MODEL MAKING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22719, 4 May 1937, Page 17

MODEL MAKING

A PAINSTAKING HOBBY EXHIBITION IN AUCKLAND REMARKABLE CRAFTSMANSHIP It would be difficult to think of a hobby requiring more sitil 1, patience and perseverance than that of model making. That there are a number of experts at this painstaking work in the Dominion is shown by a display of working miniatures by the New Zealand Society of Model and Experimental Engineers, which was opened at the Town Hall yesterday. An overseas engineer who attended the exhibition declared that some of the craftsmanship was equal to any lie had seen.

Models /ill the hall. There arc miniature naval guns beautifully finished in battleship grey and polished brass; luxury launches exact in every detail and ready to take the water; a Cornish mine pump built about 90 years ago; and hundreds of other perfect facsimiles. In a glass case lies the Santa Maria, three inches long and fashioned with remarkable detail. Alongside her rest a Phoenician trailing vessel, a Penzance fishing lugger and an Elizabethan frigate all showing the same meticulous attention to detail. A score of other models of ships of all countries in the case are built to scales of from 40ft. to an inch to 70ft. to an inch, the diminutive vessels raging in length from 2in. to sin. The Old and the New There is a "Super Heath Robinson de Luxe" locomotive and waggon, in which the builder has combined mechanical dexterity with humorous imagination. Rigged in the truck is an apparatus for circumventing tho rule that "no intoxicating liquor shall be carried in a locomotive." Built for the Wellington James Watt bi-centenary exhibition, a- model of the Watt "Lap'' engine of the period 1788 shows some of the neatest craftsmanship. Just, as its mechanism is crude and old-fashioned, that of a six-inch disappearing gun alongside it is up-to-date. The minutest details have boon given strict attention and theie j are even soldiers working levers and j carrying shells. . A flat-bottomed hydroplane equipped : with a single cylinder steam engine and capable of over eight knots looks the picture of speed and streamlining. In sharp contrast to the rakish lines of this modern racing craft is the replica of the world's most famous clipper ship, the Cutty feark. Every sail, every pulley, every rope, is exactly as it was when the vessel sailed the China trade route. Horizontal and vertical steam engines hiss and emit clouds of steam, a railwav engine with its wheels raised races at "high speed, while marine engines send propellers round at such a late that they appear motionless.

Locomotives in Miniature Locomotive construction in New Zealand is shown in six stages, every engine and carriage containing weeks of patient work. The latest addition, a K class locomotive, has a cabin about 3in. long, but perfect to every fitting. Eight thousand pins were used on a model of the launch Shcnnandoah. Everv hole had to be drilled and the pin bent before it was inserted, as the wood split so easily. 1 here is a model of the carriage used by tho l)ukc of Gloucester during his tour of the Dominion. In the lounge are divans with cushions, table and flowers, a liqueur cupboard with glasses and bottle, the glasses being one-sixteenth of an inch high. In spite of the fact that the carriage is no more than 3ft. in length, there are 100 pieces of metal in every bogie. The oil-can in the engine is not an inch long, but is used for oiling the train.