The Little World

As Ray Stevens might have said…” Well, I seen it. ”

It was the 1:72 scale components of a Saunders Roe Princess flying boat produced using some sort of 3D printing machine…and cello-taped together as a teaser at the Sandown Park exhibition. No-one around, but enough literature left as a clue to allow me to hunt down the website of the maker:

http://one-man-model.main.jp/index.html

Go have a peep at it an see if you can understand all that the chap has to say. I believe he is a Japanese gentleman who has made a number of models by this method and is soliciting interest from hobbyists to finance more of them. He includes a philosophy statement in his website – surely a first for many scale modellers – but I can attest that the object that he produced is real. Beyond that I am in the realms of speculation.

I have spent some time imagining how one would assemble and finish this sort of model, given the mechanics of the 3D printing process. I can only imagine a great deal of surface smoothing by filling and sanding, and then suitable re-scribing and detailing.

Having built a Mach 2 model, I can only admire the resolution of anyone who does this sort of thing. There are brave and determined people in every field of endeavour and the owner of a completed 3D Saunders Roe Princess would never need to feel fear again.