1962—MODEL CARS
1962 saw me getting deeper into my (now) two hobbies. I built many model cars, and painted in both oils and water colors constantly. Nothing is left from this year, however, as I was busy with a first girlfriend and a fairly busy social life.
My friend Gil came from a family which had a good deal more money than mine. In fact, most every one of my friends came from more money, though all of us were working class. I had to work hard to fit in. Gil always had anything within reason that he asked for, so he was ahead of me in most things requiring monetary outlay. He got started in spray painting his model cars a good six months before me, as spray cans of specially-formulated model car lacquer sold for $1.69. Enamel was much cheaper at .79 per can, but I didn’t like the results. I liked to rub out my finished for super-high-gloss. Lacquer was ready to rub out in a few hours, whereas enamel took several days or even a week.
I recall going to his house to see his latest model car. It was, in quality of construction, well beyond anything I’d accomplished to that point, and it motivated me to push harder. This latest build of his was a just-released AMT 1949 Ford Trophy kit that he’d chopped and channeled, carefully opened one door, and spray-painted Candy Red lacquer, which unfortunately dried to a low-gloss surface. He bugged me to tell him how I got such high gloss on my (by then) lacquer-finished models, but it was payback time, and I held out.
So, I built a different car (actually truck) model: a Revell 1/25 Ford F-100 pickup model with a multi-piece body and opening doors. This was my own very first spray-painted model, and I rendered it in Candy Orange over gold basecoat, with white trim and (again) india ink pinstriping, following the contours. I rubbed out the Candy Orange lacquer to a mirror gloss. (OK—my secret was a dab of toothpaste—a very mild abrasive—on a Kleenex!) This truck model was to be entered in the Navy Pier Annual custom car show model contest, so I thought it should be special. What to do? My time management on this project was good, for a change. The model was finished to my satisfaction, and I still found that I had time on my hands, so I built a display board that was 16” square. It was made to be tilted along a diagonal axis, with the back being raised about 3” higher than the front. The theme was “beachfront”, and I used a plywood board and textured it with plaster to simulate sand, with tire tracks and footprints. I built two sides up as scenic backboards with forced perspective and blue skies. The display elements began with two surfboards standing vertically in the “sand”, the tools from the ’61 Ford kit laid out on a scale blanket, and lots of other detail items, including a scale easel about 3” high with signage calling out features of the model, which except for the paint job, had no modifications. Unusually for me, it was built “SOB” (Straight Out of the Box), with no body modifications, and using nothing but kit parts. It still took Third Place behind some very complex, though tasteless, winners. Gil’s ‘49 Ford model, despite an excellent effort, complex and difficult body modifications and a flawless but low-gloss paint job, took an Honorable Mention. I didn’t think much of it, but unknown to me, I was becoming a thorn in his side. This would affect our relationship more and more as time went by.
(ABOVE) The Revell 2nd issue ‘56 Ford F-100 Pickup Truck kit. A 1962 re-tool of the first-issue kit, which was originally released in 1956. This was the basis for my contest-winning model as described above. This model was re-issued at least six times, by my faulty memory, until the present day. Only the box art and molded plastic color were updated. The 1956 first-issue model had a multi-piece body with no opening doors, which made the tooling a bit easier when the company decided to add the opening doors in order to compete with the industry in 1962.
In ’62, I started high school at St. Patrick’s, taking Latin, Algebra, English, and some science classes, along with Music Theory. I was a tiny fish (5’2”, 85 pounds) in a big pond, in a school that was centered on sports. I joined the Cross Country team, but soon dropped out. Running on Chicago winter days just wasn’t my cuppa. I had been lured to St. Pat’s with the promise that Art would become a major in 1963, but that never happened.
A major influence, both at age 13, and in my future career in full-sized cars, was Walter Musciano’s book BUILDING AND OPERATING MODEL CARS, shown below. The graphics shown below are from the first edition, published in 1956 by Funk & Wagnalls. I originally found it in my local library. Have you ever heard the stories (usually apocryphal) of kids having to walk 5 miles through 6 feet of snow to school, only to find out it was closed? Well, I had to walk a mile and a half to the library through a couple of feet of snow, after school, in the winter darkness, just to take out books or do research for my classes. This was one of those books, which of course I was able to order last week from Ebay, and which arrived in three days here in Italy…things are so much easier nowadays!
The photo at right below, shows a full-sized automotive project proposal clay being worked on by an entire multi-studio team of EIGHT men, with TWO managers. In my ten-year-career working for Mazda, Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi, and several other major manufacturers and contract builders in their clay studios, a “crowded” clay would have a maximum of four men working on two sides, and then only when schedules were behind. Usually two men worked on a more relaxed schedule. 1/5 scale models like the truck on the left were the province of a single modeller, usually completed in four to six weeks.
The second half of my automotive career was as a clay modeller, a direction I never expected, but one which I took to like a duck to water. I had previously been a “hard modeller”, working in pattern foam, wood, and fiberglass, and due to a background in precision product modelling, had developed some fast and economically advantageous modelling techniques. I was self-taught in clay, and had acquired a nice set of tools over the years, so I could just jump in.
EXAMPLE: At one large studio which shall remain nameless, a deadline for a finished painted clay was tightened up drastically by the Japanese home office, who had been working from false schedule information given them by our US studio manager. Everyone went on crazy overtime, working 20 hour days at time and a half and double time to meet the drop dead calendar date. The problem was the wheel covers, which were complex clays that the modellers had begun by sculpting a full-sized ten-spoke clay. They had the clay roughed in but only one wheel spoke finalized. With this method and the deadline two weeks away, the modeller still had to sculpt 9 spokes (nine days needed) pull a fiberglass mold (two more days due to curing time for the materials), lay up four fiberglass wheel covers (eight days due again to curing times), detail, prime, and paint them (four days), and fit them to the model (one day if he was lucky). Total 24 days with only 14 days in the schedule!
I, who had been brought in from “the outside” because of my reputation as a schedule-buster), gave things some thought and came up with a technique that used disposable brushes, a ten-minute-hardening urethane resin and with paper towels as a filler and strengthener, proceeded to copy one spoke (4 hours), make a one-spoke mold (2 hours), molded ten more spokes and fitted them together (one day), made a mold of the entire wheel cover (four hours), and molded five wheel covers in 12 hours (always make one spare), then primed, detailed, and painted all five in silver lacquer (two days). They were ready to fit to the painted clay in 5 3/4 days. Not realising it, however, I had made enemies in the workshop.
The Manager took me aside and told me that “the guys” were complaining because I worked too fast. About half the staff of ten modellers were on my side, and the other half avoided my glances. The project was finished, and the whole studio looked like heroes. Unfortunately, due to corporate politics, the Japanese managers then began to tighten schedules on all future projects. OOPS!
Whenever I was brought in by an Advanced Studio, because of my unconventional studies and experience, I could work in any material and was experienced in painting, too. I could jump into any project at any stage and hopefully trim some hours from its schedule. Eventually, however, most of the other guys came around, word spread among other studios, and I made many friends in a decade in these settings.
Later, in my career from 2003-2014 as a full-time faculty member and full-time 3D Workshop Manager in a top Automotive Design University (Yes, that’s two full-time positions at once, at a single salary…), I taught a Senior level class in Transportation Modelling that, in ten weeks, had students sketch, develop a 1/5 scale painted clay model, and make hard parts. I experimented in developing a paint technology that answered the multiple adhesion problems, and had good success, Painting Chavant oil / wax clay was always a problem, as the paint had an adhesion problem and usually blistered and peeled as it shrank. My instruction sheet with material recommendations was later published on the clay supplier’s (Chavant.com) website, to be used by students and professional designers and modellers.
In my 11 years of teaching, we placed a few dozen clay modellers in positions at many major corporations, from GM to Ferrari, Nissan, Toyota, Ford, Chrysler, and Mercedes-Benz.
(ABOVE). The Walter Musciano book, cover (L) and one double spread (R), from a chapter titled “Models in Industry”, showing clay modellers modelling a 1/5 scale model and working on a full-sized clay model. Though the styles are old, and there are no digital measuring devices and 5-axis milling machines as are used today, the clay, tools, and finishing techniques remain the same , some 69 years later!
(ABOVE) One of the images in Musiciano’s book, of Malcolm Campbell’s “Bluebird” LSR car from 1954. This was my first experience in blueprint reading, and after a bit of puzzling things out, I built the model from laminated balsa wood, finished with model airplane dope in bright blue, with hand-lettered emblems. I managed to find the wheels in a local hobby shop. In a month of evenings and weekends, it was finished, and dozens of hours staring at this drawing got me comfortable with simple blueprints. They would, of course, become more complex as my career progressed.
1962—ART ATTRACTION GETS SERIOUS!
In July of 1962, my Mom saw an ad for entries in the annual Lake Meadows Art Fair in what’s now called “Bronzeville”, in a shopping center just South of downtown Chicago. Dad and I went to the local lumberyard and bought a couple of 4’ X 8’ panels of plywood, which I painted bright turquoise and mounted on cheap easels. We turned up that Saturday with these panels tied to the top of Dad’s ’53 Plymouth, and an even dozen paintings, hangers, stick-on price labels, and three folding chairs that we borrowed from our church. We hung four paintings with price tags on each panel. I had lettered my name along the top. We had quite a bit of traffic.
In two days, I ate my first Hoagie sandwiches, and sold a few still life s and landscapes.
Most memorable was the portrait of an beautiful imaginary olive-skinned young woman with a French Roll hair style, seated in a white evening dress backed by some colored drapery. Halfway through that Sunday, a lovely Black woman stopped in front of my display and spent a couple of minutes inspecting my work. She seemed especially interested in the portrait of the young woman. I approached her and we made small talk. Looking at her, I couldn’t help but notice a strong coincidental resemblance to the subject of the portrait! Apparently she was fascinated by the resemblance, too. After a few minutes of conversation, she got out her checkbook and wrote me a check—my first paid portrait work, ever. I was now a professional portrait artist! This lady turned out to be the wife of Mister Billy Willams, a jazz and blues singer who had a top-selling recording of “Red Sails in the Sunset” a few years earlier. Mom was quite surprised and impressed, and Dad was smiling, too. Ms. Williams was very happy, and told us she would, with her husband’s agreement, be hanging it in her bedroom after she had it reframed.