In this Issue…

PLUS…

- Club News brings us all the coverage of past and upcoming events from the Sonoran Desert Model Builders.

- In the Scorpion Gallery we see some awesome automotive models from our club members. 1

Big, AWESOME white

In this Issue…

Big , AWESOME white

- In This month’s Behind the Model we pick the brains of our Newsletter Editor and fellow club member Dave Diaz.

Mold Lines is the official publication of the Sonoran Desert Model Builders Modeling club. We publish it on a monthly basis and it is your source for Club news, interviews, model reviews, photos or our member’s modeling work as well as articles on modeling techniques and other articles of interest to our

members.

WHO ARE THEY? The Sonoran Desert Model Builders is a chartered IPMS model club in Tucson, Arizona dedicated to advancing each other’s skills through tip sharing, encouragement and, most importantly, hands-on building. Our members enjoy a deep camaraderie and level of respect for each other as well as a passion for model building. We build it all... cars, airplanes, armor, ships, figures, sci-fi...

Our mission is simple… LET’S BUILD!

WHERE CAN I

FIND THEM?

We meet at the Northwest corner of Alvernon and 22nd from 6:30 to 8:30 P.M.

1100 South Alvernon Way Tucson, AZ

MEETING DATES 2016

JANUARY ……………… 7 th

FEBRUARY ……………… 4 th

MARCH ……………… 3 rd

APRIL ……………… 7 th

MAY ……………… 5 th

JUNE ……………… 2 nd

JULY ……………… 7 th

AUGUST ……………… 4 th

SEPTEMBER ….………… 1 st

OCTOBER ….….……… 6 th

NOVEMBER ..…….…… 3 rd

DECEMBER ……..…… 2 nd

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for an armor or aircraft modeler to try their hand at a subject normally out of their area of comfort. Of course, the glossy, flawless shine on a car finish is still the ultimate (and often elusive) goal for many of us. I hope you will be inspired by the contributions from our members as they share pictures of their models. Finally, the Year of the Shelf Queen continues. I have decided to rescue from oblivion a Revell Junkers civil aircraft which I started 4 or 5 years ago. I think the completion of an abandoned model can be either an exercise in self-punishment or a small personal victory. Which will it be, as you tackle your own project? Let's build! All the best,

Editor’ Workbench

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Greetings, fellow Scorpions! Spring is here and the Sonoran Desert is in full bloom. Enjoy it before the heat starts moving in! This issue of Mold Lines offers me the privilege of writing as a guest editor. The impetus for this was my desire to interview Dave Diaz, the creator and editor of our newsletter. Dave is a multi-talented guy who not only builds fabulous models, but also applies his energies to organizing SDMB contests, sharing his expertise through clinical demos and articles, and to putting out this monthly newsletter which you are now enjoying. I am glad that he will be able to share his thoughts with us through the interview. For April, we are highlighting things automotive. Cars and trucks used to be considered exclusively "shiny" subjects, but that no longer seems to be the case. The recent trend towards weathering models has extended to the automotive arena; so perhaps it will be enticing CLARA

Clara’s Shelf Queen. Revell’s 1/72 Junkers F.13

CLUB NEWS

RECENT EVENTS

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• Sonoran Desert Model Builder monthly meeting - The monthly meeting for the club was held on March 3rd 2016. This month’s show and tell theme was modeling tools. I was surprise at the multitude of useful ideas regarding new tools or uses for everyday items as modeling tools. As always we had our fare share of great models on display, a perfect recipe for a wonderful time.

Derek Campbell continues to delight us with his figure dioramas. This time he continues with the ancient Rome theme with this WIP diorama of the Battle of The Teutoburg Forest. He assures us he personally chopped the base from an ancient tree in Germany.

CLUB NEWS

RECENT EVENTS

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Simon Herbert brought us this wonderful WIP diorama of a British Quad tractor in the North African desert. Cool looking camels!

Pardon me. Do you have any Grey Poupon?

But of course! (insert Heavy British Accent)

CLUB NEWS

RECENT EVENTS

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Our friend Dick Smith continues with his New Year’s resolution with yet another Shelf Queen completed. Yes another 1/72nd scale Electric Lighting! The man is on a roll!

Bill O’Malleys’s 1/12 Fiat 806 Grand Prix by Italeri

CLUB NEWS

RECENT EVENTS

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See more awesome model photos from our meeting at:

www.sdmb.yolasite.com

We were truly delighted to see Dave Fisher’s amazing 1/9 scale Stug III G,. This massive piece took 12 years to make and it is completely scratch built including the sculpted figure! Wow!

CLUB NEWS

UPCOMING EVENTS

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• Make and Take at the Pima Air and Space Museum - This event is designed to introduce children to the hobby of model building and the math and historical research used to build accurate scale models. The event will take place April 5th , 2016 from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM.

• SDMB Monthly Meeting – Our club’s next meeting will be held on April 7th, 2016 from 6:30 – 8:30. It will be held at our regular meeting location. (See Page 2 for details).

• Don’t forget to support out monthly raffle! Every month we give away one item from our raffle stash for every 10 tickets . Tickets are only $1.00!

• Annual Library Display. This year we have a follow up of the theme Models from Movies, TV and Books. This event will take place at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library in downtown Tucson from May 1st through May 31st.

Model by Senji Watanabe

MODELS IN THE MOVIES

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During the construction of the scale model for the alien mothership in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind modelers made their work fun by adding small and crazy details on the space ship. There are small aircraft, ships, buildings and even a small R2D2!!

You can see that in this still of the actual film the R2D2 can clearly be seen as the mothership passes over the characters.

Did you know…

by Bob Duke

AMT 1/25 WHITE FREIGHTLINER TRACTOR

I’ve always liked the look of the “Cab Over” semi tractors so when I found this sitting on the shelf at ACE hobby I bought it. My initial reaction when I started to build it was the poor quality of the parts sprues. There is a lot of flash especially on the clear parts sprue. There was so much flash on those it was hard to tell where the parts ended and the flash started.

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I dived in and started the kit. The first step is assembling the diesel engine, this is where I discovered this kit is going to be a real challenge. First of all, there are no identifying part numbers on any of the sprues or the instructions! The numbers on the instructions just indicated the number of the recommended step process to build. And then to top it off the graphics on the instruction sheet were of so poor quality that in some cases it was hard to find the corresponding part on the sprue.

The kit comes with vinyl tires which I didn’t think looked real. I had an idea that worked real well. I bead blasted all the tires in a plastic media bead blaster and the tires came out looking fantastic in my opinion. The glossy sheen was removed and the vinyl looked like real aged rubber…Cool!

The cab comes in 2 parts, the cab and then a sleeper. The fit of the cab to sleeper was real bad, and needs a lot of filler for the joining seam. In addition when you work the seam filler you invariably remove a lot of the rivets so that is an issue also. In fact on the top of the cab I sanded ALL of the rivets off of due to the damage in the seam area and left it like that. I then went on to assemble the interior items and glue them into the cab, this turned out to be a chore.

I was real excited

about starting the

kit so it leap-

frogged several

other kits that I

had my eye on in

my stash.

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As far as the paint, I used Alclad 2 on all of the kit chrome parts. I stripped the chrome from the sprues using ZEP 505 industrial cleaner (From Home Depot) The rest of the cab was airbrushed with Tamiya Pearl White. The interior was hand painted by brush using Vallejo Acrylics (love that stuff!)

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The kit was a real challenge for me and my menial modeling skills. I really can’t give AMT any kudo’s on this kit except for the decals in which they don’t produce. This kit is for the “patient” modeler, but it was fun and I like the way it turned out considering the issues. - Bob

The decals were excellent, went down very well and didn’t have any issue with silvering. I sealed with Future then applied a light coat of Testor’s Dullcoat. I added the trailer support cables from phone wire. After approx. 60 hours of build time I considered the kit done.

Behind the Model

Many times as we admire a model at a modeling event, magazine or online website questions come to our minds. Most of the times these questions are the usual like, what technique did he use? But often we find ourselves wondering not about the model, but about the modeler. Who is the modeler? What does he or she likes best from the hobby? Or, how did he end up scale modeling to begin with? In this section we will try to get a glimpse of these elusive artists behind the pieces; because as is often the case, the story behind the modeler is more interesting than the story of the model itself.

This month I have the privilege of interviewing the creator and editor of our newsletter, Dave Diaz. Since he joined the SDMB in 2013, Dave has brought a heightened level of enthusiasm. He was instrumental in initiating and organizing Scorpfest and has shared his modeling expertise with fellow club members through many articles and demos. Dave holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a AA in Plastic Arts from the University of Puerto Rico . Dave lives in Tucson, AZ with his wife Becky and their children Trista and Gabriel.

CT - Dave, tell us where did the scale modeling journey began for you? DD - As a child I had severe asthma and because of this I could not participate in most physical activities like sports and such. Once when I was around 10 I got really sick and I guess my mom felt bad for me having to spend all my time indoors (there was no 24 hour children TV stations back then) so while we were at the pharmacy getting my meds she bought me a model. It was Monogram’s 1/72 A-10. My dad helped me build it and while neither of us knew what we were doing he did noticed that I really liked it. After that he would always get me a model for my birthday. I built models on and off for years after that.

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Behind the Model

CT - Most modelers reach a point where they start doing modeling in a serious way. When did your approach when from “on and off” to a more serious hobby? DD - Everything changed when in 1993 I went to my first scale model show. At that time I was very into war gaming and building models (mostly figures) at a more rapid pace but I was not entirely committed to constantly improving my skills. I was blown away by the quality of the models on display at the show, from figures and aircraft to fantastic dioramas including armored vehicles and figures. At that show I met people who would become my inspiration, my mentors and my long life friends. It seems modeling glue can hold together more than just parts. That night when I got home I felt different as if something in me had changed.

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What had changed was my view of the hobby. It went from it being part of a game system to being an art form in itself. I had been shown what was possible, a new horizon and I wanted to be like those guys. I still remember how that night I looked at my shelf with all my unpainted and horribly assembled models and proceeded to throw each and every one of them in the trash. After that it was different for me.

“At my first model show I met people

who would become my inspiration, my

mentors and my long life friends.”

Behind the Model CT - What part of the hobby is most enjoyable to you? DD - For me it has to be the painting and weathering. While I enjoy the entire modeling process the building part is not as fun. I know it sounds strange but I have to admit the building part can be a little bit stressful sometimes and I think is because that part is more mechanical than artistic. Interestingly scratch building feels more artistic to me and I greatly enjoy it. CT - What is your favorite subject? And why? DD - Armor by far! I have always liked the image of huge armored vehicles lumbering across the battlefield. I also like the fact that in my opinion armor subjects offer the most opportunities for recreating wear and tear and weathering in general. Sci-fi comes in a close second. CT - What has been the build you have enjoyed the most? DD - The Jadgpanzer Spinne (Spider) scene is one of my favorites. I have always been fascinated by artists like Kow Yokoyama who could come up with unique designs and stories like his Maschinen Krieger series. The model was design and built from scratch with only a few parts taken from my bits box. I also wanted to make a very dramatic base for the scene and it was very enjoyable making the rocky hillside with all the trees and bushes. I also think I like it because the end result came out very close to what I had envisioned when I started the design.

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Behind the Model

CT - If there was some skill or something you would like to improve as a modeler, what would that be, and why? DD – Oh boy! I wish I was a faster modeler. I have met modelers that can turn around amazing work in a matter of days. I had a friend who once completed a build in one night during a modeling get together. It wasn’t anything complex, but he still did the whole thin in one night, and it was amazingly well done. It takes me months, sometimes years to finish a project.

“You have to constantly push your

boundaries beyond what you think you

can do or else you will never get

better.”

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CT - What are some suggestions for somebody who wants to become better at scale modeling? DD - There are several things I consider a “must” in order to become a better modeler. The first is to try something you think you cannot do in every new build. Keep trying and push through to the end of a project even if you feel it’s not coming along as you imagine it. You will notice the difference on your next build. You have to constantly push your boundaries beyond what you think you can do or else you will never get better. The second is, learn from others. Like in many art forms, modelers get better by having contact with other modelers. If you see an effect on a model that you like, ask the modeler how he achieved it. Most modelers are very friendly and will be very willing to share their thoughts and techniques.

Behind the Model

CT - What are some things you do different now vs when you started as a modeler? DD - The major difference is I don’t worry much about accuracy. I used to be obsessed about how correct a model kit was to the point where it was impossible to let any mistake pass. Yes I was a “Rivet Counter”. Over the years I have learned that is very unlikely anybody will point any inaccuracies in your models. Once I realized that I was better off spending my time improving my painting and weathering techniques the hobby became so much more fun. Another thing I do now is I focus on one build at a time. I used to start multiple builds at a time and they would linger for years. Now I am more disciplined on that subject. CT - You have served in the US Army. Has this experience had any effect or influence in your modeling? DD - Yes, it has been very influential. I was in the Cavalry and I did my share as crew for M1A1’s,

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M3 Bradleys, and Humvee’s and it all proved to be an invaluable source of references years later when building models. You can truly add new levels of realism to your builds because you know how dirty vehicles can really get, or what areas the paint rubbed off first. There are things that you cannot learn from looking at a photograph, or by reading a book.

CT – Dave, thank you for this

opportunity. It was great!

DD – Thank you Clara.

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Dave Brown’s rusty old VW Beetle (1/24)

Annette Sostarich’s Pleasant Purple Plastic Plymouth Prowler (Say That 5 times fast) in 1/24 by Monogram

Scorpion Gallery

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JR’s 1/24 1953 Corvette “Gasser”

Scorpion Gallery

Several of Bill O’Malleys’ cars including his 1957 Tom “Mongoose” McEwen Chevy

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SDMB Club Officers

& Contacts

HOW CAN I JOIN THE SDMB?

Test the water before you join!

Here's how: Drop by and say "hello" at one of our monthly meetings (see our Next Meeting page for date and location details). If you like what you see and hear then drop by again the next month

and be sure to bring your questions and we'll help you get started! The first two meetings are free so drop on by! After your second meeting we would appreciate you joining our club. Our club dues

pay for various things such as community programs and sponsorships of trophies in contests. We are happy to have visitors but even happier when you join our club of award winning modelers.

Dave Brown arizonadesertdave@gmail.com (PRESIDENT)

Kent Weeks kentanddeanna@centurylink.net (TREASURER)

Derek Campbell 4nagato1@gmail.com (SECRETARY)

Mike Bilcik mbilcik1@cox.net (CLUB IPMS POINT OF CONTACT)

Dave Diaz EDITOR_SDMB@Yahoo.com (NEWSLETTER EDITOR) (Vice President)

Steve Barlow redsteve921@gmail.com (CLUB WEBMASTER)

Visit our website at www.sdmb.yolasite.com You can also find us on Facebook. SDMB is an affiliated club of the International Plastic Modeler’s Society www.IPMSUSA.org