high-tech era, the world of model building has been going through some startling transformations. The kits aren't simple (some of today's most skillful modelers use engineering blueprints for their complex replicas), and they don't cost ninety-nine cents. In addition, many of today's Spitfire and Cobra builders aren't kids. They're likely to be
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