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In the Interim

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In the Interim, Volume 6, 1981-1982

VOLUME 6:1 (November, 1981)

IN THE INTERIM...

Author Jan Struther wrote in Mrs. Miniver that she “saw every personal relationship as intersecting circles”. She did not add that we are often quite unaware of the extent to which our lives have overlapped. So it has been with ourselves, the scale modeling fraternity and Jim Doyle, the founder and spark of Northeastern Scale Models. In these overlapping spheres is a thumbnail sketch of how our lives expand and a brief insight into why TSC exists. In 1963, when Helen was in the process of putting together the text and drawings for the first Cabinetmaker's Guide, a list of sources for 1” scale materials was not as easy to come by as it is now that the hobby has surfaced and grown. So we did what was most natural for ex-model railroaders; we listed Jim Doyle and Northeastern Scale Models. Since 1947, Northeastern had been a standard source of brass and other hardwoods in the hobby (including a carefully managed, but long since depleted, supply of WWI gunstock walnut), and Jim's designs for HO railroad kits and wooden structural shapes had set a standard of excellence in the field. Through the 1960's miniaturists, using that first pattern book, began writing to Jim for materials from his model railroad catalog that could be adapted to 1” scale uses. A decade later in a 1975 interview printed in Craft, Model & Hobby Industry Magazine he was asked what prompted him to expand his already successful line of scale modeling woods into the miniatures field. His reply was characteristically generous but straightforward. It all began, he said, with the people who began writing to NESM for materials as the result of a pattern book published by a woman out in Missouri (where we lived at that time). Jim later told us that at first he thought that it wouldn't last, that you would eventually go away and leave him to concentrate on materials for model ships and railroads. But you didn't! So he turned his broad talents and exacting skills to supplying those needs. By the time of his death late last spring he had designed and produced the now familiar NESM array of precision materials for the miniatures hobby. We met Jim Doyle only once. Yet when he heard, six years ago, that we were considering the improbable venture of launching a scale modeler's journal in the miniatures field, our phone rang. It was the first of a succession of very long and invariably late phone conversations with him. Through those we learned to recognize a person with a passionate devotion to scale modeling, a broad-ranging curiosity, exacting standards, outstanding skills and candid, forthright opinions. (He once called to tell me that the ink in his newly arrived issue of TSC stank ... and to suggest a remedy ... and he was right! When TSC was still a fledgling, struggling to survive the consequences of inexperience, he volunteered to help announce its existence with a small form in all NESM sample boxes and orders (as many of you know). It was an offer which exacted no favor and demanded no commercial advantage, reflecting only his strong commitment to scale modeling. Jim Doyle ... sailplane designer/builder/flyer, environmentalist whose interests ranged from cataloging the birds in his yard to preserving endangered African species, photographer, precision tool maker, consummate scale modeling craftsman, critic whose standards often eluded our grasp without discouraging our reach. We in scale modeling are all beneficiaries in having shared the days of our overlapping years with him. In designing the Reader Survey form which was mailed out with the last issue, we had hoped to invite your responses without imposing too much on your time. But we did leave an open end on the questions, welcoming your further comments on the journal and its content. I have been overwhelmed by your response and pleased with the large number of you who invested considerable time and effort in explaining both your criticisms and commendations of the journal. In the next issue I hope to publish an article, summarizing the information you have given us. And as we plan ahead, taking your views into account, I hope that you and TSC will share the benefits of your efforts. On November 24, 1981 at 8 p.m., Helen and I will participate with Judee Williamson and Bill Robertson in presenting an hour and a half program, Miniatures in the Making, at the Smithsonian Institution in D.C.: one of a series of presentations in a six week long Smithsonian Resident Associates program titled The Big Wide World of Miniatures. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in. .....Jim Dorsett

VOLUME 6:2 (February, 1982)

IN THE INTERIM...

For several enjoyable and enlivening days last fall, Susanne Russo visited the TSC offices to work out the text and photographic details for the first in two basic carving articles for the Journal. (Actually, it sounds more impressive to say “offices” but actually it's really an old farm house on a hill above Sinking Creek in Giles County, Virginia.) During a non-stop weekend of hot-stove-league discussions, she and Helen turned to the question of designing your own miniatures, rather than reproducing existing pieces. When Helen was a student at the Chicago Art Institute several years ago (“several” being the sort of cautious term husbands tend to use when referring to age), a standard type of assignment was to produce a drawing or painting “in the manner of” some well known artist. From that grew a decision to do what Susanne has introduced in this issue of TSC with the second of her articles on basic carving with an X-Acto knife: a serpentine table done “in the manner of” a rococo French piece. As she notes, it is the sort of thing that gives room in the hobby for those with an artistic bent. The cover photo on this issue, displaying the bedroom set produced by Madelyn Cook in her completed kit-bashing series, Kits & Pieces, is born of the same impulse. The preliminary report on last summer's Reader Survey has been included in this issue. While it may not provide any surprises and may risk telling you more about TSC readers than you ever wanted to know, it does underscore the fact that scale modelers and builders are a bit different in their approach to the hobby than are the main body of miniaturists. One result that I hope will become evident over the course of the next year will be additional content (e.g., beginner's tool and technique article) in those areas you have requested. Speaking of tools, one change is of note in the content of the inside front page. Jim Jedlicka, whose tool and technique articles have instructed us all for several years, has agreed to serve as TSC's Tool Editor. In so doing, he brings years of tool experience and expertise to the service of TSC readers. I am delighted (as one who can easily get into that subject area beyond my depth) to pass that responsibility on to Jim. Readers and authors with questions or articles regarding tools and their use will be passed along to him in the future. Also in this issue is a center-fold project that has been in the works since last spring. At long last we have produced an Index to the first five volumes of TSC. As you will note it is primarily intended as a technical index, directing you to sources of information on projects, tools, techniques and other workbench concerns. I am indebted to Meg Dorsett who carried out the preliminary work on the index last summer, getting me untracked, and to the computer which stacked all the rocks in their proper order! I knew that I could no longer avoid the task when in response to reader inquiries I could no longer keep track of what had been published in TSC or when. So one can view the index as an act of self-preservation. But I hope you find it to be useful as well. .....Jim Dorsett

VOLUME 6:3 (May, 1982)

IN THE INTERIM...

Several weeks ago at a Miniatures trade show, one of TSC's subscribers asked me where the title for this column originated. It that is a cause of puzzlement, the answer lies in the following paragraph, published five and a half years ago in TSC 1:2. “There used to be a rule in the old SatEvPost that no off-color material would be printed. However, at one point the rule was slightly bent when the Post ran Katherine Bush's serial “Red Headed Woman”. The first installment ended with the heroine and her boss having dinner in the heroine's apartment; the second began with breakfast at the same sit. The Post was deluged with letters from indignant readers to which the editor, George Horace Lorimer, replied: The Post cannot be responsible for what the characters in its serials do between installments.” So, what the Interim column is intended to do is give you some idea about what has been going on in the minds and at the workbench of editors during the interim between installments of the journal, but without going into very much detail. Obviously, one thing that has been going on in our minds is modeling in half in scale. With the publication of the new Vol. 8 in the Guide series of pattern books, this one containing 61 half inch furniture patterns, there is little doubt that we have been thinking about this scale for some time. And this issue of TSC also contains for the first time plans for a 1/2” piece: a Federal bed step to go with a kit four-poster bed from Bauder-Pine, Ltd. Neither of these developments means that TSC has abandoned its primary focus on the principal scale used in the hobby, one inch to the foot. But it does recognize that scale modeling can and is being done in a range of scales that allow for varying degrees of detail and require differing degrees of skill. While designing half inch scale pieces we have found that, beyond the plans, there is very little the scale modeler needs in tools and materials that is not already either on the workbench or available in the one inch materials stocked by a local miniatures shop. You'll use a lot more 1/32, 3/64 and 1/16 inch stock, but that's about the only change. The impact of a new scale on miniatures suppliers and dealers is more pronounced when it comes to “ready-to-run” materials for the collector. During a time when the economic tide is ebbing and high interest rates seriously threaten any enterprise which must finance a new inventory (1/2”) that parallels one already in place (1”), the strains are real and severe! So the emergence of assembled, half inch miniatures may be at an understandably slow pace. But for the scale modeler, the tools and materials are already available; they have been all along. In future issues TSC will continue to publish a few half inch scale patterns, all of them contributing to the eventual completion of furnished room settings which will incorporate both kit and scratch-built pieces. Anyhow ... half inch is one thing that has been going “In the Interim.” Between installments we have also added Susanne Russo's name to TSC's list of regular contributors. Those who have read her past articles in TSC, seen the high quality of her workmanship or have been engaged by her imagination can look forward to future articles as Susanne delves into a range of useful skills and techniques in the craft. First among these will be an article on how to produce the type of drawing which will result in the exquisite quality of photo etched brasses found in this issue's Product Review section. Also in the works are reviews of some power tools which we feel will be of interest to scale modelers, a Norwegian bride's chest from the Hillhouses, a Morris chair, a clothes wringer from John Gray, a round, mahogany extension table (with operating extension mechanism), a chest on frame some interesting accessories ... and ... and ... that's what goes on In The Interim. .....Jim Dorsett

VOLUME 6:4 (August, 1982)

IN THE INTERIM...

During a life-time of residential moves, I've never become quite accustomed to being the “new kid on the block.” But, as the children and wives of many other civil engineers can attest by their own experiences, that recurring role seems to be as inevitable a fate as death and taxes. The echoing nightmare in my family was that of the moving van backing up to the door before the packing of the household had begun. To a limited extent that specter has been revived again over the past several months as this issue of TSC was being put together. For Dorsett Publications has moved. Since its inception in 1976, TSC's workshop, clerical, editorial, warehousing and shipping activities have all coexisted as increasingly space-hungry inhabitants of the Dorsett household in a large, old country house near Pembroke, Virginia. The composition and layout office has been located 30 miles away in Christiansburg. But as with the camel's nose in the tent we have found that our co-inhabitants have demanded and seized a progressively larger portion of what we had originally thought to be an inexhaustible amount of available space. At last the point was reached when something had to give. It was becoming increasingly difficult to tell where TSC stopped and where we began. (Every scale modeling family comes to the belief that sawdust, filtering through the house from the workbench, is the proper binder for a meatloaf in the kitchen, but the journal's activities had pushed that expectation to ridiculous lengths! So this summer we evicted our pushy tenant. TSC and Dorsett Publications now occupy a suite of offices on Main Street in Christiansburg. The address and office phone number are listed elsewhere on this page.) For a while I'm sure that some confusion will trail in the wake of the move. The Pembroke Post Office address will continue to serve TSC in addition to the new street address in Christiansburg. However, I expect that over the coming months phone calls will continue to cause some problems. (The Christiansburg number will serve during office hours, 9 a.m. To 4 p.m., and the Pembroke number for the remainder of the time.) While all moves tend to be a bit messy until each piece of furniture has found its proper place, work on this and the November issue of TSC has continued with only a brief interruption. And out in Pembroke, while we are wondering what to do with all that space, I suspect that I'll miss the sawdust in the meatloaf. .....Jim Dorsett

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