ScaleHistory

Welcome to ScaleHistory…

I’m sitting at a coffee shop in Taichung City, Taiwan.  And by the way it’s a great coffee shop with some of the best coffee I’ve had.  And the owner of Cafe Gusto, Casper, is a huge baseball fan.  I first met him when I saw him wearing his Mike Morse Nationals jersey and we had a great talk about him, baseball, and my Mariners.   Well, I’ve been in Taichung for six weeks now and I have two more to go.  And I miss some things.  I miss my work bench.  I miss my new 1/72 Tamiya Zero that I haven’t gotten to start yet.  I miss my 1/32 Tamiya F-14 that I haven’t gotten to finish yet.  (And, yes, I build more than Tamiya stuff.)  I also missed the Seattle IPMS show this year.  And I’m going to miss Nationals!  But most of all I miss my Thursday nights at Step Above Hobbies in Albany.  Sitting around building and talking with the guys about, of all things, models.  Work has a way of getting in the way sometimes.  Do I miss other things, like my wife and family?  Of course I do... a lot.  But I also miss the guys.  

I love talking about models.  And I love talking about history.  I love reading about both of those.  And when I build models I love the fact that I get to bring a little piece of history to life.  I love that!  It fuels what I do in my hobby.  It’s the reason I build.  I love the stories behind what I build.  For every plane or tank or ship I love to find some story behind it.  And in some small way to show a piece of that story in that model.  Even if it is as simple as knowing what division that vehicle fought in and where it was at that time.  

Those Thursday nights are all about all of that.  It’s the night our local Albany, Oregon chapter of the IPMS meets.  We meet every week and we just build.  Every week is build night for us.  I love that.  Bring your kit to work on and share the night with some modeling buddies.  But we also do more, we talk.  We talk about models, kits, how to do things, history, shows we went to or want to go to.  OK, we talk about other stuff too, and with the personalities in our club it can get long winded and intense sometimes.  As a club we’re pretty loosely organized.  Just enough to keep things going.  We have active guys who love to model and love to talk about it.  

And that’s what I miss. 

With all that said, welcome to ScaleHistory.  You see, my goal with this website is to create a space where we can share that kind of talk.  The sitting around the table with your favorite kit kind of talk.  This is a site for average modelers who love the hobby. The high gloss magazines are great and the articles by the pros are great.  But I want a place where I can go that meets my  needs as an “everyday” modeler.  An average modeler who happens to be crazy about the hobby and the history behind it.  We can talk about anything, the latest kits and techniques are always good.  But what about your current build?  And, by the way, why are you building it?  What about the latest book you read that caused you to find the next model you are going to do?  Or, the book you had to find to help you research out your current project?  Or, that trip you took to the museum and the pictures you took while you were there.  Maybe you want to share those with everyone.  You get the idea. 

But we can also talk about things from the kit side.  What is your latest project?  Is it out of the box or are you adding something to make it unique?  For that matter how do you like to build in general?  Are you an OOB guy or a super detailer, and why?  Anyway, again, I hope you get the idea.  This is about modeling and the “stuff” behind it.

Hopefully I can keep the conversation going.  I have a number of ideas for blogs, pictures, and even articles.  And I am sure that I will find many more from what you might share.  So, again, welcome!  I look forward to hearing from you.