discussion Old modelling handbooks/guidebooks/manuals

[Bugatti Fan]

I have the Art of Weathering book and Cottage Modelling for Pendon.
The weathering book is a very good treatise on the subject although biased towards railway modelling.
The Cottage Modelling for Pendon describes how the individual buildings were made for the museum at Pendon in the Vale of the White Horse in Oxfordshire. The working model layout is absolutely staggering with the attention to detail. Look on the Pendon Museum website to get an idea.
Over the years we all tend to accumulate various books. Harry Woodman's book on scratch building model aircraft is reckoned to still be one of the best despite its vintage. Published back in the 70'x by MAP.
My particular 'go to' books are the Complete Car Modeller 1 and 2 books by Gerald Wingrove, rightly considered to be one of the great masters of that particular genre of model subject. Both superb books.

 

[radish]

I will 'second' the books by Gerald Wingrove, they would have to be about the best books I have come across, to show how a Master Modeller actually makes the bits for his models.

He had a couple of extra books printed about all the different model cars he made and another about Ship Modelling, any of these are well worth acquiring, just to see how many models he has made.

None of these books by Wingrove, show you how to hide all your mistakes under a thick coat of dust either, they show you how "meticulous" he was. ---- at what he did.

 

[Bugatti Fan]

Regarding the Complete Car Modeller books 1 and 2, as I make models predominately in plastic I found those two books very useful and simply adapted many of Wingrove's techniques to suit. For example, scratch built chassis can be made from plastic card or from plastic extruded hollow sections, and where Gerald would use soldering on his metal parts, I used types of plastic cements. It was a matter of getting my head around adapting the techniques to suit the materials I chose to use. Sometimes plastic is not always the best option as I found when making the bonnet panels for a Bugatti T59. I used aluminium litho plate for punching louvers to scale easier and better with this material. Horses for courses!
So far, I have made three scratch built models a Bugatti Type 59, Brooklands Napier Railton and a Hispano Suiza H6C often referred to as the 'Tulipwood Car'. The original's body was actually clad in Honduras Mahogany planks.

The Model Cars of Gerald Wingrove is best described as a coffee table type of book published earlier on in his career and the emphasis being mostly large pictures of his work within the book.

The other is The Art of the Automobile in Miniature by Gerald and Phyllis Wingrove and is a much more comprehensive book covering the background to the actual cars themselves and many more of all of the models built just before Gerald and Phyllis retired to live in Spain. This is the book I would recommend as the best to view as a portfolio of most of the models.

The ship modelling book was his very first and was published by MAP. I think it's title was Ship Modelling Techniques.