Hello from Virginia!!!

(Fairfax County, VA, to be exact)

I am a 13 year old modeler who started this wondeful hobby at the age of 5 (my first kit was the Monogram 1/48 Apache). I enjoy building planes and ships, especially the latter.

My “flagship” is the Tamiya 1/350 HMS King George V with Tom’s Modelwork’s PE. I must say I am very proud of this ship, and it sits on top of the fireplace mantle.

Currently, I’m working on the Promodeler Sabredog. Next up is the HUGE USS Constitution from Revell.

Cheers,
Tom

Welcome Tom. You have come to the right place to ask for advise, share tips, and even have fun. I wish this site had been open years ago. Again, welcone

Hi ya Tom …

I second berny13’s welcome to the FSM community forum. The greatest site on the internet - all about the greatest hobby in the world.

Glad to see younger modelers joining the membership … hope you can find the time to spend many happy hours here … reading and posting … having fun and learning … and even teaching us older modelers a thing or two … !

Younger modelers such as yourself are the future of our hobby.

Welcome Tom,
Good to see young modellers here. sounds like you’ve taken on some big challenges already. Keep up the good work.

Hello Tom…from another Virginian!
This is a great site and it is nice to see people of all ages and countries come together to share a common interest…modelling.

Welcome janus,

I just moved away from Manassas, VA. 9 months ago. I now live up in Massachusetts. I miss the south. You will like this forum, lots of good people.

Darren

You might want to get in touch with the Northern Virginia chapter of IPMS. I believe they still meet at Fairfax Highschool .I was a founding member-They are a good grouip.

Hi Tom
I built the 1:96 Constitution a number of years ago. Here are a few lessons I learned the hard way…and I mean the HARD way!

  1. Reinforce all the masts that you can with hard brass tube or bar stock-it’ll keep them from flexing under the strain of the rigging
  2. Use a good quality silk thread for the rigging, waxing it thoroughly. you can turn single strand into three or five strand cable or hawser laid stuff with a home-made rope making machine.
  3. Get good deadeyes, pulley’s etc…they’ll look a lot better that the ones in the kit. If you can’t buy 'em, theyre easy to make. Just ckeck some of the boos on building sailing ship models.
  4. Make up new chain plates to lead down from the deadeyes, over the chain wales, and then pin 'em in place at the terminal end with a very small pin right through the hull…then epoxied in place. This is going to take most of the strain of the rigging of the shrouds.
  5. Use finer stuff for the rat lines, than for the shrouds-it looks better. learn to tie a surgeon’s knot and follow witha square knot…when you tighten, avoid stressing the lines you are tying off
  6. When you’re painting the gingerbread work on the bow & stern, paint highlight colors (gold, white etc) first, using a good artist’s paint. after they’ve dried (really dried!) flood the background with really thinned-out black water based paints. It will take a lot of coats for the black, but just let it flow onto the surface, and it will pck out the edges of the detail really well.
  7. For the masking, use artist’s tape…it’s a little pricey, but you’ll only need one roll. It’s not as tackey as regular masking tape.
  8. Take your time…it’s not a race
  9. When it’s all done, get a good display case…you can’t dust a sailing ship model ( My mother-in-law tried to dust my Cutty Sark…worse that a torpedo hit!)