Those of us who have been lucky enough to know about this gem of a service, know that Jeff Hayes has been providing beautifully milled wood to the ship modeling community for many years. I’ve relied on Jeff for supplying strip woods for a number of my projects, and also for supplying wood sets that I’ve purchased from Admiralty Models for their Echo Cross Section project.

It was just announced by Jeff today that he will be shutting down Hobby Mill. With other businesses, shutting down often means that business hasn’t been good enough to support the operation. In the case of Hobby Mill, it’s more about being too successful and of Jeff not having enough time to enjoy life and to build his own ship models. So, like Warner Woods West, who was once a great supplier of strip woods for ship modelers. This is sad news for ship…

Next week is the Nautical Research Guild conference. It’s in St. Louis this year and I actually get to go. This will be only the second NRG conference I’ve attended. My first was the one held in the San Francisco Bay Area back in 2011, I think it was. I only made it to that one because it was local. The one in St. Louis will be my first one that’s out of the area, as most of them are. However, I managed to get the trip paid for by the ship model distributor and store Ages of Sail.

As I’ve mentioned before here, I’ve been doing some work helping them out as they’re right down the road in the East Bay in San Lorenzo, CA. I basically told the owner I’d be willing to help him out with the business if he sends me to the conference. He agreed…