"How it all began"

I've always built models of some kind or other, since I was a young fella. As a kid, model car kits were fascinating, and really sparked my interest in race cars and hotrods. The box art probably had the biggest influence on me, which would later in life, help lead to my career as an automotive artist.

As a young man, I also developed a love for wood working. I had an uncle that was quite a handyman and tinkerer, kind of a jack of all trades. He exposed me to a lot of different tools and basic carpentry skills, but he also had a knack for wooden type crafts, fun stuff for his kids, or things to sell at craft shows. Eventually he gave me my first Bandsaw (which I still have today) and that saw opened up a whole new world. I still have vivid memories of Saturday afternoons in his garage, cutting, sanding, painting, learning new things. To this day, I can get lost in a project, a whole weekend will fly by, and nothing else seems to matter except the project I'm working on.

As my skills progressed, I also began dabbling in wood carving. I had the opportunity to work with a company that mainly did work for some of the larger amusement parks. This was my first exposure to professional wood working, carving, and paint work. These guys were were real craftsmen, their standards were exceptionally high, and this envirorment raised the bar for me to a much higher level.

As a creative person, I seem to always be looking for a new challenge. Slowly, All these different skills began to merge.....enter the R/C Airplane!!!!...... This hobby combines every possible skill that a craftsman could possess, wood working, finishing techniques, mechanical skills, engineering, and a strong understanding of basic aviation. For almost 10 years I was consumed with this hobby. Eventually though, the kit building got old, the creativity was lacking. With model airplanes, your just at a different level than the next guy, not to mention crashing a very large expensive aircraft that you spent hundreds of hours working on. I'm not going to get too deep into the R/C aspect, because that's not the point of this Blog, but It was very important schooling to all my projects that are to follow. I still build aircraft occasionally, and still love to fly, but my creative drive keeps me constantly looking for a new challenge.

During the height of my R/C days, An older gentleman walked into my shop to inquire about some paint work. He had a 1/4 scale sprint car built completely from wood, and needed some minor lettering done on different areas. Although it was rather crude, I really liked the idea of a very large wooden car model. Through the years I had seen a lot of wooden toy type vehicles, but most were built with kids in mind, and the finish work was usually clear polys or stains to show off the beauty of the wood working. I'm a painter by trade, so it doesn't bother me in the least to prime and paint a beautiful piece of wood.

This idea stayed in the back of my mind for several years until I finally decided to try and build a static 1/4 scale dragster. My first effort wasn't my best, but I learned a lot, which set in motion several other large models which I'm still working on today.

Through the years, I came to realize that these models are rather special, and somewhere, years from now, hopefully someone else will end up with these in there collection. The main purpose of this blog is to somewhat chronicle these projects, so that in the future there will be some kind of record of how and why these models were built.