I grew up in the Tidewater of Virginia, where Skipjacks and Deadrises were as much a part of the scenery as Fords and Chevys. As a young teenager I built the old Lindberg model of the Skipjack which still hangs from the ceiling as a mobile at our family cottage in Virginia Beach.

Looking at it recently I decided to build it again and hopefully do a little better than I did when I was 12. I found the kit on ebay and as soon as I opened the box I realized just how different things are now some 55 years down the road.

Building a model back then (or at least for me) was not too different than doing a jig saw puzzle: You opened the box, took out all the parts, and built what you saw on the box top. It was all about putting together what was there.

These days when I build something my objective is not just to assemble what’s there, but to create a fairly accurate and detailed representation of the real item.

And there are so many more resources available today. Between the ability to access thousands of photos and other references (not to mention on line communities such as this!) as well as the availability of all sorts of aftermarket material in all shapes and sizes, a modeler is only limited by their tolerance for pain, both time wise as well as financially!

The biggest thing I discovered about the Lindberg Skipjack is that it didn’t appear to resemble any of the ones in the photographs. Whether this kit was based on an actual boat or not it certainly did NOT depict an actual working boat which is what I wanted. With some variation almost all the skipjacks I found followed a pretty standard layout.

Among my discoveries on line were the outstanding instructions for the Model Shipways kit of the Willie L. Bennett, and rather than try to attempt that kit (and have to build the entire hull), I decided to transform the Lindberg kit



into a more typical working boat like those in the plans.

With a special thanks to my long suffering wife who did the initial sewing of the sails from an old pillow case, I now have hopefully captured a piece of a bygone era from a place I love.

Tom,

Yours is a beautiful build of Pyro's old classic (later issued by Lindberg). Well done!

Thanks, Tim. I thought I remember it being from Pyro originally.

Tom,

She is a beauty, really a lot of nice detail. I enjoyed the photos.

Mark

Thanks, Mark. The funny thing is that after I decided that doing the wooden Model Shipways kit would be "too hard", I wound up scratch building most of this with the exception of the hull itself. And because I decided on a totally different deck plan than the original kit, even the deck itself was built from sheet styrene.

Tom,

definitiv a Beaty, as Tim and Mark already rightly stated. Wonderful detail and re-work of the kit. I for myself have no first hand experience with those Pyro kits, but from Tim's build logs I can imagine what you all had to do!

Cheers
Jan

Thanks Jan! The Lindberg/Pyro kit represented a "non-working" boat from what I could tell. There was no representation at all of the "A-Frame", the dredges or dredge winder, nor the housing for the motor for the winder. And it only had a fo'csl cabin and not a main cabin as well, something that all the photos seemed to show.

So to represent a working boat I did have to do a ton of scratch building, but lucky for me that's something that I enjoy the challenge of a great deal.

Tom's artistry is especially apparent when compared with the kit parts as they come -

This highly attractive rendition by Paul Helfrich, who prefers to build more or less out of the box, shows how different the kit can look.

Both styles have produced distinct yet beautiful builds!

That is one beautiful Build. I love it.....Cheers mark

One thing I notice in Paul's build is how he was able to locate the second small boat that the kit provides on the deck of the skipjack itself.

Once I cluttered up the deck with the extra cabin and work gear there wasn't anyplace to stow it aboard and rather than leave it out I wound up deciding to tow it behind on a painter.