Reminder: while the June meeting is usually reserved for our patrol boat trip, the craft is currently undergoing repairs. We’ll be having our regularly scheduled meeting at the Lutheran Church* this evening. Hopefully, we’ll be able to take our trip later this summer!
We’ll be talking about our favorite hobby-related books, so bring along yours and prepare for some interesting discussion!
*Lutheran Church of the Acsension, 460 Sunset Ridge Road, Northfield, IL (that’s the southwest corner of Sunset Ridge and Willow Road). Directions and map.
The Tri-Club meeting is on for September 20 in the Oakbrook Park District building (the same location as the last several of them). Among the planned speakers: Bob Filipowski is going to talk on coppering of hulls of ships, and Richard “Doc” Williams on resistance soldering, especially as it relates to building the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Others speakers are filling up the roster: Gus Agustin will discourse on his unusual techniques for super-realistic Flags, Kurt Van Dahm will cover techniques for photographing your model, and Tony Levine will discuss photo-etching at home.
There will be morning pastries and coffee, as well as soft drinks. Lunch will be provided and there will be adequate time for the modelers to observe and discuss one another’s models. The price of the event will be $20.00 for members and $30.00 for non-members. This is a great event, and a chance for the various club members to become better acquainted with one another as well as better educated in the hobby.
NRG Directors Mickey Martelle and Kurt Van Dahm and long-time Guild Member Gerald (Red) Shaw are collaborating on putting together an NRG sponsored conference in Chattanooga. Red has contacted local government, historical and chamber of commerce groups and has been well received, generating a lot of enthusiasm for the conference.
A central theme for the conference revolves around the WWI Denver Class light cruiser USS Chattanooga, C16. Red found that the city has received numerous artifacts from the Chattanooga, including wardroom silver, a flag set and the ship's headboards. He has a plan for adding a model of the Chattanooga to these artifacts for local display.
Room rates at the Chattanooga Marriott (1-800-841-1674) have been negotiated at $94.00 for a single/double. The Marriott will be the location for all meetings, the reception and the banquet with the vendor spaces in close proximity to the meeting rooms. The average temperature in November is a pleasant high of 65 and low 41 giving great fall weather.
Join us in celebrating the 9th Annual Ghost Ships Festival March 7th & 8th, 2008 in Milwaukee.
The Ghost Ships Festival is a conference devoted to Great Lakes Scuba Diving and Maritime History. Exhibits, workshops, and presentations cover just about every aspect of maritime history and Great Lakes scuba diving. You can listen to and interact with leading dive industry professionals, extreme explorers, maritime historians, and Great Lakes authors!
Raising the Hunley
The highlight of this year’s gathering will be on Friday, March 7. Nationally known and respected underwater archaeologists Ralph Wilbanks and Harry Pecorelli will share their amazing adventure of locating and raising the CSS H.L. Hunley, the first combat submarine to sink a ship. Hunley was the South’s “secret weapon,” built to break the Union blockade of Charleston’s harbor. On February 17, 1864, after sinking USS Housatonic, the Union’s largest battleship, Hunley and her crew vanished beneath the waves.
The Hunley was thought lost, but in 1980, author and history buff Clive Cussler’s National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) began what was to become a 15-year search for the missing vessel, hampered by weather and treacherous diving conditions. In 1995, NUMA discovered the remains of the sub under several feet of silt nearly four miles from Charleston, South Carolina. Raising the sub took yet another five years, but now the Hunley is housed at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center.
Admission and Details
The standard full-day admission to all events is $20.00 until March 6th; at the door, tickets are $25.00. More information on admission, including purchasing tickets and details of the Platinum Package.
The S.S. Independence, the last ocean liner to be built in the US, and the last to sail under an American flag, was towed out of the San Francisco waterfront on February 8th. Where the Independence will end up is unknown, but likely one of the notorious Indian wrecking yards.
Bethlehem Steel launched the Independence in 1950. In her heyday, she made regular runs to Genoa, Italy on the “Sun Route”, topping out at 23kts. With increased competition from air travel in the late 1960s, she moved on, eventually doing highly-regarded week-long cruises around the islands of Hawaii until 2001.
The sudden decline in tourism following the September 11th attacks ended the career of the Independence. Photo of the Independence docked last year. Read more about the Independence…
The Wisconsin Maritime Museum will be hosting the 32nd Annual Midwestern Model Ships and Boats Contest on the weekend of May 16-18, 2008. Many of the finest maritime models in the country can be seen on this special weekend, when modelers from across the United States and Canada meet and take part in a modelers’ symposium, banquet, and round table discussions. R/C modelers run their boats in their boat pond across the street from the Museum. The public is welcome to view the models, talk to modelers, and even vote for the People's Choice award! More information following shortly.
Come attend the 10th Annual Chicago Tri-Club Association Modeler’s Symposium on October 1st! The TCA will once again hold the full day event at the magnificent Oakbrook Terrace Park District Heritage Center. Our speakers will cover such topics as Airbrushing, Investment Casting, and Sailmaking. More details and directions...
The Chicago Tri-Club Meeting and Modeler’s Symposium took place this year at the Oakbrook Terrace Park District Heritage Center.A fun and informative show, with expert speakers on critical topics such as spiling, sharpening, silver soldering, and case construction, you can read a report, see several of the presentations, and view pictures of some of the models in the show here.
Phil Krol has outdone himself! He’s provided two terrific tool reviews, one for the Byrnes Table Saw, and the other, a sneak preview of the soon-to-be-released Proxxon DH40 Microplaner. We’ve also added photos for the Byrnes Thickness Sander review.
But that’s not all! Under the Features / Tutorials section, you’ll find Phil’s instructions on building an electric scale ropewalk. This is one of the coolest, most useful, must-build gadgets out there. If you attended last year’s NRG Conference here in Chicago, you might have seen Doc Williams demonstrating his ropewalk...now, you can build your own!
We’ve added a number of regional history links covering maritime history and underwater archaeology in the Great Lakes region. Take a gander...
There’s more newsletters to be found in the library, including information on carving, spiling, and case building, along with reviews of books and kits amidst assorted interesting bits of flotsam. Check it out!
A tantalizing glimpse of several participants at the Kenosha Days of Discovery tall ships festival from afar. Read more...
Jack Hadfield arranged for a Lake Michigan cruise aboard the WP671 Yard Patrol craft, out of the Du Sable Harbor, just south of the Navy Pier for the Deadeyes meeting in June. A good time was had by all aboard the magnificent craft!
Several members of the Deadeyes made the trek to Long Beach, California for the three-day Western Ship Model Conference & Exhibit. Click here to see some pictures snapped by our own Phil Krol, including the jewel-like 1:300 HMS Victory and Rob Napier’s exquisite Dancing Feather (also visible in the porthole at left).
Long as the trip was, the Japanese ship model club, The Rope was extremely well represented. Along with the fine Victory, our club members were awestruck by the amazing joinery of Katsuji Tsuchiya’s 1729 French Ship-o-the-Line, Le Fleuron. The ship is built to disassemble, deck-by-deck, to show the entire structure of the interior.
On March 20th, the 4th Annual Greater Chicago Area Model Ship & R/C Boat Show took place in Oakbrook Terrace. This show has grown rapidly into a well-attended event, with over 100 models, multiple clubs, and technical sessions. This year, the show was fairly evenly divided between static and R/C models, with everything from an R/C version of the Viking longship Gokstad (mechanized rowers planned!) to a huge 1:72 Missouri that blew everyone out of the water.
You see our own Doc Williams’ Royal Louis. This model has progressed far enough that Doc decided to debut his latest enhancement: a beautifully handcrafted case to keep fingers and the occasional flying cat from destroying the rapidly advancing rigging.
