Plastic Model Mojo
Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby
Plastic Model Mojo
Red Cross Clubmobile with Jake McKee: PMM Episode 139
What happens when scale modeling becomes historical detective work? Jake McKee joins us to share his extraordinary journey creating an historically accurate 1:35 scale Clubmobile—a converted GMC truck that brought donuts, coffee, and a touch of home to WWII soldiers near the frontlines.
This isn't just any modeling project. McKee walks us through the challenges of researching these vehicles that largely disappeared after the war, requiring him to piece together fragmentary evidence from archives, photographs, and specialized libraries. We explore how he's using CAD design and 3D printing to recreate not just the vehicle's exterior, but its complete interior—from donut-making machines to record players with loudspeakers.
Beyond the technical aspects, we dive into the human story of the "Donut Dollies"—civilian women who drove these trucks dangerously close to combat zones while facing constant harassment. Despite their contributions to troop morale, most returned home without recognition or veterans' benefits, their wartime experiences often dismissed or misunderstood.
The conversation moves beyond simple modeling techniques to explore how scale modeling can preserve important historical narratives. McKee's dedication to accuracy honors these forgotten women while demonstrating how our hobby can contribute meaningfully to historical remembrance.
Whether you're fascinated by unusual military vehicles, 3D printing techniques, or the untold stories of WWII support personnel, this episode offers a compelling look at how one modeler is bringing a remarkable piece of history back to life. Follow along as we explore the intersection of craftsmanship, technology, and historical preservation in one of the most thought-provoking modeling projects we've encountered.
Jake's Clubmobile Blog Post
iMODELER Blog Post on the Tulsa Route 66 Model Expo
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Mike and Kentucky Dave thank each and everyone of you for participating on this journey with us.
Welcome to Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby. Let's join Mike and Kentucky Dave as they strive to be informative, entertaining and help you keep your modeling mojo alive.
Mike:All right, dave. All right, mojovia. Welcome to episode 139. Moving up the road? Yes, we are. Well, I hope you had a good Easter everybody. You too, dave.
Kentucky Dave:Yes did. I had a great Easter.
Mike:Well, other than that, what has been up in your model sphere?
Kentucky Dave:Well, my model sphere is better now. The reason this episode's a day or two late is wholly on me. I was a little bit under the weather for a day and that caused us to push the recording here, but my model sphere's better. I'm feeling better, Happy to be recording the episode. I've been making slow but steady modeling progress and you know the only downside is, with spring comes all the spring chores.
Mike:Tell me about it.
Kentucky Dave:And you know that takes away from modeling time time, but on the plus side I have plenty of time to listen to On the Bench and other podcasts as I'm working on my yard. Well, good on you.
Mike:How about you? I've got a lot of balls in the air. We've been getting things squared away with our new sponsor there, the fine folks at Kit Mass. We've had a little back and forth with them and expecting something new from them in the next week or so. That's going to be exciting for us.
Kentucky Dave:Yep.
Mike:And I've been thinking a lot about the web content for Phase 2, when we might actually get to roll that out. Yep, still kind of up in the air and, of course, trying to get prepped for our trip to AMPS coming up here next month.
Kentucky Dave:I am looking forward to it. I had such a great time last time and I've never been to Camp Hill, pennsylvania slash, harrisburg before in my life, been as far as Hershey Park and Antietam and all, but never actually gotten to Camp Hill. So I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what this venue looks like.
Mike:Well, I bet we have a good time man.
Kentucky Dave:Oh, have we ever gone to a model contest and had a bad time?
Mike:No, I don't think so.
Kentucky Dave:I was going to say. I don't think so either. I'm just there's a saying I can't repeat in public. But yeah, even the worst model contest is fantastic. It's a great time.
Mike:That is true.
Kentucky Dave:Yes. So, mike, since we're recording an episode, that has to mean you've got a modeling fluid. What modeling fluid do you have, peroni? Oh, okay.
Mike:Good choice, good choice. You've got a modeling fluid. What modeling fluid do you have? Peroni, oh okay, good choice, good choice. I mean, if you like those kind of sulfur finish european pilsners, yeah, yeah, some folks don't like them too much, but I'm fine with them, I think peroni has its place.
Kentucky Dave:I mean, mean you know it's a good. You go to a bar and it's got a limited menu. If you see a Peroni on there, you know you're going to have a good beer. What about you? Well, as a matter of fact, oh, back to that.
Kentucky Dave:That one was a little hard to open. I have Holston Premium 5.0. It's brewed by Carlsberg Canada under license from Holsten Brewery AG, so I take it it's going to be a European-style beer, so it might not be all that different from the Peroni. This is one of the beers that was brought to the dojo at Heritage Con. I have absolutely no clue who brought it, but whoever it was, thank you. We had a lot of people in and out of the dojo over two nights, so let me take a sip. Yep, very similar to a peroni, I think. I think this one's gonna get me through the episode folks often say be careful what you wish for.
Mike:Yes, maybe sometimes I should just let things ebb and flow as they do, but I did send out a request for listener mail last time and it did not fall on deaf ears.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, yes, same thing at the DM end. So we better get into it.
Mike:We probably should Well. First up tonight is longtime listener supporter of the show, Mr Terry Wilkinson, and he had a laugh about Piedmont Airlines. Uh-huh, you know he's an ex-airborne guy and he had a laugh about Piedmont Airlines. Uh-huh, you know he's an ex-airborne guy Right, and he flew out of Fort Bragg and Fayetteville many times on Piedmont in the early 80s. Oh yeah, he says they scared the hell out of him.
Kentucky Dave:It's true, Dan I understand.
Mike:He said he spent four-plus years jumping and rappelling out of just about anything the military flew and that was child's play compared to flying the Pede. I don't have such shocking memories of Piedmont. All of ours were pretty good.
Kentucky Dave:Actually all of ours were pretty good, except I do remember that one flight on that Fulker F-27, particularly going into Tri-Cities in eastern Tennessee yeah, that's my hometown when the guy stood the plane on the wing to make the approach. So yeah, it's kind of nestled in the mountains, as it were. So I do remember that being a little bit worse.
Mike:I bet Asheville's worse.
Kentucky Dave:Probably.
Mike:Terry looks forward to seeing us at AMPS, and I look forward to that too, because I don't think we've met Terry face-to-face yet in all these years. I don't think so.
Kentucky Dave:Well, good, I'm glad he's going to be at AMPS. Look us up, please.
Mike:We'll be at our table. Next is Steve Hustad. He's accusing us of not listening to him. Yes, he is. Apparently, our suggestions for blending in the display-onlys with the regular entries is something they do at Nordicon, using a different sheet for display-only.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:So the judge's note is simply pass them over.
Kentucky Dave:And apparently he's told this to us on more than one occasion and it has gone in one ear and out the other.
Mike:Or down one glass. Well okay, up another, up another maybe. Yes, he says it's exactly what they're already doing. Well, good on them, Yep, and they've also used a GSB jazzy system. So they are trying the best of both worlds.
Kentucky Dave:Yes.
Mike:Well, steve, we do listen to you and hopefully our latest airplane projects reflect that.
Kentucky Dave:Yes.
Mike:Because Nordicon's a long way from us.
Kentucky Dave:I know we got to get there, man.
Mike:Well, someday.
Kentucky Dave:I got to get there.
Mike:Kit Hedley's written in in again, and this time it's in response to how far away have you found a part that you lost? Uh-huh, he goes into quite a bit of detail. He was a professional model maker for a while, didn't build much, but at some point he decided to pick up a kit and he was building this one to 2500 scale star trek enterprise from the motion picture. I guess AMT had a three pack of these little guys, yes, while he's living in Texas, and he got into it and then kind of got out of it Some life stuff happening and moving to Seattle. But he was keeping up with his dad doing some like zoom call modeling, yep, and he was on a chat with his dad one time and his mom comes on the screen and asks if he knew what this little white piece of plastic was that she'd had at the bottom of her purse, for she didn't really know how long and it was part of his enterprise. He had no idea where it was.
Kentucky Dave:I wonder how it got into her purse. Well, just like any model part, yeah Well, that's a good mom who'll see something like that pick it up and put it in her purse instead of throwing it away.
Mike:His distance is three states, about 4,000 miles round trip and 10 years between losing it and turning it up. So that's not a record.
Kentucky Dave:That's a good one.
Mike:God help who's got one worse than that?
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:Carl Barrow, originally from Yorkshire in the UK, but currently in Richmond, California.
Kentucky Dave:Okay.
Mike:Well, El Sobrante, is that right? I don't know. I've not heard of this town. I'll have to look it up. Anyway, he is also Piedmont. He sent some references in for decals and the Fokker overwing turboprop that you mentioned.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:So there, Dave, if you want to build one.
Kentucky Dave:I've got the kit. If I've got the kit, I want to build it eventually, but I'm not sure how high that's going to go on my list, especially considering that kit has to be 40 years old well, he's wants to credit the show with his decision to join the ipms.
Mike:Good, and through the national website he discovered a local club, the mount diablo model club. He's also joined that.
Kentucky Dave:Great, that's fantastic. There is nothing better for your modeling than joining a local modeling club.
Mike:John McAvoy's written in again. Dave, Okay, this is in our response to infrequent use of 3D printers. Uh-huh, I guess I was talking about reconstituting mine and you put out a general question about whether or not that was a problem. He's got a couple of bullet points. One any mechanical device is better served by frequent use.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, that is true. That's why airlines keep airplanes in the air all the time.
Mike:And he says FDM printers are more mechanically complex than resin printers in his opinion and he's seen several fallen disrepair due to alignment and clogged nozzles et cetera. But he's seen those get fired up without much trouble and he says initially didn't see anything about letting resin printers sit, just got fewer moving parts and that kind of thing. If they're kept in a conditioned space this shouldn't be, shouldn't be too much trouble. But you know, keep it clean. He uses a cardboard bib taped over the vat when pulling off the build plate to prevent dripping resin back into the machine. And if you're going to sit unused for an extended period of time he tries to remove the the resin and put it back in the bottle. Otherwise he stirs the resin in the vat before if it's been sitting around a while. Now my Form 3's got an automatic stirrer on it so that's not too much problem for me.
Mike:I think sometimes my resin can thicken, I think it sits a long time and that can be a problem and he likes to clean off the build plate with isopropyl alcohol before each use. That's something I do actually after I take the uh the prints off all the time, I'll uh clean that sucker off. I think John's points though keeping the resin fresh and keeping it clean. Those are all good points, man. We got a lot tonight, dave.
Mike:Yes we do Well. Aw Smith wants to thank us for mentioning the model cave up in Michigan.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, that's the one we didn't get to go to. Right that we did not get to go to. Well, michigan toy soldier had hurt my wallet so badly.
Mike:I'm not sure we could have made it for financial reasons, but we were pressed for time and weren't able to get there well, he's up in romulus, quite, which is right there where the airport is Right, and he says he was pretty overwhelmed by the selection of kits, paints and accessories, and every time he goes up he's going to plan on stopping by there. Nothing like a good hobby shop.
Kentucky Dave:Oh yeah, Nothing like a good hobby shop.
Mike:Up next from West Alexandria, ohio, is Greg Williams, and he wanted to get the word out through us. If there's anyone in need of a 116th scale value gear vietnam stowage set he's picked up one somewhere and doesn't need it okay, he's willing to mail those to someone who wants or needs it. To go well with andy's hobby head quarters. M113a1 and 116th scale.
Kentucky Dave:And anytime you have something like that, by the way, post it on the dojo If you've got something you're willing to rehome. That's part of the community aspect of this thing, so please feel free to post something like that on the dojo.
Mike:He's in the dojo and if somebody finds Mr Greg Williams there, you can DM him through Facebook if you're interested. And we'd encourage you, greg, to go ahead and post that up if you still have it, and give it to the first taker. From Mr Ray LeGrant. Okay, he was worried in my call for emails that maybe some were getting lost and I think what I did well, I know what I did. I shifted this one over to a folder I'd created ahead of the last Wheel of Accidental Wisdom and I started sending some of those emails over there and it was over there and it didn't come up during the random selection so it didn't get read. Gotcha. But he had an interesting question that I think we'll go ahead and take care of. All right, he just completed building the reissue of of the Jupiter C rocket and gantry and I guess one to 110th scale from Revell.
Kentucky Dave:Yep.
Mike:That's a pretty old kid, I think that is an old kit. He's put a lot of work into it and he's really proud of the way it turned out. And there's an upcoming IPMS show and he says, given the fragility of this thing, there's no way he's taking this thing to the show.
Kentucky Dave:And I sympathize with that. I really. Especially if you finish something that you're very proud of, you would like to show it to people, and it used to be back in the old days. The only way to do that was to take it to a show and put it on a table, and the more fragile a model is, the more danger that is, and when something breaks, you can never repair it and make it look as good as you had it originally.
Mike:Now sometimes you can.
Kentucky Dave:Well, after a finished model, yeah, that's right. Show is that you have the ability to share a model that you're very proud of without taking it to a show. All it takes is some average photographic skills Cell phones these days, the cameras have gotten so good that you can produce really, really stunning photographs of a very nicely finished model. But no, I completely sympathize Winning a little piece of plastic or a little trophy or whatever is not worth destroying a model that you've poured your heart and soul into, that you've poured your heart and soul into.
Mike:Well being, primarily armor up until recently. As far as models go, I think they tend to be a little more travel-friendly. Right, they got a lower center of gravity, they don't have a lot of fragile landing gear and stuff like that on them.
Mike:Yep, but he just was curious. Have other modelers experienced this of having to leave one of their best builds at home because they'd fear it would get damaged at a show? So I'd be curious if anybody out there in Mojovia has had a similar hesitation. And he goes on to ask does this mean that some of the best built kits never make it to shows? I don't know If we're not seeing them. It remains to be seen whether the best builds or not, but I'm sure there's some amazing builds that never make it to a show because of fragility and travel concerns.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, I am too.
Mike:But I've seen some pretty dainty things at model contests.
Kentucky Dave:Listen, when Mr Husted transported that scratch-built tri-wing World War I float plane, I mean that thing looked as delicate as anything I've ever seen in my life and he transported it all the way to a Nationals and back successfully. So of course he does a very nice job of preparing his transport. He builds transport boxes and in fact we'll have to talk to him about that sometime because they are amazing little models in and of themselves. But I suspect he would tell you that you could transport anything as long as you built a transportation case for it.
Mike:Next up is from Jeff Groves, the Inch Eye guy. He sent us an email that had a link in it to some coverage of the Tulsa Route 66 Model Expo. Yes, and this was written by Greg Kittinger and it was on iModeler. I don't know if that's a blog or.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah right, it's a blog. Is it his blog? No, I don't know. I forget who runs iModeler, but it's been around forever, almost as long as Hyperscale.
Mike:This show's running an exhibition style where a particular modeler's entries are all grouped together Like you'd see at a figure show, like you'd see at a figure show.
Mike:Like you'd see at a figure show, and they do a GSB award system. They've got a lot of special awards. There's a lot to this blog article and I think I'm just going to link it in the show notes and I encourage everyone to read this if you've got any kind of opinions on model show formats or are just curious about how different things might operate. It's a, it's really well written and it's got some interesting stuff in it, but uh, it's uh, it's worth checking out. So I appreciate jeff for sending us that, because that's kind of been. It's not a topic we've hit directly, but kind of on the periphery. We've we've had this come up several times. Well, different show formats and judging formats.
Kentucky Dave:I would say it's coming up more and more because, again, as you have noted on a couple of occasions, you think there's some real movement in this area, like some momentum-building movement. I think so. I don't disagree with you, so I'll be interested to see where things go.
Mike:And finally Dave, from the email side of things, from Duncan Young, Okay, and from Guelph, Ontario. I can miss Hamilton, our friend up at Heritage Con and he heard our banter in 138 about some appropriate clothing while at the bench and he's shifted to wearing a canvas apron when he works at the bench.
Kentucky Dave:There are. I have seen several, several modelers. In fact there are several commercial products. I think the guys who do Flexifile actually make that type of apron and I know there are a couple of others.
Mike:Well, the reason he wears a canvas apron, dave, is because he was modeling one stuffy summer evening, I guess last year. Let me check this. Yeah, it's about a year ago, on a warm Sunday evening. He was merrily building away at his workbench while on a Zoom call, and he can't recall exactly what he was doing. He was doing something with his hobby knife and it slipped and he struck himself, pointed in right in the abdomen, right in the gut, oh, which required an ER trip and a couple of stitches and some convincing the doctor and the ER attendants that he was not attempting to self-harm himself in any way. So safety first, wear your PPE. And in his case it is a canvas apron, so he's not stabbing himself again.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, I'm telling you, I think everybody has cut themselves with a falling exacto at one time or another, and you know those. They hurt, they really hurt, and you know you got to be lucky not to get a bad one, so I can imagine if you catch it in the abdomen that's one of the more serious ones. It is.
Mike:Oh, and I misspoke. That's not the last email. I do have one more. Okay, and it's for Mr Michael Karnalk. And I misspoke. That's not the last email. I do have one more.
Kentucky Dave:Okay.
Mike:And it's for Mr Michael Karnalka in New York City. I figured it as much there. I had not moved it to listener mail yet. Okay, and I knew I'd got it. As I was talking Right as I said that about Duncan's email, I knew there was one more, okay.
Kentucky Dave:Okay.
Mike:Um, so if the global trade war we find ourselves in should last it a long time and we were to see a disproportionate, a disproportionate effect on the scale modeling community as a whole, how long would you and or Dave last or make it through? I guess he means buying no more new kits. Personally, he has enough kits to make it through several ice ages, should they reoccur. But don't tell anyone, yeah really.
Kentucky Dave:I think he blew that with the email. But the answer to the question is I have reached what they call Sable S-A-B-L-E Stash Acquire Beyond Life Expectancy. Have reached what they call Sable S-A-B-L-E stash acquired beyond life expectancy. I could, today, never buy another kit in my entire life and I could build at a rate three to four times my current production pace and still would, day I expire, there would be a stash for for my uh remaining heirs to have to deal with. So yeah, not a problem. I'll be honest with you. I'm not worried about any of that stuff. I have more than enough stuff to keep me occupied.
Mike:Well, I'm in the same boat, apparently. Well, he just said he was too. He said he'd be in pretty good shape. He'd still like a couple of the announced 135th scale Vespid A30 Challenger tanks. So that's right, I forgot they're coming out with a 35th scale tank. Other than that, he should be able to stick it out, and I can certainly stick it out, though I've slowed here last. I don't know what's going on either. Subconsciously, I know I've got too much.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:Or just the releases. Haven't been up my alley of late, so that's, that's probably what it is.
Kentucky Dave:I have been acquiring and there's and there's plenty of stuff on the radar that I want. So, yeah, I will continue to buy as it's available. But should a global trade war shut down all global trade in models, I will still be perfectly fine.
Mike:Well, that is it from the email side of things, Dave. What has been up on the direct messages?
Kentucky Dave:Well, people took you to heart on the direct messages too, and so I've got a number of them and I want to run through them just relatively rapidly. Our friend from Southern Kentucky, warren Dickinson Kentucky, warren Dickinson Warren, has decided to go ahead and acquire one of those Despay ball hand steadiers that I got a couple of years ago.
Mike:Yeah.
Kentucky Dave:And I'll tell you what I told him. It really does help. Warren has the same type of tremor that many of us get as we get older and I will tell you. Particularly on the SAM project I'm currently working on, it's been extremely helpful. I found it very helpful for applying small decals and small pieces of photo etch. So I told Warren. I think he will be pleased with it. It's not overly expensive but it's not cheap. But I think he will be pleased by the effect that it has the effect that it has. Next, martin Pieda, listening to our last episode where we talked about a company announcing a 3D printed Loticor 631, which not only did I know what it was, I had actually seen one built, not the 3D print, but a vacuform kit done a number of years ago.
Mike:Yeah, you mentioned that last episode.
Kentucky Dave:Right and Martin heard us mention it and he never heard of this thing before. So he went and looked at it and was pretty impressed. You know, the Between the Wars French flying boats are just some of the most interesting aircraft around and this one kind of got Martin interested. I don't know if it got him interested enough to spend the money for the 3D printed kit, but we'll see. Our good friend Chris Wallace and I am embarrassed for my part in this in 48 scale that was released back in the 80s before the actual stealth fighter the F-117, broke cover.
Kentucky Dave:Testers and a couple of other companies did hypothetical stealth fighter models. Chris wanted to get one and build one at the time but he didn't, and so he found one on eBay but they wouldn't ship it to Canada. So he had it shipped to my house and I took it to Heritage Con and gave it to him and he is actually building this thing. I'm assuming at some point there's going to be a video on Model Airplane Maker on this thing. It is to my eternal shame that I have been involved in this project in any way Because the tester's kit was such Well. On one hand it was hot garbage, had no relation to anything in reality. But, on the other hand, I have no doubt they sold a ton of these things because it was really the hot speculation at the time. Yeah, and, by the way, as you would expect with Mr Wallace, he's doing a great job. I mean, he is making this pig look so much better than it deserves. I'll be honest with you, I can't wait to see the video on it.
Kentucky Dave:Speaking of our friends from up north, mr Ian McCauley, good friend, good friend of the podcast, good friend of ours, an administrator in the dojo, ian wasn't able to make it to HeritageCon this year due to personal issues and those had caused him to be kind of off the grid for a little bit, had caused him to be kind of off the grid for a little bit. And we recently reestablished contact and Ian's doing great and it was nice to hear from him. I missed him at HeritageCon. I know we all did and we're looking forward to having him back next year and it was good to hear from him. So, ian, glad to hear from you, glad you're doing okay.
Kentucky Dave:South Carolina modeler turned Kentucky modeler, jim Sloan. Jim was a longtime member of IPMS chapters down in South Carolina when health issues brought him to Kentucky, to Louisville, where he joined our club. Jim's a really great guy and he noticed the announcement from Arma of the Hawk 75s and he knew from our conversations that I'd be interested so he sent me. They had released the first artwork and everything for that kit and so he sent it to me to make sure that I had seen it, which of course I had because I've been following that one really closely.
Kentucky Dave:Next is modeler Seb Vydeck from Slovenia, and Seb sent us a long DM that you and I both corresponded with him on and he was talking about he had noticed the same thing you had mentioned about an acceleration in the number of shows that were using an open gold, silver, bronze, unlimited awards type award system. Now, the reason it was interesting from Seb's perspective is that of course he's over in Europe, so he was giving us a perspective from what he was seeing in Europe and it was a really. He sent a very long, thoughtful DM and it was really interesting to get that continental European perspective.
Kentucky Dave:And for listeners who are out there, who are in Europe, or even if you're in Asia, we'd like to hear from you all about what you're seeing develop, because Mike and I we report on what we see in North America and we kind of like to hear what's going on in the rest of the world. So thank you, seb, for mentioning it, and anybody else out there wants to chime in, please do. Finally, evan mccallum, you had mentioned product uh, ammo, the splashes, the, yeah, the lack of longevity, right, the lack of longevity.
Kentucky Dave:Right, the lack of longevity, and Evan had just DMed in to mention that he had encountered the same thing that they tended to dry up fairly quickly once opened to get these products for a particular project. Don't get them in advance. Wait until about the time you need them to acquire them so that you will get the maximum life out of the product. It's good to have him confirm what you had experienced in your modeling.
Mike:Well, that's interesting because there was another email that came just today from Dave Morris about these kind of products and he's telling me I'm not alone in having my AK terrain materials turn to rock while you're not looking Right, and he thinks he's found a solution. Oh wow, what he does is he takes a piece of saran wrap and then he puts it over the jar and then pushes it down in there to where it's contacting the surface.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, you know where that comes from, or not necessarily where that comes from. I know where. I've seen that before.
Mike:Well, he credits his wife for the idea, because he shamelessly stole it from her preservation of her brown sugar container.
Kentucky Dave:Now, I have never seen it in that regard, but I'll tell you where I've seen it. You know drywall mud.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, I've seen that come to think Yep, that is a tip that you will see. You know you have a container of drywall mud and you know you open it up, you use some of it and the odds that you're going to use drywall mud again soon unless you're doing a whole home renovation is low over the, the tub opening and then push it down into contact with the, with the drywall mud, and it actually works it. It extends the longevity of the life of that stuff pretty well, so that that makes perfect sense.
Mike:Well, he wants you to know he's still looking for that Trappist-Dale he told you about. Okay, and he looks forward to seeing us at AMPS.
Kentucky Dave:Again, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody at AMPS. Amps is going to be a party. A lot of the podcasts are going to be there. A lot of the listeners that we interact with on the regular are going to be there. Young Evan McCallum is going to be there. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. All right, is that all you got?
Mike:That's it. Wow, that was a lot folks. Keep it coming. We love it. Yes, absolutely. We had so much this time. I was a little discombobulated about where I'd put everything. We'll improve on that. But if you want to write into the show, you can do so by sending us an email at plasticmodelmojo at gmailcom. That's one way to do it. Or you can use our Facebook page and DM us using Facebook messenger, and we also have the give us your feedback link. That can be found in the show notes of this and every episode. So send them in, folks.
Kentucky Dave:And that's a nice feature on the website to be able to give us feedback and have it linked specifically to the episode that you were listening to when you communicated. You've got the idea to communicate what you wanted to communicate, so that's a really nice way to tie it to a particular episode. When you're done listening to this episode, please rate us on whatever podcast app you use. Please give us the highest rating possible. It helps drive the visibility of the show. Also, if you listen to this show and you know a modeling friend who doesn't, please encourage them to listen. The best way for us to continue to grow is for current listeners to recommend us to a friend.
Mike:You can also rate the podcast using the rate the show link. That's also in the show notes, dave, so we've added that as well.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:And once you've done that, please check out our fellow podcasts out in the model sphere. You can do that by going to wwwmodelpodcastcom. That's model podcast plural. It's a consortium website set up by Stuart Clark from the Scale Model Podcast up in Canada where he's aggregated all the banner links to all the shows in the model sphere and you can go there for a one-stop shop to find them all. In addition, we've got a lot of blog and YouTube friends out in the model sphere and we've mentioned the Inch High Guy, jeff Gross, his Inch High Guy, jeff Groves, his Inch High Guy blog. Evan McCallum Panzermeister36. Got Stephen Lee SpruPi with Frets, a great long and short form blog. A lot of 72nd scale content there, just like Jeff Groves. Yep, you mentioned Chris Wallace, model airplane maker, so maybe we'll see his stealth fighter come up soon on a video. I'm sure we will. And Paul Budzik Scale Model Workshop over on YouTube and Patreon. So always some good stuff there from Paul. So please check out all this stuff.
Kentucky Dave:Also, if you are not a member of your national IPMS chapter, ipms USA, ipms Canada, etc. Please consider joining. The national organizations do a lot to promote modeling in the respective countries. Additionally and we've mentioned the AMPS National coming up if you are not a member of the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society and you have an interest in armor modeling or post-1900 figures modeling, that's a great organization, a great group of guys. They've got a lot of great local chapters and their national is an endless amount of fun and Mike and I plan on experiencing that again this year.
The Voice of Bob:Plastic Model Mojo is brought to you by Model Paint Solutions, your source for harder and steam-backed airbrushes, david Union power tools and laboratory-grade mixing, measuring and storage tools for use with all your model paints, be they acrylic, enamels or lacquers. Check them out at wwwmodelpaintsolutionscom.
Mike:Well, Dave, we have a great special feature, don't we?
Kentucky Dave:Yes, we do. I mean, I cannot tell you how much I am enthused about this particular project, so I really, really encourage everybody to go to the show notes and check out our guests' blog entries and posts regarding his current project.
Mike:And our guest is Mr Jake McKee. He's been on the show a couple of times already, but he approached us with this idea about talking about his Clubmobile project. So hopefully some of you folks have followed the link in the teaser on the Plastic Model Mojo Facebook page not the group, but the page and checked out Jake's project because it's really cool. So let's go ahead and get into the discussion, dave. Well, dave, we try to bring some different things we can. I mean, there's a lot of podcasts out there now and it's easy to retread and go down the same beaten path that others have. But sometimes we see something that's really cool and this time it just happens to be with someone who's been on the show a couple of times. Jake McKee, how are you doing tonight?
Jake McKee:I'm doing good, I'm doing good. I'm excited to talk tonight.
Mike:Well good, I'm excited to talk tonight. Well good, I'm glad you gave us the opportunity to feature this one. It's a really cool project and we're going to put your link up to your blog so folks can get a look at this, before this actually drops, and understand what we're talking about. But you are building a club mobile, why don't you?
Jake McKee:just lead off with with, with what a club mobile is, and then we'll, we'll just go from there well, and I was just mentioning before we got started that you know I'm back to loving this project because, as all projects go, you know the a few days ago I was at that moment of just wanting to say out of hell with it after all. This time I'm setting it aside, I'm moving on, just because you know some things weren't going my way, but that was more. You know life in general, I think, causing me trouble. But but this evening I've got my modeling fluid and I'm back in the good spot, so I'm ready to go. All right, all right.
Kentucky Dave:Tell us what it is and then tell us how you decided. This was a subject you were interested in.
Jake McKee:Yeah, so a good start, a good starting point. Good start, a good starting point. A a club mobile was a world war ii converted gmc two and a half ton truck that the american red cross actually operated, and they had three women that drove these things around the, the countryside and, you know, pretty damn close to the, to the battlefields, and would serve coffee and donuts. The point there was that donuts and coffee were two very iconic American things and for all these troops that were extremely far from home, many of them had not gone out of their city at that time, much less out of the country right. And so they were the Red Cross and there was one guy in particular I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but they came up with this idea to convert about 100 GMC trucks where they built these boxes on the back of the truck, extended the chassis and put donut fryers in the back, put coffee urns in the back, put a big, huge boiler that was powered by a little small field stove and they'd drive around and serve coffee and donuts and a whole lot more.
Jake McKee:There was a lot of music playing and the socializing with the troops and that sort of thing that these women would do. And let me pause there, actually, because before we start talking about how I started it, we could talk for hours at this point. I've done a ton of research on this project and I'm fascinated by the whole concept, but I'll give you guys a chance to ask some questions along the way here.
Kentucky Dave:The behind the lines stuff to me is the under studied, under modeled area of particularly World War II, but all wars. What was it that first caught your eye and said, yeah, that's a project I'd like to do? How did you first come across the Clubmobiles?
Jake McKee:The simple answer to that is that I found I believe it was a CMK resin conversion kit years ago I mean, it's probably been at least 10 years of the Clubmobile and thought, man, that's cool. And, to your point, I really like the rest of the story. Type of stuff, right, the plane is interesting, but the bomb truck and the crew that ran it when they were getting loaded up has always been more fascinating to me. And even more fascinating than that is the civilians that were helping to support the airfield in the first place. Right, I really like this idea of the rest of the story. And so you know, the Clubmobile was an interesting one just because it was this kind of odd boxy project. It was a conversion that you know, I always like doing these conversions. But it also was interesting to me just because it had, you know, I mean, it's got a donut fryer in the back, right. How many World War II projects do you get to do that include donut fryers?
Kentucky Dave:Well, I love donuts, so this one gets me on. Just this one ticks about every box that I could possibly have, except it doesn't have wings. Did know about the donut, the club mobiles, before you came across the cmk conversion a little bit, not a lot, you know.
Jake McKee:And and I it was one of those things where I saw it I thought, oh, that's interesting. And, as we all do, you know, I started looking a little bit more into. You know what is the club mobile? And and I want to say I picked it up somewhere, kind of on a lark, you know, at a show or something. Somebody was selling their old version or something, and so I didn't know a lot about it at the time. I just thought, hey, I like doing conversions and it would have a good spot in the, in the stash, and so grabbed it up, came home, looked up a little bit and went, oh, that's really interesting project, and put it aside and not necessarily forgot about it. I knew it was in my stash and I'd run across it every once in a while.
Jake McKee:But you know, years went by and I didn't think much of it and I started doing the GMC garbage truck conversion, which is, you know, it's in progress as well in itself, from scratch, because I found a really interesting photo from probably the 50s I think that was in Life Magazine that had a picture of a converted GMC truck with a standard civilian packmaster garbage truck bent on the back and some big Duke tires. The duck amphibious vehicle. It was using those tires on the GMC it. It was this kind of mishmash of interesting things. And I thought, man, that's pretty cool. And that was really the first big conversion project that I'd done in this year and a half or so that I've been messing with CAD and so I started paying attention to some other things. I finished up the Warren gas station diorama and thought, all right, well, what's next? And I haven't done CAD in a little while here, so I'm going to for anything big. And so do I get back to the garbage truck or do I start something different? And I don't know.
Jake McKee:The Clubmobile just kind of struck my fancy and I went to the storage unit and pulled out that resin kit and was like all right, I'm going to get started, I'm going to start gluingped beyond belief. And I was like man, you know what am I going to do to straighten all this stuff out? And you know there's going to be a lot of work to get detail parts added onto this. I can design those. And of course my brain started saying why are you going to try and fix all these warped old resin pieces that the detail is most likely wrong on anyway, and you're sure enough, I started looking into it, even just a cursory glance at the, at the historical photos the few that there are and I was like, man, there is this, this thing is wrong. I mean, it's just top to bottom wrong. And so I started, I opened cad and started building, and that's been going on for about four, four or five months now, probably.
Kentucky Dave:Uh, Well, let me stop you there, because you said something. Well, you said a lot of interesting things, but one in particular. You said the few photos there are. I would have thought that if there were a hundred of these things built and they were used in every theater throughout the war you know 42 to 45, I would have thought that at some point there's a Life magazine with an entire feature on the Clubmobile and the donut dollies, and there have been photographs galore. Is none of that out there?
Jake McKee:Well. So it's a good question and you're absolutely right, there's a lot of well, let me rephrase that, a lot's a relative term. There's a number of photos out there of the exteriors, much more kind of PR photos, you know, women hanging out of the window, the much more kind of pr photos, you know, women hanging out the window, the serving windows, and you know troops rallied around that sort of thing. But interestingly for for having a hundred of these built, almost none of them, if if any, really survived much past the end of world war ii. A few were saved and went on to serve in korea and I think they rebuilt some brand new ones for Vietnam, but largely they, they, they were gone at the end of the war for, for whatever reasons, but and you know they were, they were built in in England by, by a British company, completely sourced from this British company, outside the, the, the normal army procurement channels, because they, you know there was a red cross that was in charge of these projects and I I have found and we'll talk more about the process, but I found, I eventually found some plans that really helped out. But they were, they were rough and you know I've I've spent some, I've spent some time looking around and there's only a handful of photos that are of good interior shots, right, and lots on the external.
Jake McKee:I've been able to sort of figure some of that stuff out. What I discovered is that, yeah, there's a few recreations out there of these vehicles around you know reenactment circles and whatnot but those are either completely wrong, like the serving windows on the wrong side of the vehicle on one of them. Another one was a basically a facsimile of the club mobile that was built on top of a GMC shop truck. So they basically took the shop truck and converted it to look on the outside like this. But you know, even the one that I found that was in somewhere in Europe and was part of a reenactment they actually had some women that were dressed up like the Red Cross workers as part of that reenactment, but they didn't have the donut machines inside, right. They're not running the original equipment at all. They've gotten sort of close to the overall exterior design, but it's not exact right, which has been an interesting process to try and figure out what is good information and what's bad information. That's interesting.
Kentucky Dave:What is good information and what's bad information. That's interesting To me. My first instinct would have been well, I'm going to email the Red Cross. Surely they have the complete everything on this, including plans and photos, and you would have thought that's a big part of their history that they would have preserved all of this.
Jake McKee:Dave. It's a good thought. It is one that I tried. So here's the process. For me is, as you might imagine, I did as much upfront work as I could define the photos and if anybody's gone online to try and search for stuff, you know how it works. Right, that you start searching and you'll find five things and you're like, oh, these are great. And then a week later you're searching on something completely different and suddenly Google works better for you and you find five more things and then you start finding some repeats and different. You know there's a low version and a high quality version. Then you go to Pinterest and you find a bunch of stuff that you hadn't seen before. And then you know you get halfway through your build and something pops up on your radar and you're like, where did that come from? Why didn't I have that when I started? Yeah, that's been, that's been the process and I have.
Jake McKee:So there's there's been a variety of things that has has happened in this, in this project, including emailing a lot of people. So I've emailed a number of people around the web who run forums for your restoration vehicles. I've I've gone on a lot of the Facebook groups that and join those that do GMC renovations and you know, both for sort of the truck itself and detailing it, but also trying to ask hey, anybody know anything about this? You know, sometimes you just happen to come across somebody who has a cache of information and I'll share more more about that story in a second. But I did email the red cross, got their archivist. Actually, after getting forwarded around a couple of times she came back and said we've got a lot of information but I don't know that we have anything like that. She did point me to a library. There's a women's history library on the campus of Harvard that a lot of the club mobilers they didn't call themselves donut dollies, but everybody else apparently did. They didn't really like that term very much but the world kind of called them donut dollies, but a lot of them as they've been passing away or as they've been collecting all their information up and they've been sharing it with. I think it's the Schlesinger library.
Jake McKee:So I've I've literally been trying to figure out when I can fly out there and just dig around for the day. But there's also another museum in England that has a bunch of papers on various conversions that the Red Cross did, both for things like dentistry, but also for videography, you know, like showing, showing video movies out of the side of a truck, and they had some images. And I asked around and our friend, malcolm Childs from the just making conversation podcast, volunteered to go a couple hours from his house and and take a bunch of pictures from their collection. And so, you know, I've been, I've been looking all over and I actually ran into a guy that found me. He saw me posting somewhere on the on one of the Facebook groups about this project and he started. He's a researcher and runs a site about Sherman's but also had a bunch of Clubmobile photos, had some links to point me to. He has a bunch of knowledge that he's gained over the years and so I've been asking him about, you know, hey, how does this thing work? What is that thing in the corner there? And he's been really super helpful. That's, that's really cool, yeah.
Jake McKee:And then, of course, yeah, there's a. There's a number of books I've picked up off of Amazon. There's one that was made in the eighties that I've I've found a digital copy of called ARC in the storm, about the club mobile core, you know, but it's it's out of print, way out of print. I think it was a small run to begin with in the eighties and you know it's the only one I can find on eBay is $900. So library of Congress actually has a digital version of it. So you know, just digging and digging, and you know, finding things like some of the original sales manuals from right after the war for the Lincoln Model D donut maker that's in the trucks, that was super helpful to understand what they look like and kind of where parts fit on the exterior and whatnot.
Kentucky Dave:When I went to your blog and website and looked at that, that was one of the details that just completely tickled my fancy the ability to find and 3D model this piece of industrial equipment that was an automated donut maker.
Jake McKee:Right, yeah, and it's been interesting too, because, just to take that one piece of this right, there's a bunch of different components of cabinetry and water tanks and loudspeakers, I mean you name it. There's just a bunch of different pieces. And again all of this is really coming. I'm having to dig around a lot of photos and and what I find interesting about the the things like just taking the donut maker for, for instance is that I I modeled it and got a decent shape but didn't have a lot of the details. And then I look at the same photo that I had that had one angle, black and white, fuzzy photo, but I got a high enough quality version of it that I could get your dimensions generally right and some of the details. And then I'd look at it three or four times, and every time I'd look at it I four times and every time I'd look at it I'd find something different. I'm looking at the same photo, but I just keep reviewing it and just keep going back to it and of course you know part of that, part of this is that you know whoever was designing the cmk kit glanced at the photo, knocked something out and then moved on with their lives. Right, I have not been able to do that because, you know, months in and I'm still just, you know, added two or three new things to the donut maker the other day that I, my brain, was seeing but what wasn't really processing, right, I saw this thing hanging off the front of it but I was like I don't know what that is, I'm going to skip it. And then, and I just kind of kept going back and looking at it and it's like, you know, I so close to being as accurate as I can possibly get it, I might as well take it across the finish line best I can, you know.
Jake McKee:So there's been a lot of those kinds of processes where I look at one part and I work on it and it gets, you know, I try and get the dimensions right, it fits, and then I'm like, well, wait a minute, what does that mean for this other thing I've been looking at? And, can you know, comprehending is something totally different now that I see it. Oh, okay, well, that means that these, these cabinets must be twice as deep as I thought they were. Whatever, right, you know, I've been working on the jump seat.
Jake McKee:From one photo I can't find any other photos of the jump seat and that folds down in the in the back for one of the women to write on. I've got one photo and so I've been basically just having to make that one up best I can. But there's other little pieces that you know until leaf hubert is the guy that reached out and said hey, I've got a bunch of knowledge if you want it, and I've showed him a few things every once in a while and he'll look at it and go, yeah, but you know you're missing this thing, right and I'm going oh what are you?
Jake McKee:talking about I go back and look at the photo and I'm like, oh, now that you've contextualized what I was looking at, I understand completely what that was, and now I need to go fix it.
Mike:Well, I think it's really interesting for projects like this. You know, I'm building this KV-85. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty dissimilar, granted, but the point is there's not much, there's not much information out there, so you end up having to backdoor all this stuff and it just I don't know. I don't know how you feel about it, jake, but I think it's a lot of fun, and maybe the project doesn't progress as fast as you would like it to. It's not, like you know, like a tiger tank. There's a website on tiger tanks that shows every stinking tow cable bracket on every surviving tiger in the world. Right, it's just not that way.
Jake McKee:And when you pick a unique subject like this, you really don't know what you're signing up for until you start digging into it. Yeah, and that's been one of the most interesting parts of this project and, to your point, mike, I love this project because it's been so much fun. It's been so interesting the process of going through all these photos, reaching out. There's been several people that I've reached out to that have been extremely helpful and you know I've made new friends along the way who know a bunch of stuff about these things. And you know when, when leaf has answered a bunch of my questions, when I respond and say, well, what about this thing? Here's what I've found, and he's like, oh man, that's cool, I didn't know that. That's when I feel really good.
Jake McKee:Right, no-transcript journaling, where where these women went, what they were doing, and you know how they were kind of getting acclimated to the, to the process, how close some of them were to the front lines, like you know having having generals say, dude, you need to slow down, you're going too fast. I'm getting nervous about where you're at Right and actually repainting the vehicles. They started off gray, kind of a U S Navy type of gray, and most of them, but not all of them, got repainted as standard olive drab because they were starting to stick out, because they were that close to the front lines, right and in in many ways, you know, one of the things that's that I don't want to forget to mention is that. Dave, back to your question about what really was fascinating about this project to me.
Jake McKee:I think part of the reason why I've gone so hardcore on trying to get this as accurate as humanly possible, right, but every other thing is based on, you know, plans, it's based on photos, based on, you know, oral understanding of at were on the front lines who were dealing with you know, hundreds and hundreds of soldiers that were going through their own stuff and having to be great party hosts at all times, right, and through a lot of, to put it mildly sexual harassment right All day, every day, day after day for years.
Jake McKee:And then they went home and a lot of the family members had no idea. They were just like oh, you were just serving donuts. You know it's no big deal, we didn't any big thing, and they had as much ptsd and in some ways, all kinds of different ptsd than than the soldiers did, but got almost none of the support, despite a really miraculous effort on their part really important effort, and so I've been really trying to get it as right as possible for them, as part of the philosophy of doing better with our modeling right.
Kentucky Dave:I agree, wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly agree. Now that brings up an interesting question. Now, that brings up an interesting question.
Jake McKee:Were these women civilians or were they in the military? They were never in the military. They were Red Cross employees. The theory was that they needed to be basically on par as officers so they wouldn't get harassed as much. No, yeah, and so they weren't really military, but they were treated with the rank of military, if that makes sense.
Kentucky Dave:Gotcha pensions or GI Bill benefits or any of that stuff that even waves or other females who were in the military ended up with as benefits from having been a veteran, yeah, and I don't know if the Red Cross did something specific for them, but I seriously doubt it.
Jake McKee:But they certainly didn't get GI Bill and you know veterans benefits and va care and that sort of thing, as far as I know to me.
Kentucky Dave:I would have thought that I could go to a library somewhere and there would be a book called the club mobile in world war ii and you'd pull it out and it would be the entire story of the clubmobile how it came about, what it looked like in great detail, with hundreds of photographs, and then the story of the women who served in these vehicles. And it's just amazing to me that there's not that book.
Jake McKee:Yeah, I agree, and I've been talking to our hobby's friend, david Doyle, who writes some just.
Kentucky Dave:That's exactly who I was thinking of. It would be a David Doyle book. I'd just go up and yeah by Jake. Mckee oh man, well, right, maybe there will be.
Jake McKee:Yeah, yeah, you know, maybe I'd like to get some help from David, but yeah, I'd love to have that kind of book and it's, you know I'm. I really like the again go back to the rest of the story kind of thing, whether it's the behind the lines rest of the story for the war or you know how things, you know small little efforts like this were. You know, there there was a guy and I really I'm sorry I don't remember his name we, there was one particular person who said, hey, I have this idea, and he basically convinced the Red Cross to go spend money to convert 100 vehicles. Originally the concept was that half of them were going to be serving soup and cocoa, I think, and the other half would be serving donuts and coffee.
Jake McKee:And pretty quickly, the difficulties, logistics and value of doing soup and coffee and donuts it was just too much work. They didn't seem to have the same value out of the soup kitchens, basically because they were already doing food elsewhere. They switched it more to almost a hospitality mindset with the donuts and coffee and really saw how much that hit as a reminder of home, really saw how much that hit as a reminder of home and so. But that all started with one guy saying, hey, I have this idea and sold it into the Red Cross to go invest. And then really designed that whole program and hired women, trained the women, three per vehicle to operate them. You know, that story in itself is an amazing standalone story.
Kentucky Dave:We take it for granted today, but women who knew how to drive much less. Drive a truck in 1940-41 was a rare commodity.
Jake McKee:Absolutely yeah.
Kentucky Dave:My grandmother on my mother's side, did not know how to drive until the day she died. It was not while American car culture meant that a lot of American males knew how to drive, compared to males in other countries.
Jake McKee:The concept of finding women and then training them to drive a two and a half ton truck, and and not just any two and a half ton gmc truck right that had the, had the, the staked bed on the back, yeah, but one that had a massive oversized box on the back right. This was.
Kentucky Dave:This is kind of nuts yeah, this was loaded all the time yeah, which probably played with the, with with the handling characteristics to some extent.
Jake McKee:Oh, I'd imagine, and I'm guessing that's part of why many of those didn't survive the wars, because those you know. I heard an interesting stat from the guy who does all the restoration and repair for the Pacific War Museum just up the street from me in Fredericksburg, texas, right, a guy named Aaron. He does some really great work there. But he was talking to me at one point when I was out there taking photos of a GMC actually that those trucks, the Jeeps, the GMCs largely those things were designed and expected to last six months.
Kentucky Dave:Right.
Jake McKee:And then at six months they were trash and they basically just scrapped them unless they could keep them running. They had to keep them running whatever. But you know, generally speaking, the design length of lifetime was was six months. You can imagine putting that much extra weight on the back of that thing. And most of them dragged a trailer behind them with either a water tank or a supply trailer. So you know, you're driving this big, huge, oversized box on a truck with a manual transmission GMC from World War Two and pulling a trailer. I don't know if anybody's driven a modern car with a trailer behind it, but it's. It's not always fun.
Kentucky Dave:No, no, oh, you mentioned speakers. So in addition to serving coffee and donuts, I assume they probably played music. You know familiar tunes at the time.
Jake McKee:They did and this is so. This is one of the interesting parts about you know, really digging in and understanding the vehicle itself, and I think in some ways this was this has been kind of a component of my design process was to really try to understand, not just from the pictures, what the elements were. Right, there's a cabinet on the left, there's the smaller cabinet on the right, there's the donut maker, there's this, this other cabinet over here. But to really understand, when you open, there's, there's access doors. What are those access doors do? Well, the one on the left side was for the, the field stove, so you could heat up the boiler and make the coffee. The two in the front that that overhang the, the two access doors in the front that overhang the cab.
Jake McKee:It took me a while to figure out, and actually that came not from photos but from narrative and then some book that I was reading something from. They were talking about how they'd pop those things open and there was loudspeakers in there hooked up to a record player in the back of the truck, and so trying to understand what was actually happening and what they were doing so that you could translate that into these photos. And what are you looking at in the photo? Oh, this cabinet over here that has kind of a weird shape. That's where they had the record player that was hooked up to the two loudspeakers on either side of the vehicle. So that means that these little small, you know 12 inch tall or so shelves that were, that were really small little rectangles, those that must be where the records went. Okay, now I know what goes there, right, I'm looking at the plans and I see this cabinet, but I don't know what it, what it's for. Oh, it's the records and the record player Got it.
Jake McKee:So there's been a lot of that kind of work to try and understand, you know, how are they using things. Where were they making things? Oh, that's the flower bin, that's the sugar bin. Here's how they would have gotten into them. They actually fold out, they don't slide out that sort of thing. But yes, the coffee and the donuts was a component of the overall mission for them, which was really to provide some sense of hope. That was the umbrella, and so that meant seeing some women when all you've seen is men on the battlefield. Some of that was being able to flirt with those women, to be able to talk to them in ways that you can only talk to women. You can't get out of men on the battlefield right and getting music getting tapped into some R&R for a few minutes or an hour before you have to go back to the battlefield right. But yeah, they had two different loudspeakers mounted on either side of the vehicle.
Kentucky Dave:Let's move on to the actual modeling of this project. Yeah because I could go on just on this part forever.
Jake McKee:So yeah, and hey, Dave, if you want to call me one-on-one, I can talk about this for hours. That I'm sure the podcast listeners don't want to hear, but I'd love to.
Kentucky Dave:I was going to say be careful with that invitation, because I may well do it, because, like I said, I am extremely enamored of this project and projects like it.
Jake McKee:If you need to come along with me to the Schlesinger Library in Harvard to search the research archives, I can always use some help, so we'll talk about that offline.
Kentucky Dave:All right, so talk about the modeling. What kit are you using as the basis for the truck?
Jake McKee:Yeah, good question. So the majority of the vehicle is made up of basically two and a half components.
Jake McKee:Right, it is the base of the Tamiya 35th scale GMC two and a half ton truck, you know that one that we've all known and loved, the deuce and a half, yeah, and then the box on the back, that's. You know, I basically modeled that and it is its own kind of separate component. So you know that thing, I'm basically building the chassis and that, and then there's one extra piece that I've had to add because the, as I mentioned earlier, the chassis got extended in the back, uh, to be able to fit the size of the box. So I've modeled a little extra extension onto the back, but for the most part the, the tamiya kit. I've got some resin wheels, of course I've swapped those out for the tamiya kit wheels, but, but basically the chassis with some photo etch details and a little bit of 3d printing here and there is basically the Tamiya kit at its core, and then the kind of the box is what I'm calling it on the back is all fairly self-contained and that's effectively 100% designed from scratch in CAD and 3D printing.
Kentucky Dave:Now, what software are you using to do the? You don't work work in cad in your normal job, do you correct?
Mike:I mean, unlike mike who, who lives in cad in in some respect I used to, not so much anymore, but but that's true I'm I might have an affinity that he's still trying to develop. So it's pretty amazing that you're you're cranking out what you're cranking out.
Jake McKee:Jake yeah, so I'm using Autodesk Fusion. Yep, it is a very. It's one of those programs that's easy enough to learn and probably never going to master. But you know, I constantly call up Will Pattison and say, hey man, why is this working this way? And then he just kind of shakes his head and he goes man, you're doing it wrong. And then the next project I'm like, oh, this is much easier this way.
Jake McKee:It's sort of that happy Gilmore line, you know, when he hits the hole in one and said that's much easier. I should do this every time. Yeah, but I have a lot of those sort of moments. I'm doing a little bit with the web app for the Glowforge software, the laser cutter software. I'm doing a few small things with the laser cutter. I have a travel box because this is my project I'm taking to SMC this year. So I've got a travel box that I painted and I'm going to do some stenciling on the outside of that and I'll use the Cricut cutter for the stencils or maybe the laser cutter if I can find the right material to use for the stencils.
Kentucky Dave:But yeah, most of it's the Autodesk Fusion. So I assume you are basically building the components of the box first and then building as separate components all of the things that go inside the box. That would be the kitchen recreation area, when all of that stuff, I assume there's a a shell and then the stuff that goes inside the shell. Is that the way you're doing?
Jake McKee:it. That is the way I've done it with, with one minor caveat to that that I've I've done a number of things where so yes, that's where I started this I built the, the shell of the box itself right and the the front cab overhang has kind of a weird contour to it. So you know that I wanted to get that kind of knocked out of the fairly early on because it was just it was just difficult for me as a newbie to to get that, that weird angle right, that weird sort of curve surface right, but generally the, the rest of the box is, you know, two straight walls and the, the weird front wall and the back wall. That's got the, the two folding doors on it, right. But but yeah, largely that's where I started was was the box to get the core shape done. And then there was a lot of tweaking as I went, because you know, obviously, when I built the box and I thought, okay, it's the right size, and then I'd go in and line it with the chassis and I'm like, no, it's too short, I got to go back in and, you know, make it a little wider, a little longer. I'd get the serving window put in and then go. Oh well, where I put some of these external bracings? It's not hitting in the right spot.
Jake McKee:You know, again, so much of this was based off research that I didn't sit down and kind of sketch out anything first and then go do it in CAD. I was kind of sketching in CAD and there was a lot of stuff where it was do a thing, get it close to what I think I'm looking at on the photo, go back and look at the photo again, notice another detail that I kind of can ground to and say, oh well, if the serving windows are this big and there's this thing in the middle and they're equally spaced, then my spacing is wrong or the serving windows are too big. So there was a lot of that sort of stuff that happened. And then when I went inside the box and started doing things like cabinetry, then there was a number of things where I didn't realize what I was looking at until I'd kind of gone through the process and said, oh okay, well, those weren't.
Jake McKee:That's not the wheel. Well, that's actually part of the cabinetry. So it's going to be a different material, which means it's a different size and a different location and that sort of stuff. But you know there's been a lot of those sorts of back and forth and you know it feels like I'm getting if you start from a hundred and you just keep dividing in half to get to zero. You just keep doing these little, incrementally smaller changes each time.
Jake McKee:We call that the endless stream of half measures, exactly, exactly. There's been a lot of those, and, in fact, the one that really has stuck out is and this is part of the challenge for me has been it's not just with any project right At work, in life, at home, or modeling with any project it's this balance of trying to figure out how much pre-work do you do before you do the real work, because I could have done a ton of planning, I could have done a ton of CAD, and then started printing stuff out to see how well it worked. I knew that that wasn't going to keep my motivation high. I needed to be seeing stuff come to life physically on a regular basis, or else I was just going to get bored. As much as I like doing the CAD work, I had to sort of have the physical output happening to keep me motivated, but what that meant, though, was things that I just kept putting off certain stuff, like I want to do these little, the wire racks that hold all the donuts, and there's two boxes on either side of the serving windows that has four or five different donut racks, you know, so that you can have a stash when people start getting in line and coming up and I was nervous about how to make the racks printable, because obviously they're 35th scale wire racks, right. They're, you know Right, pretty delicate, yeah, really delicate, really thin, and it was one of those things where I just kind of kept shoving it to the side and shoving it to the side.
Jake McKee:And then I I got to the point about I don't know a week or two ago and realizing it's time I got to do this, and so I I made one, printed it out. It printed out surprisingly well and I was like, oh, this is excellent. Okay, now what? Well, let's go make sure that they fit. And I, I had been modeling it on the right side cabinet and it fit wonderfully. I was like man, this is amazing. Oh yeah, I got to put it in the left side too. So I went to put it in the left side and realized I had made the size of the holes for the racks wrong on the left side. Not not a huge deal, you know know, went back into my sketches, changed the dimensions, printed it out. Everything's fine.
Jake McKee:But it was one of those, like you know, I didn't realize how many pieces I had to rejigger to make those work when there was one standard size, but these little boxes on on top of the counters, on the, you know, next to the serving windows, I'm not really sure. There's been a couple of times along the way where I'm like I have measured everything, everything makes sense, but there's something wrong with the dimensions, in just a small enough way for things not to fit. And so I've been trying to figure out how to get these, these boxes of multiple donut racks, wire racks, printable for one, which is challenging when you know there's so, many, so many little small spaces to try and get in and get supports. And then how do you get them off the supports without tearing the thing up? That's, that's its own challenge. But then also, oh, to get them to fit right in the dimensions that I can see are supposed to be right. There's something wrong overall and I'm a millimeter or two off so that it doesn't really make these things slide in and out of bowl right, the, the, the cabinets. I can slide the racks in and out and I'll glue those in place.
Jake McKee:These I have to print them in place for for several reasons, but they're, they're basically just a little bit too big and at that scale I don't think anybody's going to actually be able to see it with a human eye, which is okay, fine. But again, if I had, if I had started out with the wire rack, then I could have really kind of designed everything around that, which in retrospect would have made more sense because it was a common element. So I'm really, you know the next project I'm already rethinking. You know which pieces do I start with and you know which parts of the project that are going to be the hardest or the most kind of pivotal for other dimensions and that sort of thing. It's. It's given me a lot of insight, for that that's more of an engineering process than it is a modeling process, right?
Mike:And then you just want it to fit together, like I will say, fall together. You want to get this thing designed the way it was in real life and it should just fit together. Right, right, but it but it doesn't. It's driving you nuts.
Jake McKee:I, mike, that's part of this process I've gotten so far down the path as to some really solid accuracy. This is by far, probably, I'm assuming, the most accurate Clubmobile model that will exist in 35th scale or probably any scale at this point. That has been made and there's almost a there's like a spider-man with great power, responsibility kind of mindset. Right that? I'm like right, I do, I need to go back and fix all this stuff. And you know, normally you're not really going to be able to see that on this model, right on any other model I'd just be like you're not gonna be able to see that. It's fine it On this one. I'm like well, do I go back and rejigger every part of the interior left side cabinetry to fit this one millimeter off donut rack box? I don't know, maybe.
Mike:Well, and there's the wild card is these were converted by some probably not so large British firm who did these things Right. They may be more bespoke than you think they are, that's what.
Jake McKee:I'm going with. That's a good theory and I'm going to stick with that because it didn't work because of the guys that were doing it were hastily putting them together. They're all different.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, well, you know the story is. Restorers will tell you that parts from one spitfire will not fit another spitfire because they were in essence handmade.
Mike:I got to think after the Mark II or III that that had to have changed.
Kentucky Dave:But that's a completely different discussion. It did some Well, jake. I'm going to ask you a couple of what may be terrible questions. Question one are you going to make the top removable so that people can see what you've done inside?
Jake McKee:Yes, it is removable, and because I can't do anything small, I wanted to light it as well.
Kentucky Dave:You anticipated my next question Because this cries out to be lit. It really does. So that's, you anticipated my next question Because this cries out to be lit it really does.
Mike:Yes, absolutely, it's got those two big serving windows. So I mean.
Jake McKee:Right, it does, but you know I don't want anybody to have to stick a flashlight in to see all this detail. So there's two ways to go about that. One is that I've made the roof removable Fairly straightforward. Right, I cut it. In a certain way. There's a little bit of inaccuracy at the front where it fits, but if it's on it's accurate. If it's off, then well, sue me. But the lighting actually is an interesting challenge because I didn't want to have to hang wires off the side. You know, have this thing wired up and have it hang off the side.
Jake McKee:So in my many travels around YouTube and looking up lighting tutorials and starting to ask the question, how do I make these things, how to make the roof totally removable yet still have lights on it, and I came up with a couple of options that didn't really work very well.
Jake McKee:One in particular where there's a new way that you can basically create wireless LEDs, that you get a metal ring that goes to your battery pack and then anything inside that ring and up to a certain distance, will power itself without any wiring, right? Which amazing. But I couldn't work in a wire, a round large ring like that, and it was too tall up off, away from what would have gone under the vehicle or even under the base to actually reach, you know, have that power, transmit. So what I, what I discovered, is that you can actually solder magnets to the end of your line. So underneath the vehicle is, you know, in the base would be the battery pack, and run wiring up through the vehicle into the top of one of the water to internal water tanks that hangs on the on the wall towards the ceiling and the roof has two little magnet receptacles. Basically, that are, again, not totally accurate, but it works. So it's fine and if all goes well, when you put the roof in place the lights will come on well, how are these things lit?
Kentucky Dave:actually, are there a couple of bulbs down the center line of the cat?
Jake McKee:that's exactly right they've got. They've got three although I only put in two just because trying to get the roof line right was proving to be difficult, but especially with not a lot of great photo photos and they, they have three sky lights where they can actually open some hatches on the top and you'll get light in that way and fresh air. They've got, obviously, the two serving windows on one side and then on the other side they've got a little tiny window and kind of the upper ceiling above the donut machine, but there is some very basic light fixtures on the ceiling as well.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, that's what I would have thought that they're, you know for, at least, like at night or something like that, if they're somewhere far enough back where they've got to see to work to be able to make the donuts.
Mike:Yeah, exactly right. This is based on my observation of your photos on your blog and my parallel is this little flak panzer I'm building. It's a 3D print. I bought the STL files off Colts 3D and this thing is going to end up being one of the most expensive models I've ever built. So you've got a picture on your blog. This is a big old pile of close, but not exactly. What's that been like? The trial and error, the fit mod, fit, all that and if you're passionately invested, I know you really don't care. But man, when you look back and scratch your head, you got to think wow.
Jake McKee:I do.
Kentucky Dave:yes, that was a lot of 3D print resin.
Jake McKee:It has been a lot of 3D print resin. This is one of those situations where I'm not really paying too much attention to how much I'm spending on resin. When I need a new bottle, I get a new bottle and I use the bottle right Because part of it. So again, it goes back to more of the engineering process than the actual modeling process, because there's been some. You know, if I had done some things in how I organize some of the components that I'm building within the single master file CAD drawing that I'm doing, it would have been a little easier to not miss things. Like you know, when I'm, when I'm printing out the overall shell, for instance, there's there's a bunch of different components to turn on and off right, because I've modeled each, each different thing, like each door. The service window doors are different parts. The little access panels for the loudspeakers those are two independent parts because I want to be able to print them either closed or open. You know, there's just a bunch of those little parts, but there's also some ways that I've modeled different things. Maybe it's the right methodology, maybe I'm just, you know, getting started. It's not the right way, I don't know. But I've done a lot of things where, if I miss turning on one of those components, I'll do a whole print, get it out and be like, oh man, and that is. That's about half the test prints, to be honest. The other half is just me sort of. I mean literally doing a test print saying, okay, is the shell the right size, have I gotten it to the right point that it needs to be, and is it has to have the right components, and so, okay, it's good, it looks great, it can actually print. Well, that's good to know before I go too much further with this particular approach to how I'm designing the shell.
Jake McKee:I actually upgraded my printer to be able to fit the shell as one piece. Uh, I got a, got a bigger printer because the small one I had wouldn't fit it all as one and I I really wanted to print it all as one. You're getting quite the shop, yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me about it. But yeah, there's, there's a lot of. There was a lot of trial and error. That was completely fair, normal process stuff that I'm very, very proud that. That's how I went about doing it.
Jake McKee:And the other part let's not talk too much about that. That's kind embarrassing, I you know, and it didn't happen once or twice. I mean, it happened so many times where I was like what is wrong with you, man, pay attention to what you're exporting before you you actually go through the whole print process. And there's been a bunch of times I pulled stuff off the printer because I started a midnight print, you know to be done the next morning when I woke up, yeah you know, forgot one little piece. That's basically impossible to you know, scratch, build out in afterwards or something. So back to the printer.
Kentucky Dave:I would assume that one of the many side benefits besides learning about this important piece of history and doing the research and the satisfaction and making all the friends and contacts, I've got to think that one of the side benefits for your modeling is that you really must have improved, over the life of this project, both your CAD skill and your 3D printing skill.
Jake McKee:Yeah, that's completely fair and it's really been. You know I have to give a shout out to the community as a whole because I've asked a bunch of questions to some of the guys, like John Colesante and Will Patterson and Matt McDougall you know who text on a regular proved I'm getting much better. And it's funny because you know I sat down to work on the, the little folding jump seat this this afternoon actually, and I was just thinking, as I finished that file and sent it to print, how much faster and more organized that design file was to create and then to print it out. We'll see how well it prints out here in about two more hours.
Jake McKee:But uh, you know, the the, the speed at which I was able to get a pretty good design done was was radically faster than when I started the project. And it's, you know it's. It's been interesting too, because part of the reason why I left some of the stuff off, that donut machine for instance was because I'd I'd kind of tapped out on on the interest on it. Right, it was just, it was so, so much mental energy to get to a point of having a good enough version that you know I was like, okay, it's, I'm done, I can't do it anymore. Now, you know, when I went back and looked at it a little longer, I'm like I know, if I just spend another 30 minutes or maybe an hour and a half at most, I can get everything that I can see in the picture on that model. Come on man, you just go do it. You know, and it really was much faster, much more organized than when I started off.
Kentucky Dave:It's like I'm listening to you and I talk and you talking about the KV-85 and how this isn't quite right.
Mike:That isn't quite right Well he's talking about this jump seat and I know what's going to happen. Jake, You've had to backdoor so much information You're going to. There's going to be a photo show up that is taking it some airfield in England and it's going to be Clark Gable getting his donuts and coffee at the Clubmobile and the center of the. He's the focal point of the picture and just over the woman's shoulder serving him is the jump seat right? That that's how this kind of project moves forward and it's it's fun.
Jake McKee:But part of that iterative design process that I've been going through is for exactly that reason because, yeah, part of its understanding, like I was talking about earlier you know it's. You're not knowing what something was, and so you design it in a certain way because that's what your brain tells you to do it. You know that that door back there is some for for X instead of Y, so it's going to look like this, or the hinges are going to be in this spot. And then you get another picture. You read an account and you're like, oh, wait a minute, that was a storage area so it would have swung out, not back in or up or whatever. That's happened a number of times and I've been starting to joke now at this point that it's almost guaranteed that TACOM or Trumpeter or somebody is going to come out with a Clubmobile here in about six weeks. So for all the rest of you guys that are interested in this project, you're it's gonna, it's gonna suck well.
Kentucky Dave:Well, that actually raises that. That actually raises two additional issues. One, I would suggest that's probably not gonna happen because, given the, the, what you've had to do to research it, I'm not sure anybody. Well, of course, they go now to, they go now to your blog and everything's all in one place yeah, talk to me whoever you know.
Jake McKee:Icm many are. You guys want to talk?
Kentucky Dave:you just come to me well right, give me a little credit on the box at least they just injection mold, the uh cm, the cmk thing you bought, yeah, yeah but that's the other question. I'm assuming, after you built this and you've shown it around, you know for a model season or whatever have you given any thought to actually manufacturing this yourself, either printing them and selling them or selling the STL files?
Jake McKee:I have thought about it a little bit and it's, you know it's an interesting question for me. I'm, you know some of this is I think some distance is going to be needed. It's not that I I don't have any desire to gatekeep the design, and if somebody else wants to use it or use parts from it or talk about it, then you know I'm an open book. Let's, let's talk about it. I've this one's the first project that I've done of, you know, small or large nature, either one, you know, small component or full build that I felt like you know, maybe the parts here are good enough that you know it's not. I could print them and actually just sell somebody the part on the supports and not feel embarrassed about the quality, right, because you don't have to do a ton of cleanup on some of these things to get it to the usable state. It's like any 3D part, every part requires some cleanup, but I just mean I'm not trying to fix it after I've printed it like I have in past builds. So maybe I think it's a good question. I I don't know yet, in part because I still have several other ideas for you know, there's some really interesting photos of of people who would set up the donut machines kind of under a tent, out in the field and and in fact they what would end up happening is that they discovered that doing a bulk of the donut making in the vehicle was not the best use of time, because these very unique in a battlefield situation women were called to be more present, not to be in the truck making donuts.
Jake McKee:Set up a an area with three or four or five of these donut machines which could make something like 8 000 a day or something they were. They were insanely, uh, insane numbers. It's like crispy, yeah, yeah, exactly, and they'd set up basically a little small donut shop, right and and they'd have a bunch of guys you know a bunch of privates somewhere back with the you know donut machines cranking these things out. Then they'd ship those back to the trucks and and by and large, they'd make a majority of donuts elsewhere eventually. So you know some little vignettes with the donut machines and guys sitting on some stools with the big sticks of donuts. You know, sounds like a fun project.
Jake McKee:That would be great, yeah, and there's, there's another one, there's another photo that I really like of one of the club mobiles being driven off, one of those large landing craft uh, you know post d, d plus five or whatever it was and it you can see about half of it in the photo because it's still in the truck and half of it's on the ramp. You're driving onto the beach and so you know, I've, I've got the ability now to just basically close all the doors, print out one shell that's got all the pieces on it and just go straight to paint. Right, and I have that 35th scale landing craft from was that from? Trumpeter? I think yeah. So you know there's several more project ideas I have in mind, so we'll see. You know, kind of once I've run out of those ideas, I may think about putting it up on Colts or something.
Kentucky Dave:The reasons I love this project are almost endless, but one of the reasons is that we all love the cool Sherman or the cool Tiger or whatever about having you on. One of the things I said is a US soldier was probably much more likely to have seen one of these club mobiles than they ever would have been seeing a Tiger tank.
Jake McKee:Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Kentucky Dave:The rear area. The story is that for one guy at the front you need 10 support people behind him doing all of the things that need to get him and his ammo and all to the front, and so it's just such an underappreciated area.
Jake McKee:You know the tanks are cool and all, but it's this stuff that actually made all that other stuff possible at the front yeah, 100, and and you know what's on top of that too, I find it really fascinating personally just how many versions of the gmc variants there were. Right, oh, yeah. Anyway, it's part of the fascinating to me. I've always enjoyed the home front stories about what they were doing with production and how they were centralizing and standardizing certain types of things. But the amount of things that were put on the back of a Dodge, gmc or Chevy truck chassis whether it was the turret trainers that went on the back of the Chevy bomb trucks, the shop trucks, these club mobiles, you know there's, there's just so many of those variants, and and for me personally I like the stuff that isn't something somebody else has done already. Uh, at least not a lot of people have done already. You know, the coming up with things that we just don't get to see much is what I always gravitate to at the shows.
Jake McKee:You know when I go to the tables and you know, you can see the most beautifully weathered tiger tank. But you know, the one thing you've never seen before and never even heard of. That's always fascinating to me. And then I want to go home and you know, I want to talk to the modeler and say, hey, tell me more about this thing that you it, because it's the fascinating rest of the story.
Kentucky Dave:Well, and that's to me one of the best things about this project, when you're done, not only do you have this model of a club mobile, but you will know a lot of the story of all of these women who did all of this stuff that has pretty much been invisible to anybody but a super hardcore historian, and even most of them probably not To me.
Jake McKee:The fact that by building this, you're also going to bring their story forward is just a major benefit, I think, of the project. Yeah, and Dave, I'm glad you brought that up too, because I've really been thinking a lot about. I have the unique privilege of being here in Austin with Matt McDougal and he and I get to go to lunch usually once a week or so. He and I get to go to lunch usually once a week or so. We talk a lot about modeling in life and the philosophy behind what subjects we're working on. He's talked a lot lately about bringing more whimsy into the hobby.
Jake McKee:I don't know if you guys follow the model philosopher Chris Medding's podcast, where Matt was on talking about the idea of purposely you know, purposely making his work more political, so to speak and I'm using my quotey fingers when I say political, but you know more meaning and I, years ago in Austin, at the TEDx Austin event, I saw this woman who was a photographer speak on stage and she talked about her work going to Africa and African villages and taking photos there that you know help to really share more than just what you see on the news and, you know, really give more flavor of life and bring that back to the, to the U?
Jake McKee:S, so we can see both the good and bad about what's happening in very specific parts of Africa and whatnot.
Jake McKee:And her, her speech and this was 10 or 12 years ago, but it has stuck out to me on a regular basis that you know she was saying if you're going to take photos, take photos.
Jake McKee:That matter and in some ways I really like that idea and I've been thinking a lot about it as I was reading some of the accounts of what some of these women went through in the club mobiles no-transcript and I'm hoping that the way that I pull off the story I've got in mind, which we'll talk about in another episode once I get it dialed in, but you know I'm hoping that helps to make a point that is, using the modeling you know, not just to make a model but to also tell a story to enlighten us all, to get us thinking about. You know, in particular, what those women went through and you know how does that translate through to today and you know what does that mean for all of us men that listen to listening to this podcast today and you know how does that impact our daily lives as we interact with the women around us and whatnot you know. Hopefully that has an impact on us.
Kentucky Dave:One final idea when you finally take this to a contest and display it, stop by a Krispy Kreme, get a dozen fresh donuts, stick the box under the table and just open it up so that if people come up to look at the model, they get the smell of fresh made donuts.
Jake McKee:And Dave I, I love that idea enough that I'm probably going to figure out how to add it to my, you know, to my concept here.
Mike:So there's probably a candle or something.
Jake McKee:Yeah, yeah, probably a little battery powered fan sitting on top of a box of donuts under the table. I like it Well, and there's more elements to this that I'll release as I get them conceptualized. But you guys remember the Cylon Raider had the Viewmaster. Well, I've been working on some things to try and get BuildLog across in a more project-adjacent version instead of just kind of an off to the side. You know, photo book there's, there's some ideas I've got for you know how to integrate it into the overall display of whatever diorama I come up with the travel box that I've got going, and then, of course, the the, the build log content.
Kentucky Dave:Just don't let the TSA anywhere near.
Jake McKee:Well, I'm flying the. I'm assuming that the first show that this will show up at is is SMC in October. That's that's my timeline. I'm working.
Mike:Well, that'd be a tall order for getting it somewhere safe yeah.
Jake McKee:But I've I've been designing it around the the travel box that I have that fits under the airline seat, so hopefully it goes better this time, buying its own seat.
Mike:No kidding, no kidding. Well, jake, we we thank you for giving us the opportunity to showcase this project and again, we're going to put this in the show notes and in the teasers ahead of this episode, because it's a really, really cool project and I really Dave and I both just speak a little bit for Dave we appreciate the the history around this project, but also the technical aspects of this project. Really, uh, give me a little inspiration to maybe get back on a couple things I've been neglecting of late, and simply because I, honestly, I've got a lot more cat experience than you do. That's you know, full stop, that's the truth. I'm an engineer, right, and you're doing all this stuff with fusion and I'm like I just can't make myself go do it. It's really encouraging to see, see you do this stuff. I mean it's. I've looking at the 3d models you're showing in the blog and it's it's all really, really great stuff and I can't wait to see this thing come, come to its fruition.
Jake McKee:Yeah, and I can't wait to see this thing come, come to its fruition. Yeah, thanks, man. Well, you know, I'll reiterate too is kind of a closing thought here that you know a huge part of what's made it, I mean this is this is going to be a long project, right? I'm I'm almost to the point of being able to really start putting real paint down. I've been doing a lot of paint tests and part tests and whatnot.
Jake McKee:But you know, I'm almost hopefully a week or two away from really sitting down and saying, okay, I've got every single internal component done, I just need to start painting them and putting them together and I'm probably going to have about 10 figures on the base. So you know, between the diorama of actually finishing this project out and and doing the figures it's, you know, there's a remarkable amount of work ahead still that. I'm hoping I get done by October yeah.
Mike:That's not global bill, yeah.
Jake McKee:Yeah, that's, that's all this stuff surrounding it, right, much less all the you know, display issues, but. But I think what's you know what for me in this? This may be different for other people, but for me what's been really surprising is how much enjoyment I'm getting out of this project lasting as long as it has, because it's been this multi-nature dynamic of you know, finding people to talk to about it who really are as passionate about the nerd history as I am, to be able to figure out other places to get information. So you know this idea that I'm literally planning a trip at some point as soon as I get on the calendar to go to go to the Harvard and dig through their, their archives, but also reading the stories along the way. Right, you know, I've I've read book and a half now, all the way, cover to cover, about you know stories and I'm I've I've read in parts to others. Right, I'm reading that arc in the Storm book online when I can get to it.
Jake McKee:You know, just combining this level of, like, deep research with fun interaction, talking about it with the actual drive of the work itself in CAD, but also printing it so I can see it coming to life, all these pieces really fit together to make a really fun long term project, in a way that I would have gotten bored so easily earlier if I hadn't had kind of all those pieces playing together. You know, a huge part of that is being able to see it come to fruition and, you know, not just kind of sit around and design all day long and then at some point a year later print it out. But you know, printing it and going man, this thing is I'm holding right now, as a matter of fact, I'm holding my you know, hopefully final donut maker in my hand and that looks really cool. I'm really excited about that. Just imagine when I go and finish the cabinetry on the right side that I'm almost done with. You know that that'll feel just as good.
Jake McKee:Right, it's just, it's very empowering to sort of bump back and forth between all those different elements and, you know, kind of make it. It's a. It's a fun story to read about it, to see come to life. It's a fun story to share with others and you know that makes for a very interesting modeling experience beyond. Just sit at the bench, build the model, be done, put it on the shelf, move on to the next one.
Kentucky Dave:Well, thank you very much.
Jake McKee:Yeah, thank you guys for giving me the chance to share all this nerdery that only folks like you might get a kick out of.
Mike:Oh well, there's plenty of people get a kick out of it and we'll make sure the folks know how to get to your blog. And again, we'll, we'll, we'll, tease the blog ahead of the episode drop so folks can warm up to it a little bit and know what we're talking about.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:I better go make some updates, then you bet. All right man, thank you very much. All right, thanks, guys. Wow that was fun.
Kentucky Dave:That was great, we could have gone another hour. I mean, I am endlessly fascinated by this project and related projects.
Mike:Well, it makes me want to get back on my Hungarian truck because he's certainly doing the same kind of level work and I don't know. I just got to find the motivation to get back on that.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, you do, because that's good, that's a great project.
Mike:Well, let's thank Jake one more time for coming on the show and look forward to the next time he's on man.
Kentucky Dave:Me too Can't wait to see this project completed.
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Mike:Well folks, it's the Bench Top Halftime Report and I hope we've both got some progress to report. What have you been doing, dave?
Kentucky Dave:I do have progress to report. The F8F group, or batch build, is moving along at a steady pace so far. I'm enjoying the heck out of it. I can see why Inch likes batch builds. I really do. It truly is. If you are building a number of versions or a number of copies of the same kit a number of versions or a number of copies of the same kit it really is a time saver to have multiple parts that you can paint following the assembly sequence for the same step across multiple models. I very much am enjoying that. Additionally, the SAM is moving along. I need to pick up the pace on weathering the underside of it because it's very close to done. It is super, super close to being finished. Obviously, I don't have to worry about getting it finished for amps, but I do want to get it finished and I really like the way it's turning out. So I'm making progress, not as much or as fast Partly that's due to spring having arrived and other obligations, but other than that I'm satisfied. How about you?
Mike:I've got a little bit done. I've been slumping a little bit. I need to get my butt in gear. Mostly we've talked about my 3D printer and getting that going again. I've been reprinting a lot of parts for the Flak Panzer and getting those cleaned up. I tell you, my opinion right now is that unless the materials change for the better, my opinion right now is that unless the materials change for the better, they're okay now, but they've got some nuances about them that I don't like. Compared to styrene or even polyurethane resin, I don't think plastic kits are in any danger anytime soon.
Kentucky Dave:Well, I do think that you will see continued evolution in the material.
Mike:Sure, I do too, but I think right now there's nuance to these things. It's a different skill set.
Kentucky Dave:Personally, some of it I find not too fun to work with, right that's my opinion, there are some inherent limitations, including the one that occurs to me off the top of my head is an inability. You know, if you have a polystyrene part that has a warp to it, it can be straightened out with an application of heat and pressure, and that's not really the case for most of the 3d print stuff that I've seen the case for most of the 3D print stuff that I've seen.
Mike:Well, I'll give a little tease. For May we have a guest coming on to talk about working with 3D printed kits and accessories, so we'll get into more of that next month in one of the feature episodes. I've also been working on the KV-85, slowly adding whole details.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, I really like the work you've done on the fenders and supports.
Mike:It's going slow, but you know, I'm just being meticulous and trying to do the best job I can. I'm still kind of looking for the right size nylon mesh for the intakes. I'm getting closer, yeah, but that's you know. Chipping away, you know I might bring that unfinished model to AMS to have at our table. Yeah, that would be cool. That'd be kind of cool, yep. Other than that, that's it I've. You know, I've refrained from starting anything new. It's been tempting but I haven't done it yet.
Kentucky Dave:Well, good.
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Kentucky Dave:Mike, I assume you've spent a little bit of money on modeling-related stuff since you got back from HeritageCon.
Mike:Yeah, a little bit, not a lot, related to both my Benchtop Halftime projects KV1, I ordered, you mean the KV85? The KV85, right the front tow shackles from Aver for KV-85. Or for the KV-85, right the front tow shackles from Aber for KV series. They're multiple part and they're kind of nice for what they are. And then the barrels for the Kugelblitz, barrels for the flak pans I'm working on.
Kentucky Dave:Now, those are in brass right.
Mike:Well, the barrels are aluminum and the muzzle brakes are. They could be 3D printed. I don't know if they are. They've already been cleaned up.
Kentucky Dave:Okay.
Mike:Or they're urethane cast. I don't know what the material is, but they're resin of some kind. And I got these from B&A out of Australia and man, I got to shout out those guys. They are so fast considering they're halfway around the world.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, yep.
Mike:And the.
Kentucky Dave:Australian postal system is impressive.
Mike:And I just bought through their eBay store I was trying to find. Well, I looked for both of these at Heritage Con and didn't find either one of them, and with little stuff like this I don't want to buy it from two different suppliers, right? So B&A had them both, so I ordered from B&A and then, you know, I showed them on the dojo and Rob Riv from over at the Modeling Insanity podcast said hey man, jadar is a another source for for ABER. You know and he's right, I've I've done a lot of business with JADAR in the past there's another photo-ish brand called Part that they carry and they're they've got good prices and fast service too. So Jadar hobbies Absolutely. That should have.
Mike:I guess it didn't come to me because I was. I had my nose into eBay looking at it that way, and they used to have an eBay store. I don't know if they still do or not. At least I didn't run into it when I was looking for these things. But certainly if I'm behind the eight ball again, I'll probably go to them. What about you?
Kentucky Dave:Well, I'm tempted to tell you that what broke my wallet was the purchase of all new appliances for my kitchen. But that's not modeling related it broke your wallet.
Kentucky Dave:It broke my wallet, it shredded my wallet, but my lovely better half has been extremely patient and it was time and she is a very much a thrift shopper and found a really good deal. So I mean, it's still a crap ton of money, but I can't complain. On the modeling front, I bought a couple of things. One shout out to Dr David Gelmacher. I was working on these Bearcat props, the F8F props that have an AeroProp logo and then some data stenciling, and the Hobby Boss kit gives you a pretty good AeroProp logo in their decals and these things were very prominent on the Bearcat. All the pictures you see of the props all have the AeroProp logo and then that data stenciling.
Kentucky Dave:Well, the Hobby Boss Aerooprop logo isn't bad. It isn't perfect but it isn't bad. But their data stenciling is just awful. It's yellow, basically the equivalent of like yellow bars. There's no lettering to it and I was like I can't put that on the prop. I mean, since there's no detail to this kit, they're basically being built out of the box. What is going to matter is the markings and the weathering, and the detail and the markings and the weathering and the external look of the thing, as opposed to any fine detailing. So, dr Geldmacher, I was bemoaning that fact. Dr Geldmacher pointed out that there were a couple of companies TechMod being among them who made both the logos and the data stenciling. So he pointed me to the sheet which I then ordered, and it's on its way. In addition, I dropped an airbrush and bent the protective guard for the needle.
Mike:Now you got five more.
Kentucky Dave:I do, I do, but I like this airbrush. It's a Badger Velocity. So I went on their site of Badger Velocity. So I went on their site and, instead of just replacing the nose cap, I bought two new needles, two new nose cones and two new protective caps. So those are on their way. I found a really good deal on a Pacific Profiles book on Japanese transport aircraft, so I bought that. And then finally, I got.
Kentucky Dave:You know how? We all have the rubber self-healing cutting mats for our workbenches and I've got several of them on my workbench. Well, they make the same thing in tempered glass. So if you're doing things like cutting photo etch or cutting decals, there are some applications where you want a very hard surface like glass or marble to cut on as opposed to the self-healing surface. And so I went ahead and ordered one of those and I'm going to replace one of my self-healing mats on my bench with that tempered glass mat. So I spent a little money. Like I said, the vast majority of it not related to modeling, but I did spend a little modeling money and looking forward to amps, because you can always find something to buy at amps. Mike, we're almost the end of the episode, which probably means you're almost at the end of your modeling fluid, because I know I am and I suspect we're going to have similar reports.
Mike:Go ahead. Well, the Prone is good. It's not great, but it's good enough. Yep, I enjoy it every now and then. Of course, it comes in the metric bottles, so it's a little shy. 12 ounces that's a little annoying, because you're usually paying an uplift, right? Yes, so you're paying more for less when you buy these things. Well, dave, how is yours?
Kentucky Dave:Very similar. Again, I suspect you could put this beer in a glass and put it next to Peroni and there would be very little difference between the two. They are the classic European beer with that slightly sulfury finish. You know, 5% alcohol by volume. Now this is 473 milliliter can, so it's actually more than 12 ounces. So you got shortchanged a little bit, I got a little bit extra and considering this one was a gift from somebody who stopped by the dojo, you know it's free beer and how can you complain about that? But good beer, not top-notch beer, but good, solid drinking beer. Now we're really at the end of the episode and it's time for shout-outs. Do you have a shout-out?
Mike:Like always, Dave, I want to shout-out our contributors, those folks who've taken it upon themselves to support Plastic Model Mojo through their generosity. This is real easy now. You can just go to wwwplasticmodelmojocom and click the support selection in the menu bar and it'll bring up links to all the avenues of support for the show, and I really appreciate folks doing that. You can also find it in the show notes. But it all goes a long way to help us out, and of late our expenses have been kind of high and it's really helped us out.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, it has.
Mike:Folks, thank you very much, absolutely.
Kentucky Dave:I want to second that. Thank you very much. We appreciate it and if you're motivated to donate, please do. My shout out is somebody I mentioned earlier, ian McCauley. Ian, we missed you at HeritageCon. Glad to reconnect with you. Hopefully you're having a great time and looking forward to seeing you whenever we can get together, and I know we'll see you at Heritage Con next year.
Mike:Anything else? That's it, dave, as we always say. So many kids, so little time, dave. So let's get to the bench and finish something.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, let's finish something.
