A Salute to Model Making | The Tank Museum

thank you for watching the tank museum's youtube channel and don't forget to subscribe if you can support the museum please think of backing us on patreon or joining one of our membership schemes or if you watch to the end of this video you'll be able to see how you can help the museum by buying items from our online shop hello i'm david william i'm the curator at the tank museum and in this video we're going to be celebrating the art of model making now normally at this time of the year the tank museum we'd be hosting a modeling event but uh of course with the pandemic the museum's closed we can't do that but at the same time we've seen a huge surge in the number of model kits all sorts of being sold from our online shop now this is great for the tank museum because we're closed so the online shop has become our main source of revenue but it's also great to see what appears to be a resurgence in the hobby of model making which has arguably suffered over the recent years from the competition from video games so whether you're a seasoned model maker or just keen to find out more we hope you'll enjoy this video which is part of a series of three we're producing as a salute to model making now in this video we're going to be hearing from model makers you may have heard of we're also going to hear about the work of models for heroes who work with veterans to teach them modeling and we're going to be taking a look at some of your lockdown models and to steer us through i i'm going to be joined by actor and comedian chris barry most famous for his roles in red dwarf british empire and perhaps less well-known as an enthusiastic model maker chris barry so welcome to joining us chris there at home with some of your models yes indeed well it's it's good to good to take part and yeah you're absolutely right i've uh kind of rediscovered uh probably about 45 years later um the uh the the hobby that is model making and um it kind of never really left me mentally but it um you know it's something that now i've got a bit of time on my hands to do it and behind me i have a little display of i'll just show you there we go i hope you can hope you can see all that but most of those models i actually made uh about 45-50 years ago um uh when i was a a young teenager and uh yeah it's it's it's it's great great fun and you it's a world you can disappear into and just forget about the the stresses and let's face it there are a few of those out there right now do you share the fact that you're a model maker with people because i i can't help but think there was a time wasn't it where it wasn't the first thing you certainly said when you introduced yourself to people or i'm a model maker and you certainly never said it when you were trying to chat up a girl no exactly um it's uh it's something that at school there was there was a few people uh there were a few people like-minded people at school but as uh i i came through the business that i have been in uh in my life uh the business of the show and television etc etc if you're at a launch or something and you you know people sort of say so what do you do chris when you're not on set yeah and you're saying things like well i'm socializing uh contemporary jazz uh i like to uh to travel to uh decent uh cool places um i like to make models effects models it kind of doesn't really it's something that they would probably stop and say what what's that last one they drill down see you mate and off they go but you know i'm not ashamed you know of of that at all i think there's a lot of people um who who wouldn't uh admit to model making who but in fact you know are closet model makers but i think you know just recently the sort of nerdiness of it all is just being cast aside and people are getting out there and it's really on the map you know whether it's model railways or afvs or or you know remote control stuff whatever it's really out there and people are getting more and more into it we're gonna now be showing you some of the people happy to share their model making experiences with us we're going to look at a video by lindy baige explaining why he likes models another reason to make tank kits as opposed to any other sort of kit is gubbins governs is good [Music] right now pay attention i've been asked to come here and talk to you today about it i've been asked to talk to you about why i've made quite so many model tanks i think it's reasonable to say that between the ages of 8 and 11 i was making something like one a week my father would take me to braley's in north fields to the model shop and i'd come home with something like this a box filled with lots of little parts on sprues and i would study well the destructions and then get out my trusty nail clippers which proved perfectly adequate and i'd clip out all the parts glue them together and at the end of this i would have a tank which was good because well there was a tank now it is true that i did uh stray a little bit from the path i'd made a couple of ships and i did go through a phase it was only a phase all right it was just a phase i was young and i grew out of it of making aircraft but there are a lot of big drawbacks with aircraft so you may think oh well that looks very sleek but try wargaming with one of these if you work out what in this scale the correct turning circle of an aircraft of this design would be you need a flipping sports stadium to play a realistic game in but tanks tanks are quite different you can have terrain on your tabletop you can lay down roads and fields and hedges and trees and ponds and military things like bunkers and barbed wire and craters and buildings let's not forget those buildings from kits buildings that you scratch built yourself are buildings that might need a lick of paint and then what an arena you have for your tanks this is the stuff wargaming you see with terrain like this you have all sorts of line of sight problems and you can set up scenarios there's a village that has to be taken from the enemy by a certain time and then you send in your tanks and perhaps combined arms with infantry as well going in against the enemy you don't get combined arms with aircraft do you oh my hurricanes and spitfires will attack at the same time that's not combined arms that's just more fighters having a go combined arms is infantry and tanks and artillery coordinating in such a way as to defeat the enemy using skill judgment and timing that's proper combined arms and terrain you don't get terrain like this on the sea what'd you get uh on the on the sea air water water that's not terrain and up in the sky what have you got air that's not who who models a cloud to scale nobody that's not terrain that's just a load of space this is terrain this is wargaming i have had some failures now in the main good stout british kits go together well but sometimes their flimsy foreign counterparts don't and i had so much trouble with this 251 hannimag flamethrower variant that in the end i just decided to turn it into a wreck but that's all right because it becomes terrain i can place this wrecked model down on my table and now it becomes part of my game do you get that with aircraft no you don't with an aircraft gets shot down or wrecked it just falls out of the sky does it become terrain no but here every still active mobile tank is a threat and every wreck becomes part of the game i'd say that my two most substantial projects in this field have been putting together most but not all of hobart's funnies and pretty much all the variants of the 251 hanamag half track are necessary for a panzer grenadier armoured company of 1944. another reason to make tank kits as opposed to any other sort of kit is gubbins goblins is good here is a tank with gubbins on the front see it makes it look better here lots of guppies on the back excellent and so you when you're making models get to festoon your models with gubbins and gubbins is excellent just look at this gubbins boxes roll tarpaulins jerry cans flimsies buckets hedge cutters don't forget to slap on the mud towing chains stowage bins extra armor plates personal kit oh this one's got a bicycle on it and spare wheels spare track links aerials more aerials extra machine guns signal flag holders fire extinguishers fascines and look this one's covered in sandbags ah gubbins so what sort of gubbins can you have on the outside of your aircraft none it has to be sleek and aerodynamic you can't have so much as the pilots pack lunch on the outside of this sort of thing no gubbins i'm sorry but planes are just rubbish now do be sure to store all your models carefully we don't want any of your hard work going to waste there are those who would emphasize the therapeutic nature of kit building and i can attest to it and would like to draw your attention to a certain charity called models for heroes they take kits donations are welcome if you've got the load of kits on your shelf if you're a model you might have several of those that you haven't built for years and they're probably never going to get round to building well you could send them in to models for heroes and then they will be put into the hands of ex-servicemen so that was lindy bay now chris the um what got you going as a modeler in the first place then why were you a modeller well of course my my late father was uh in the army we were sort of uh he very kindly arranged for me to visit the odd vehicle depot you know so i was between the ages of 10 and 14. that was the time that we were traveling around i was going to ludge all um you know vehicle depot we were based in germany of course so i was kind of you know summer holidays sort of breathing in the the military world and obviously there was lots of conversations about military vehicles and um you know that just got me you know i was a petrol head as well you know so all it all just came home in one perfect storm of uh of taking up the you know my own personal uh tanks and afvs so yeah around about the age of 11 12 it just uh it just struck me as a damn good idea do you remember the first kit you bought or was it bought for you well i think behind me somewhere it it is probably the one of the first kits i bought uh let me have a quick look it may well have been the matilda i remember very distinctly whiling away the uh the hours uh i used to put records on um with the old uh um you know the old vinyl um yeah yeah 33 rpm uh that's right for long players and uh and that would de-stress me um i probably should have been doing a bit of homework but um hey and i'm telling you the gift shop there was like i i was like a kid in the candy store as far as the brick models are concerned hi everybody this is jesse from the great war channel and from real time history and i'm happy to make a guest appearance today on the tank museum's channel to talk to you a bit about my relationship with modeling now i'm not what i would consider like a super pro super dedicated modeler or anything but i've had quite a lot of important experiences over the years with modeling and i think at different times in my life the hobby when i've dipped in and out of it has played an important role and i think that it started of course i guess like most people when i was a kid i first got interested in model airplanes but model airplanes were an important part of my childhood for a bunch of years in north america i'm not quite sure about europe but it's traditional for young kids and high school kids as well but i was back in elementary school to have a science fair for each school and they compete and they have science projects and a couple of years running my science projects were based on model airplanes one was about flight how flight works so i hung up my different models and tried to explain lyft and all that kind of stuff and i think the very first model i had that was a part of that science project when i was 10 was a stuka dive bomber there was also an american one a naval plane but i don't remember which one it was and so right away they were part of my learning experience as well as having fun i mean i lived in the countryside in canada there was no internet back then i'm probably giving away my age a little bit and so modeling was something creative and fun i could do it it was related to my interest in history and i made it also a part of my schooling so i tried to incorporate something fun from home into school and then i have to admit for many years i didn't really have much to do with modeling and i never really paid much attention to modeling until just a few years ago actually i can't say that it was for a happy reason but it turns out i think to have been a positive thing in my life a few years ago i was in the process of changing jobs and it was quite stressful and i had some other stuff going on in my life that was distracting me and causing me some stress so i don't remember what the moment was that caused me to decide to do this but i decided to get back into modeling a little bit as a way to free my mind from some of those other things that were going on but this time i didn't go back to the traditional modeling where you assemble the pieces and paint them i went back to or i chose to start getting involved in models but made of bricks but i started to get a couple of different building brick models and that was a lot of fun and actually i've incorporated a couple of those into the set well let's say the emergency pandemic filming set that we've been using for the great war since all the lockdowns began and this is something that has really struck a chord with a lot of the viewers because they've commented a lot on the tanks and the artillery pieces that are on the shelf behind me when we're filming one of them is right here it's the typical mark one of course from the first world war but in addition we also went for one of our projects with real-time history a documentary film called 16 days in berlin we went and we did part of that film in collaboration with the tank museum and i'm telling you the gift shop there was like i i was like a kid in a candy store as far as the brick models are concerned and i i had to restrain myself because of luggage but i did get myself this 88 anti-tank slash anti-aircraft gun which is also visible in the emergency pandemic set of the great war at which we've been filming as far as the pandemic is concerned i think i just read today in the news that austria has had more days of lockdown than nearly any other european country so i have had a lot of time on my hands at home and again i don't want to spend it all day just working or twiddling my thumbs or just having screen time in front of the computer and so i've continued my newfound hobby of making models and i've got an unopened sherman tank model and that's going to be my next project and theoretically and now this is going to be public so i guess i'm committing myself what i really want to do is find a way to get some decals made to turn it into a lend lease sherman for the red army but we'll see how that works out so that's my modeling story i hope that you have one that's just as rewarding and just as important for you in your life so good luck with your modeling and have fun it doesn't have to look amazing it just has to be something that you enjoy to do hi it's tristan from dress and scale models i've been doing scale modern for around three years now and i will be 12 in april this year i also have the youtube and facebook page as well which is mainly basically um scale muslim for young people i my dad is in school modeling and i used to going to be shed where he's building the models and just talk to him about it and how he's doing it and then i watched a few videos as well and after that i feel a few months later on in some holidays my dad bought my first ever model it was curtis tomahawk from airfix and after that we went to a few scale model shows with my dad's ips group and after that actually i realized that i didn't really like aircrafts and i preferred armor armor vehicles or tanks instead so then a few weeks later um my dad brought my first ever tank model which was the king king tiger from uh from airfix as well and after that i really enjoyed reading all the books information about it and just building them in general and after that um i started to build a big project in my case which was a one-third second chieftain so when i was halfway through it my dad decided for a little treat and for us to go to bovington to tank museum and the best thing about it was that we actually got to sit in the tank that was building as well so when we went there i had sat in the tank and i also kind of really enjoyed it i bought a book on the chieftain and then i read it so when i was doing my model it made it feel a bit more realistic so i knew what this tank was about and where it came from so after that i finished the model and again i did it on youtube and i was really happy with it and also i took it to my school as well and just showed it around because i was really proud of it and i've done that with a few of the models as well so here's the teeth notes glory as well and also like i said before i did take it to my school and i showed it on my school mates i and also i showed my teachers and they really enjoyed it as well also i took it to my moral show and i've always chatted to people about it and after that i've seen smiles on the faces looking at my model and that's just one thing for me that makes me really happy but the things that i love to do while i'm doing modeling is them is one main thing to me which is weathering effects is because i love to muddy up make a mess everywhere just all over the shed it just makes a mess everywhere and it's really fun to do and obviously after that it's just streaking effects making scratches putting leaves on the model sometimes as well you do and and in the end it looks like the realistic thing as well after so also um doing models and lockdown scale models for me in lockdown was quite hard for me but the few times when i do it literally does get away from everything it gets me away from the house and it it just feels like it just feels so good just to get out of the house and just sit there and do something and concentrate on it it doesn't have to look amazing it just has to be something that you enjoy to do so there's a youngster there for a bit of inspiration you know another generation of model makers now chris one of the issues we'll talk about go around the houses on modelling but uh have you got a model that you're particularly proud of and yeah maybe one of the ones behind you there and why why do we get pride in the model making why do some things give us a bit more pleasure and you want to show someone of course it was normally when i was a kid it was showing your sisters or your mum or your dad or something and yeah it was just a polite smile wasn't it sort of thing but what is it that you're proud of and one of the models you've made well i i think i'm quite proud of the of of of my return uh build uh from uh last year which i made uh and that is um this guy here um which if i offer up to the camera i don't know whether you can you can yeah there you go it's it's a good old cromwell uh standard issue and i'm sort of quite proud because i was getting used to you know all the new um paints the sort of acrylic paints and stuff uh that are much more um i i guess you know better for your lungs than say enamels and all that kind of thing so i'm quite proud of that um but i'm slightly disappointed as well because it's probably not that much better if at all than the stuff i made 48 years ago so slightly i was quite impressed by some of the stuff i made when i when i was a child looking back on them on them now um but i always uh i was kind of i made more afvs tanks and and and you know the ones at the top there the matador and the the brand carrier and the like because aircraft modelling was uh it didn't quite work for me i remember um with my model of a lockheed hudson hurling it against the wall in frustration so yeah i'm quite proud of my efforts so far um and uh you know coming coming as the summer comes we'll be doing more uh down in the shed probably and when you do a model like that do you do you do any research beforehand you know do you just look at the books or just tend to follow the kit sort of suggestions well no this is something else that i would do now that i didn't do 48 years ago and that is um really you know find some good sources to to explain find out make sure that the manufacturer of the models have got it right you know that's the one thing you want to do and then yes you do and i think making the model helps you with that model you know uh prototype identification and that sort of thing um it's the same with model railways you know sort of uh using and sort of mucking about with with with a locomotive and rolling stock sort of you know makes you learn helps you learn about uh you know what was used at the time and it's the same with with tanks you know because uh unless you're david willi you know people's you know knowledge of tanks is gonna be a little bit rusty you know um and mine is very often the case you know i walk around the tank museum and i think i can i can sort of identify quite a lot of them but there's a lot of them that i'm thinking i got that wrong so model making does help uh in in with your sort of identification and learning about the various features on each tank and um repeating a question from a little bit earlier on we asked that question about saying do you actually is it a hobby you talk about you know do you you know you mentioned being a bit of a celebrity type of thing that it's not the first thing that you tend to talk to people is it when you talk about what you do modeling and i certainly think there was a time where we didn't talk about modeling it was it was a bit like trainspotting type of thing it was definitely the very nerdy end of um and you certainly never talked about those topics in front of girls did you or did you i mean i was a trained spotter as well i mean that was the thing after a sort of afternoon of paddington station uh seeing the last of the diesel hydraulics i there's nothing better than going to knock together a couple of tanks upstairs so yeah that was utterly you know and then if i managed to find a date with a with uh a girl i um i wouldn't bring that up in conversation but of course they'd be saying so what did you do today you know i'd be thinking well i did a spot of train spotting um supported by a spot of modelling it wouldn't really work but oddly enough these days i i i don't really care you know i'll talk to to anyone about it and um i think i think a lot of people who don't have a hobby as such are actually sort of thinking oh i need a hobby you know i must find a hobby sort of thing and i'm just so glad particularly in these abnormal times uh that i've got uh you know this this great hobby that you can just lose yourself in you know i took them out and showed her and she goes you're a nerd and i went yep and i'm actually proud of it my name is stuart weider i'm the archive and supporting collections manager at the tank museum today i'm going to be talking about how i got into modelling um at a young age unfortunately i grew up in northamptonshire and did not have the opportunity to visit the tank museum itself until the early 1990s so my modelling interests started in the late 70s when i was given a large um box full of uh military modelling magazines and um a couple of kits i'd already worked on things like um airfix for the planes etc but i was really sort of fascinated with the figures and i remember there was a one of the tamiya panzer ii kits um and and started making that i remember having my room at the time there was a large um window with um basically the the shelf there and i remember basically doing my modeling on on that i i ruined the shelf um the actual um window um area um but um it was great for me to do the modeling came to the museum back in as i said in the 90s um and i used to walk around and take photos of the actual tanks no detail photos it was just like i'm in the museum when i saw the um david woody asking for people to volunteer back in 2000 i'm in the archive i thought yep got to go down this is like a mecca um and i popped down there then the assistant librarians job came up in late 2004 and when i came to the interview for my five minute presentation i decided to do one of the models i was working at the time which was um panzer one before falcon and i took it in there and i remember sitting in front of david woody and janice and and started explaining that basically modeling was like being your own curator of your own tank museum you know you could choose what tanks you wanted to build you could choose how you're going to paint them you could do the research on them and etc and i explained you know how your own modeling experience was um like being the curator or researcher or librarian of the tank with him so i got the job so i'm hoping that that did quite well on that one once i was in the archive we were dealing with with um tamiya and i was really really lucky to work on kicks like the matilda a12 matilda um the sharpie one biz and it's really been a pleasure working with them work with meng as well on on the tortoise and the amx 30. um model that i'm most proud of is probably that that sharpie uh model which is actually my mum's in a cabinet i think the thing that probably has is probably my weakest area has been painting figures especially faces um and i think that the you know some of the magazines you see these guys are artists and it's a bit intimidating at times you think well maybe not and so that's why you see a lot of my models with the hatches closed uh but it's just you know finding the time and then just immersing yourself i find that it's what i found in the last few weeks is just stopping coming in and just focusing on that model focusing on the on the plans um i think and then then deciding to build it and then there's that joy of just being in that moment um it's very good for um that buzzword mindfulness yes there are frustrations in there because the little carpet monster goes and grabs a little handle that you've been working on and trying to fit onto the actual tank and you never see it again so there are not to say that there are frustrations with it but it is much more manageable and you're in charge and you get decide what's going on so um yeah i think this is a it's a good hobby it's um something that people think is nerdy i once came back from a um an exhibition a modeling exhibition with my mate and we met his wife and she was with one of her girlfriends she said what you got in the bag and i said i've got loads of paints in the model kit i took them out and showed her and she goes you're a nerd and i went yep and i'm actually proud of it and normally you keep these things quiet but i thought no actually you know i had a really nice day i bought some nice stuff and it keeps me quiet and frankly off the streets so um uh chris so chris what with this um resurgence with this coming back to modeling what techniques what new things have you found uh from the differences as it were from earlier days you mentioned about paint what are the things that when you're buying a kit now are there things you notice the difference and are there you know how you do it has that changed in any way you know i think that's for me anyway one of the great things about it is it's it there isn't really that much difference it's just the same you know you've got to you know take the parts off the off the the sprue and you've got to file them down and you've got to glue them together some of the the more the modern glues are the bits where you sort of hold them together and you put the liquid liquid cement on which which is different i didn't have that back in back in the old days but um but generally it's pretty much the same i mean now i i've been sensible enough to you know get a decent uh set of tools to to help me with the modeling as opposed to before just trying to scratch them off with you with your nails you know um and you know the thing that i generally do have now is is a bit more a bit more patience not a lot more patience but a bit more patience so um and that really does help with a hobby like model making so no what i really like about it is it's pretty much the same as it was back in the it day your mind off the trials and tribulations of living on a plague island simple as that hello there al murray here special lockdown hairy edition um hi tank fans fans of the tank museum hello the tank museum um why am i talking to you because here i am in my modeller's den because this lockdown i have uh gone back to my original hobby roots and started making scale models again particularly scale models of armored fighting vehicles and the tiny blokes who are impossible to paint that live with them um i mean look behold it's a tiger tank for the tunisian campaign all dirty and filthy and covered in muck the way you like it and i've even gone so far as to build a few dioramas and if you look down here you'll see an m32 so that's a recovery tank hauling a universal carrier out of a ditch while some tommies pose for the camera and a mule goes by it keeps me entertained if nothing else of course the tank museum is just a place to buy this kind of stuff um i certainly have helped myself why not help myself i've had to pay like everybody else um to plenty of stuff in the tank museum shop and why do i like the hobby because well you have to concentrate you can listen to the radio you have to deal with the thing that's in front of you it takes your mind off the trials and tribulations of living on a plague island simple as that thanks for watching bye it can be stressful at times when you're when you're building something it's not going according to plan it's uh it's it's returning to a hobby that one had as a child um it's something you can do to you know keep the hands and the mind occupied and just basically you know give you something to uh strive towards if you like you know it's it's um something that you can start with very little you know skill level you know you can start from nothing and and saw builds well from there uh as for me that was exactly what happened it was you know i've always made things always built things and and returning to modelling was just a another part of that so but um yeah i think it's uh it's a good hobby and it's something that um that more people should perhaps consider uh it's something you can do on your own you can do it with your friends um i mean a lot of the uh you know some of the some of the charities that i work with like models for heroes and people like that they're supplying kit to various uh veterans and mental health charities where people get together and they can sit around a table and build their models and talk about things and you know just generally take your mind off things for a little while so yes i think it's uh it's a very good hobby in that regard it can be stressful at times when you're when you're building something it's not going according to plan but i think that's just like a almost like a good kind of stress because it's something that you can deal with so yes on the whole i think modeling is a very worthwhile hobby and um certainly one i think more people should should take up especially in these trying times there are a multitude of hobbies that can be done that help with mindfulness in the world of psychology it's called attention because your attention is taken off what is creating the issue it allows you to escape it um for example with myself i have a disability with my left leg and i'm in pain all the time but coming out here doing this it takes my attention away from the pain and allows me to do my modelling the pain is still there but my mind is on something completely different i just love doing it every aspect well apart from deckling aircraft with lots and lots of decals oh does my head in i hate deckling so one thing about modelling i really don't like but you do it because it's part and parcel so chris one of the things about modeling that people you know everyone says how therapeutic it is we can talk about that in one way but the other side of it what frustrates you when you're modeling what are those things that really wind you up um or get you as you mentioned before throwing models against the wall yeah the the sort of patience aspect i guess is um i suppose it's that sort of initial i can't do that you know when you've got to um you know to towards the towards the rear of the um of the cromwell there the they've got the shovel you need to really to paint the um the shovel a sort of woody kind of earth color you know uh which is of course it's all it's all in the mold so something like that is i'm not gonna be able to do that you know but you know you with a little bit of thought a little bit of a steady hand a couple of goes at it and and you sort of get it so um but that's all part that's now become part of it in the old days i would have got rather frustrated at that um hopefully not hold everything against the wall otherwise the wall would have been rather strangely decorated but no it's um you can get frustrated really i mean some of the parts uh particularly in in 176 scale for example are so minutes and pretty delicate and that can be a bit of an expletive moment when you realize that you've either lost a part on the floor and it's absolutely my newt uh like like the towing eyes you know at the front of the cromwell that would see but you know back in the old days i would have been using my stubby fingers to do it whereas now of course i've got a pair of um uh you know grips that can sort of hold on but then again that's when they if you if the grips haven't completely gripped it and it flicks off then it's it's gone forever so uh you know back in the back in the day i wouldn't have thought that i can get some spares somewhere you know whereas now you can you know quite easily you go online and find some spare parts do you also what why do we like making things in miniature i think you can you can create your own world i mean with a with a model railway for example you can some people approach it and sort of say i want to recreate i don't know um kingsbridge station and goods yard that circa 1950 or whatever or some people say i want to do my own my own sort of thing and and you know my own sort of version of what it would have been like when i did this um this fine german half track you you could you're probably going to tell me what it is sd kfc 251. oh no all right okay sorry so i couldn't say there we go right oh wow right eight tanner yeah oh with i think it's the 88 on the back there yeah yeah yeah um you see what i've done there is is i sort of uh this was when i was a kid i put i put the wheels in the turning position um which which to me was like that moment where yes yes we've got them in the turning position you know um so and of course that still works as well so i have a better aim at the door just in case the wife comes in in a minute um so yeah no it's little things like that that you could sort of you know individualize uh and and you know that gives you that little thrill uh that um that's all part of it i've got to bring in my bit now because um i what i found this not so long ago but it's a tamiya catalogue from the 70s and the thing that really i have to say used to inspire me they used to do these photos and dioramas with um people like francois verlinden and the these and the way they photograph them with a bit of a backdrop and again making that new real world in miniature that was the thing that got me going so much that that sense of um you know taking it a little bit further having not just a lovely diorama but having the backdrop around it and for me that was the the thing that i would always aspire to you know if you could have done that and i was looking at these photos again and trying to recapture that level of excitement that these pictures gave you when i was you know i don't know what it was under 10 or 11 or something like that you know that sort of was really quite something and it's it's i don't know it's not sad it doesn't quite do it to me again but i always hope you're going to recapture that that sense of the thrill and the dioramas were just coming in when i was sort of reaching uh you know leaving the model making phase and going into the train spotting phase but i think i did the uh the battle for berlin there right yeah which uh that was you know one of the ones i did and i i don't know where the diorama's gone i've got some of the some of the kit there um the the the egg tiger and the um ah you can tell me what the smaller self-propelled gun is uh we we call them commonly a hetzer hector hetzer yeah yeah yeah yeah well that was um well they're still here and surprisingly the um some of the german kit has survived rather better than the yeah i don't know where the the egg tiger is there it is yeah there we go gone up sir there we are so so that was part of the deer armor there we are um did you hear the base did you put it all together sort of thing yeah i i did the base but i don't know where it's gone it's probably in a garage somewhere over there um but i i painted it all up and all that sort of stuff and put in little bushes so that's when the the model railway stuff meets the the tanks you know i was going crazy with bolton and i thought maybe i should just pick the paint brush up again and see what happens [Music] hi there i've never really been famous for making or painting miniatures and models although it is something that i did do a lot when i was a an idol teenager in high school but then i joined the navy and there really wasn't time or space for such childish pursuits and so i kind of fell out of the habit shortly before the whole pandemic lockdown thing happened i was at the tank museum of bovington attending the southwest model show uh some long friends from the military were getting into the hobby and were using it as an opportunity to help veterans through therapy so i was glad to meet up with some old friends and it also really opened my eyes to just how far the hobby has advanced since i was a kid i didn't think much more of it until a couple of months passed and then suddenly we were in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and i was going crazy with bolton and i thought maybe i should just pick the paintbrush up again and see what happens given that it had been more than 30 years since i'd last painted anything other than you know a bedroom wall i was astonished at how quickly i got back into the hobby it really was amazingly easy given that with the internet there are so many tools available to help you not just get back into something like model making or painting but also to advance your skills because back in my day if you didn't know how to do something if you didn't know somebody who knew how to do it who could teach you there was no way of learning now we've got the internet and i have since spent many many enjoyable hours therapeutic hours not going out of my mind with boredom and creating things that i never thought would have been possible 30 years earlier so in a sense the um your background tells us the answer to this next question i was going to ask you what do you do with the models once they're completed you've kept them really well haven't you well yeah i mean they must have had about i don't know since the say mid 70s they've probably had about 12 moves you know from house to house sort of thing um and you know we just put them in my my i i think my father might have put them in shoe boxes you know with the old uh loot paper and stuff around them you know just a sort of cotton wool i would say cotton ball i think still some cotton wool sort of stuck in the in the tracks there um and generally speaking they're um you know that they are obviously well preserved but um i seem to recall at one point um one or two of them it might have been i probably had about three shermans and one of the shermans came out was sort of target practice for an air rifle session but um that you know that was that was in my ridiculous uh irresponsible youthful uh 20-something phase probably when i thought it was cool to do that uh i soon saw the light and thought preservation is best well i i sadly i was uh funny enough there's me as a curator but i haven't got one of my models because uh i was a bit like your um your irresponsible era for me and my models i used to take them in the garden and shoot them with me air rifle and then set them on fire as well i was a sort of you know pyromaniac sort of thing and there was different ways you could make um little flame throwers out of bladders of lighter fuel and you put a pin in the end and you made a miniature flamethrower i don't know quite why i had to burn everything but i you know they all did go and the aeroplanes went as well so um but uh please don't try that at home kids um i'm sure you didn't say all that in your interview when you went along for the job of curator of the tank museum did you yeah yeah once you've tidied one up you like destroying them they just sort of you know it's something that happens that way so one of the other things that this pandemic's brought out is the interesting change perhaps from when we were younger everyone talks about the therapeutic nature of model making and it and you know it's undoubtedly it really helps people um but when we were younger this was almost like a solitary activity that in some ways you're almost unsociable doing it but now there seems to be you know people here with us talking about it there's all these youtube videos of people sharing their what they're doing the clubs and everything there was clubs before of course in terms of you know um the sort of you know group therapy model making et cetera yeah it'd be it would be great to sort of uh to meet up with with people in a tankfest situation and and talk about the hobby a bit more um i remember i remember pre 2020 being down there and seeing some of the guys you know the problem proper professional or semi-professional model makers and seeing their work and being blown away by it and you want to ask them questions you know you know tap their brains really um for techniques and stuff like that so so yeah there is that but but it works on the solitary basis as well because you you just lose yourself and sometimes you know you you know you're very happy with your own company do you find it what does it do does it calm you down do you just have the satisfaction of completing things or is it a number of things that that it gives you that kick well strangely enough yeah it it it does calm you down it really just if you've got something that's getting on your nerves or you're seeing the news for the moment if you see the news at the moment it's something you just don't what you must not it's not healthy to listen to it uh or watch it so you've got to switch all that off and go and go and do some model making and of course it's analog it's analog i know it's great to use the technology um online to as i've just said to research stuff um and and find out answers maybe a few possible answers to questions you have but you know you just want to put the switch the digital stuff off and just go up there with your paint and your your plastic or your card some of those you can probably see the top there card card models are pretty damn good you know for card bottles it's just you the model and uh nice daylight uh and and you can crack on with it so you're not uh you're not sort of glued to the um to the computer all day does anyone object if you disappear in your model making room or is it because i sometimes i always think at the museum where we see people you know they're buying a model kit and trying to sneak it in the car without necessarily the other half knowing how much it cost or things that way but whenever i actually talk to another half i always say to them things like well come on as hobbies a hubby could have or your partner could have it's a pretty innocent one isn't it they're not off gambling or womanizing or doing all these you know what i mean model makings uh you know of all the the hobbies as a bloke could have it's a pretty innocuous one isn't it yes i i sort of remained you know uh safely married to the wife uh at least a decade before i admitted or modelly because if if i'd said it to her in those early days she probably would have sort of said um see ya taxi uh i gotta get out of there um but but now all these um you know all these years later she she i sort of say i'm off either to the shed that's for the woodwork or upstairs to do some modelling and she'll sort of go um see she is quite happy she knows where i am you know um the only problem is it obviously because i'm so keen on it you know just when i'm supposed to unload the dishwasher um i will disappear and that's i'm not that popular sometimes for that do you find that the uh you know what was going to be half an hour suddenly it's two hours later a bit oh i tell you what the time that you know relatively you know small uh achievement and in the in the build of the model uh you know can just suck up the time just where does it go you know you can sit down at maybe half eight in the evening and before you you know what seems like an hour later you look at your clock it's half eleven you know but that's part of that that means you've been you know you've been occupied you've been you know you've been sort of in the zone and that's that's what it's all about it's taking you somewhere else hasn't it it's another world i like to be able to build something that i have an interest in and have it just to display on my shelf my name is malcolm childs i volunteer for models for heroes we provide model making for the armed forces and emergency surface personnel as part of a meaningful activity my daughter visited the tank museum in 2016 with me at a model show she bought a tank from that museum and the paint from that museum and she still has the model upstairs collecting some dust on her shelf and with all the other ones that she's made i remember that she was telling everyone when she got back from the tank museum about how thick the tiger armor was i became a model because my dad he was a railroad modeler he's always very encouraging with the hobby he always brought me the model kits and the bits and the tools but i was never really interested in railways i use my modeling to exercise my interest in vehicles i like to be able to build something that i have an interest in and have it just to display on my shelf with models for heroes we take that passion for creating and building vehicles that have an incredible history and support a platform where activity can be nurtured and shared often a veteran of ours will recall a horrific event and they can use the model of the the vehicle involved perhaps to recreate a diorama so they can take ownership of that it takes your mind off the time passing it takes your mind off the stresses of the future and your worries of your past broadly it's about sharing with your family and friends and being proud of an achievement i'm someone that has had some mental health issues in the past and modeling has helped me a great deal on ambassador for models for heroes now um and the great work that they do is he's proven time and time again [Music] so hello from black rifle model works my name is luke and i am a scale modeler um predominantly armor um i've built a lot of armor i have dabbled in aircraft and helicopters and that sort of thing but predominantly armor is my love and i love putting them together and and creating something that that represents a piece of history really um so the tank museum i've been several times but i didn't go to later in life and it was after i became a modeler and i am i actually wanted to get up close to to some of the vehicles and have a look at the real thing as opposed to the uh 35th scale plastic i've got on my bench um so i think it it can inspire modelers without a shadow of a doubt you know you see the real life vehicle you go to the store at the end of your visit and there's the model kit and so it can definitely inspire models and it's it's a good thing to get more people into the hobby definitely um why did i become a modeler um i was bored basically um all those years ago i'd recently left the armed forces um and i needed something to do in my spare time something that would keep me busy um i picked up a a model kit from hobbycraft i believe uh put it together loved it and then this happened over the last sort of five or six years um and it's a massive part of my life now um i've never hidden it from anyone i've got a youtube channel which is purely scale modelling um so no i've never hidden this um i think it's a great hobby it's it's done the world of good for me um and it's a big part of my life now um things that it's taught me it's taught me patience um you know if you're waiting for a particular piece to dry or you're starting to learn how to wear brushes taught me to be patient and persevere things i'm still wanting to learn is figure painting really because i want to put some of these tank models into dioramas and i want the figures to to be part of it um but it's a skill by itself so that's something i propose to really persevere with this year going forwards and to try and create some really nice dioramas so the tanks can displayed in their natural setting really um what do i love about modeling well for me it's the the stepping away from the real world i sit down here on my bench and i'm putting together a model and it takes my mind off all the daily stresses and tribulations that we all encounter in life and it gives me that escape i've made many many friends through the hobby social media is is great youtube facebook instagram um has transformed the hobby really um and i'm obviously part of that now and i think it allows you to reach out and turns what traditionally has been quite a solitary hobby into a very social hobby and as a self made some really good friends along the way i've seen a lot of people either come back to the hobby or or have started the hobby people are looking for something they can do at home something to occupy their time something to occupy their mind more importantly um the benefits of modeling for mental health have improved time and time again i'm someone that has had some mental health issues in the past and marlin has helped me a great deal um on ambassador for models for heroes now um and the great work that they do is he's proven time and time again um and you can be part of this amazing community so thank you chris barry for joining us and for your words of wisdom on model making getting back into model making and what's coming next for model making thank you very much indeed and thank you so much for being a supporter and ambassador for the tank museum well absolutely always a pleasure anything to do with tanks uh model making you know i'm i'm 100 enthusiastic and remember folks out there model making is cool don't let anyone else tell you otherwise so i hope you all enjoyed that and if you do like models don't forget to have a look at the fantastic ranger models in our online shop and keep an eye out because we'll be coming up with a couple more model making videos uh one of which will be done by one of our guides he'll be telling you how to get into model making the beginning of model making and the other one will be by me who'll be talking about some of the models we have in our tank museum collection so look out for that and uh happy model making if you've enjoyed this do look out for our other videos on models and modelling and of course if you fancy making your own model have a look at our online shop please do subscribe to the tank museum's youtube channel and if you can support us please do so on patreon

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 98,745

Rating: 4.9706769 out of 5

Keywords: the tank museum, tank museum, bovington tank museum, david fletcher, david willey, military tank, david fletcher tank chats, tank chat, tank chats, tank chats david fletcher, tank museum bovington, the tank museum tank chats, model making, modelling, model tanks, chris barrie, chris barrie interview, red dwarf, lindybeige, the great war channel, al murray, the mighty jingles, the tank museum archive, model kits, model building

Id: zA_3sG7LSl8

Length: 58min 22sec (3502 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021