Author Archives: hspms

Happy New Year 2025! – a New Years Update

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Recently, three members of the old Hyde Street Pier Model Shipwrights group, Paul Reck, Tom Shea, and Clare Hess, met up for lunch at the Buena Vista Cafe just up the block from the Hyde Street Pier. It wasn’t a club-related gathering, just a social one. But, one thing that was brought up was the idea of having a ship model meeting again. It is, after all, a good way to create incentive to build and learn.

While our own SF based ship model club no longer has access to our old model shop aboard the ferryboat Eureka, which is still sitting at the pier, years after we got moved off, there is he possibility of having a gathering at the SF Maritime Research Center in Lower Fort Mason’s ‘E’ building. We’re now looking at that possibility.

Photo of the J. Porter Shaw Library from the NPS website.

If this happens, it will most likely take place during a weekday, most likely on a Monday. If anyone would be interested in attending, message us, or reply to this post.

Holiday Gift Idea: Classic America’s Cup Yachts

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Holiday Gift Idea: Classic America’s Cup Yachts

While it’s a little late for Christmas, the post from Ages of Sail about these Amati kits of classic America’s Cup racers makes a lot of sense. Easy curves to plank, or just go with a plastic hull, very light amount of rigging, nice amount of deck detailing, and you’ve got a ship model that you can be proud to display.

These kits should be a relatively quick build. And the ones with the plastic hulls in particular should be great for young modelers too.

Plastic Model Projects

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Being a ship modeler, we often spend lots of time on our wood projects, but occasionally, building a plastic model can be a relatively quick and fun way to build something different. HSPMS member Paul Reck shared photos of his most recently completed project, a small plastic model of the whale ship Charles W. Morgan.

Paul bought the kit on Ebay. It was produced long ago by the old plastic model company “Pyro”. Paul likes to build these Pyro kits and he built a bomb ketch that he brought to a model club meeting many years back.

Paul likes to throw out the kit’s plastic shrouds and to add his own rigging. This time around, he also decided to try his hand at making a water diorama out of it, which looks to have turned out very nicely!

Paul also sent along a photo of a much larger project he completed recently. This one was a big 1/200 scale Trumpeter kit of the U.S.S. Arizona.

Paul noted how much fun he had building the Arizona kit with its myriad of parts and photo-etched brass. He passed along the completed model, so we are hoping it now has a nice home!

Finally, ship modeler Clare Hess had some of his own fun building a plastic model of a Guppy Ib submarine SS Leonardo Davinci. The sub is the ex-Gato class submarine U.S.S. Dace, which was upgraded after WWII to the Guppy Ib standard, and then sold to the Italian Navy.

This 1/350 scale model was built from a kit from AFV Club and has some very nice detail.

Undoubtedly, there will be more plastic ship models to come… Ω