The Little World

A recent advertisement on FACEBOOK* told us to discover the joys of building a ship model.

Fair enough. There are people in our club who do just that – build wooden and plastic vessels – and it has been a joy to see them at work.

Watching them search the grey concrete floor for a grey plastic part is a lesson in human endurance. If they can do it, the rest of us can as well. And we do – frequently I tip the entire contents of a kit box onto a gravel road and then collect all the parts again. If the gravel road has earthmovers and semi-trucks passing regularly, it just becomes all that much more fun.

Back to the workbench to see our miniature shipbuilders deal with wooden planks that have stayed so long on the hobby shop shelf that they have warped – and it is always in the wrong direction. Of course there are ways of correcting this – bending, steaming, breaking, etc. The most effective way to re-configure expensively cheap wood is to swear at it. One of our members could bend a 12-inch square oak beam with language.

When the scale shipbuilder opens the plastic envelope and sees a photo-etch brass fretwork for the first time, it is a magical moment. When we have picked them up off the concrete and wiped them dry, the club PE expert can have a bracing little talk to them. They listen intently, because it is dangerous to contradict a madman. Eventually they can be persuaded to clip the first brass rail off the fret and set about ruining it.

* See FACEBOOK? You do get a mention occasionally…under my breath when I stub my toe in the dark.