The USNS
Wyman Model
Building this model
was an exercise in imagination, ingenuity, discipline, and frugality.
It is built of
paper, and Elmer's Glue. Painted with ordinary latex house paint, and weighs
about five-pounds. Tools used were a metal straight edge ( ruler ), carpet
knife, and scissors. To make the stud-link anchor chain using bell wire took
four days, producing two-feet of chain. I needed jeweler's pliers for that job.
The total building
time was two-years. Poster-board, the kind used in school to draw, and paint on
makes up most of the model.
The lifeboats are
constructed of ordinary bond white writing paper. Antennas, stanchions, and so
on are made from Q tips.
Bits, chocks,
anchors, propellor, masts, etc are paper - laminated. All materials, except for
the poster-board, were found within the premises, nothing bought outside the
house. The model is built from the ship's Booklet of General Plans, superseded,
and otherwise discarded ordinarily, but kept for this purpose. The scale is
one-quarter inch per foot, making the model just about six-feet
long.
It was my first,
and last attempt at such an endeavour, and it now resides in the garage
gathering dust. It was finished in 1990.
The above photos were taken in 1990. For more current photos taken in July of 2002 Click Here or on the Ahead button below.
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