A Brief Introdution

Shipshapes

United States Navy

I suppose it all started with a simple and adventitious firing of a few neurons. A rather unassuming weekend took form into the beginning of an exciting and new quotidian aspect of my Saturdays. The thought: make one of every class of USN WWII warships out of some wood for the fun of it. 

Sounds rather simple, right? Ha. Think again.

These models weren't your average 1:700 scale replicas. Rather, they went something along the lines of 1:3124. The superstructures were made of scrap balsa wood as were the hulls, and the masts and detail work including the gun barrels were made out of staples. 

I decided that if I were to start with something, I'd start small, just in case I messed up. Scrolling through Google's list of "Famous WWII Ships", I stumbled across the USS Fletcher. A destroyer; perfect. So I set to making the Fletcher in all its glory.

If I were to say it looked like a misshapen doll, it would be far too disrespectful to misshapen dolls. The bridge was awkwardly placed, the hull accidentally sloped from inadequate filing, and had four guns instead of five. Despite the partial failure, I had gotten the starting experience I needed to begin my endeavors with other classes.

This became a sort of tradition. On Saturdays, where the pressing workload of school had minimal bearing on my life, I took my computer and tools out to the garage where I would sit on the same old folding chair with the same rag and brushes. 

But the work itself would never get old. That was unequivocal.