Hobbies

I think I used to build a lot of stuff.

I built model planes out of balsa wood and tissue paper. All the parts – pieces of balsa, paper etc. – came in kits with the plans for construction. You cut the balsa wood to size and glued the pieces together to make frames for the fuselage, wings and tail, then covered everything with a skin of tissue paper. The tissue was strengthened by painting with dope (a type of clear lacquer). These planes always had rubber band driven propellors. I never had a model aero engine. So the rubber band was inside the fuselage, with a hook at the back and another at the front attached to the propellor. You wound the propellor to twist the rubber around, then let go of the propellor and the plane, and it would fly off for a bit. These things were quite fragile, so crashes were bad news, but I seem to remember doing a lot of this plane building. You can still buy kits like those; easily found on line.

I also used to build plastic scale models from kits – Spitfires, Hurricanes, Messerschmitts – Battle of Britain stuff. Those things are still available too of course.

I made wooden model yachts.There was one design in particular that I used to make, it came from an encyclopaedia set we had called ‘Pictorial Knowledge’. Dad was a bit of a cabinet-maker over there in the shed, and I used to pester him for help. I think he reckoned I was slightly crazy trying to make that thing over and over, but for some reason I could not be convinced to build a different one.

I built a lot of things with Meccano (a model construction system) – I think I had quite a big set. You can still get Meccano, but it’s not quite the same now. Mine was all metal except for things like tyres. You had metal strips, plates, girders, wheels, gears and axles, and a whole pile of nuts and bolts. You had building instructions to make things like cranes, bridges, trains, cars and aircraft. Playing with Meccano was something like Lego, but it was based more on mechanical and engineering ideas like struts, gearing and levers.