Impressive Navel Ship Model Wins Best in Show Award
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00:00My name's Geoffrey Taylor. I like to be known as a scratch builder or full scratch builder.
00:07I'm not one for taking bits out of a box and sticking together so we have to start at the
00:13beginning. And this project I started in 2014 and finished
00:21May this year. It is affiliated with the Red Arrows but prior to building this I built HMS
00:33Manchester and it was always my dream at least to complete a Type 42 but I always felt that the
00:40Type 21 which was a ship of that era was probably better looking. I'm not sure there's such a thing
00:47as a good looking warship but if you look at the warships today they're very sterile, they have
00:54no elegance about them, they don't look as though they can do the job, everything is hidden out the
00:58way. They call it stealth, I don't know what I would call it to be honest but the character in
01:04a warship now has been lost. So this is really a project of reliving that dream of bringing
01:12a warship of that era to life. Eight years it took, modular building most of it,
01:21as I say everything is scratch so the hardest thing was to actually analyse the part you're
01:27going to build, break it down to individual components and then say can I make it? If I can,
01:34how do I do it? You build up from there and in between you use bits of filler here and
01:40there because you will get imperfections and you have to get the airbrush out and start thinking
01:46about the finish. The difficulty is with the finish if you're starting painting early on
01:52you've got to have the same mix of paint right to the ends which I tend to do and I still use
01:59very old-fashioned techniques in some of the painting, some of the deck markings. I use
02:06an old Draftsman ink pen, they're very tricky to use, it's a one-time use only, if you mess it up
02:15you start again, that means you take it off, you re-spray the surface, re-do the prep and re-do it
02:20again. So you practice, practice, practice and when the ink is just right you do it.
02:26And then finally the last bits and pieces I did was the rigging and the aerial and again I used
02:34micro tubing for that, like a ferrule, so I was using invisible thread, feeding it through
02:44the loop and using a ferrule to secure it. And I did that because you have to get the
02:50tension right within the aerial, if you look, it has to be in a line, it has to be under a tension
02:57and that's probably the critical thing because to a discerning eye that's what really sets it
03:02off from being either an ordinary model or what I would class as a well-researched and finished
03:11model. I would lie if I didn't say I didn't want to get the top award at the IPMS Nationals.
03:20My previous model I'd built was pipped at the post, so I thought I'll go for the big one this
03:27time and again I was pipped at the post, but I was pleased in a way because I picked up the best
03:34ship. I also got an award for the best scratch built model in the show. I got another trophy
03:43from Keith Jones and that's a memorial trophy. I believe he was an ex-navy guy, no longer with us,
03:53so that trophy was awarded to the best naval ship. So it was limited to obviously
04:00ship vessels and finally the smaller trophy which I was really touched by was given by
04:07Four Corners Modelling Club and they just put a trophy against what they think is the best
04:13model in the whole of the show. And if you ever go to this show, I mean the competition is
04:17absolutely huge, the standards are absolutely cosmic, so yeah for them to say mine in their
04:25opinion was the best in their show, yeah I'm very proud of that.