I’m an ex-engineer and ex-project manager with a lifelong passion for flying and ship modelling. 

I can’t remember where the ship modelling came from, my maternal grandfather was a ship’s engineer and a HO ERA during WW1, so it probably started there.  My paternal grandfather was a watchmaker, my best tools come from his workshop.

I’ve always made things, I built a car and an aeroplane, you can see pictures of them on my Flickr site.  I held a pilot’s license for 40 years but no longer fly, arthritis caught up with me in the end.

But I love ship models, particularly the builder’s models of the early 20th century.  I don’t get on with knots, so you will not find any sailing vessels here.  While I’ve tried a few scales, my scale of choice is God’s own scale of ¼ inch to the foot (I remain unashamedly imperial in my thinking).  If it was good enough for ship builders to use to display their wares, who am I to object.

1:48th scale is unique in many ways. 

To me, the most important being that it is the smallest scale where you can reproduce rivet detail exactly.  The problem is, of course, that ships are rather large things, and so 1:48th limits to a practical extent the range of vessels that can be accommodated in a workshop and find a home thereafter.  Still, I’ve pushed my luck with that one a few times.

No offence to modellers who make up kits or change them, they can produce miniature works of art, but I don’t see the point myself.  You are starting with someone else’s mistakes and compromises.  In my models, the mistakes and the compromises are all my own.  I also happen to like making hulls.  Sanding a hull gives you an insight into the mind of the designer that no amount of staring at drawings can compete with.  Where possible, I like to start with original drawings not model plans (other people’s errors etc).

For materials, I try to stick to the principle, if it was metal, make the model piece from metal, if wood then wood.  In the past few years I’ve encompassed 3D printing, really the combination of detail and my increasingly inflexible fingers have persuaded me that if the technology had existed 100 years ago, they would have used it.

I also provide a full description of my all builds on Britmodeller.com if you would like to follow the progress of current projects. I urge you to join this helpful and friendly association.

So that’s me, a passionate ship modeller and maritime researcher, I hope you will find something of interest here.