Wood tenders, etc

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Is it possible they were never used for their intended purpose? Yeah, I know, speculation, at best.

Works for me. I seem to recall seeing a few tables of this sort of stuff a long time ago at one of the Maurer auctions..and leaving long, long before they ever got round to selling it, and wondering about purpose and whether anyone used such stuff still.....

Actually thought about buying a few just because they look interesting....

[sarge]

Regarding the so-called CD models, for what its worth, lets get the record straight.

That is Cleveland Model & Supply, not known as "CD" in any of my dealings with them. Cleveland were very famous as the supplier of plans and components to the model aircraft world, way moreso than trains. They are still in business, and have been since 1919 which might make them one of the oldest model concerns in the country.

I still have several aircraft made from their plans, including this C47, that a very good friend of mine and I built together 'way back.

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This A26 was completed to their plans...

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as was the Vultee Vengeance.

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They all built up like the C47, then were covered in thin birch. The C47 has a four-foot wingspan. Unfortunately, my modelling partner contracted leukemia before we finished the C47, so it remains as it was when he could no longer work on it.

All in all we built at least ten airplanes in this manner in two different scales. He was an excellent modeller and we had a lot of fun with aircraft, both in model and in full-sized form.

Back to wood forms, then.

[Jay Criswell]

Sarge,

Yeah, I collect old balsa model airplane kits with an emphasis on early jets (jetex power has always fascinated me). Cleveland made very interesting kits. The sad part is, though they're still in business technically, they haven't produced a kit in many years. All they offer now are the plans from kits they used to produce.

Jay

[bob turner]

I really like the DC-3.

I built Ercoupes and Panther jets, and covered them with thin balsa sheet, and Cubs, of course, covered with paper.

[Jay Criswell]

Bob,

I have 4 or 5 of the big Panther kits. Beautiful plane. I like it better than it's successor, the Cougar.

Jay

[sarge]

Jay and Bob

I really don't know what one of their kits actually looked like. They were always 'way too salty for me as a kid but the plans were always available in my lifetime. When Fred and I built the planes you see here, we never even looked at kits; might not have even been available. It never occurred to look because we were only after the drawings anyway, and weren't shy about changing up some of their design for better appearance; we were building them for static display as scale models. Fred was an absolutely peerless scale modeller in wood. We had a great time and I learned a lot about wood from him.

I could take some shots of his models and put them up for you guys if you'd like. He lived in a townhouse so didn't have much room. After he would finish one, he'd keep it for a while, then bring it over to my house once the next one was on the bench. After he passed his family passed them all on to me, some he did himself and the ones we did together.

We didn't always use their plans; I have three P39s here for example. The first is a rubber-power, perhaps Guillows? It was built uncovered. The second is a stock silk-span covered version of the same. Both were used as prototypes to reverse engineer the structure and covering nuances for the third, a full scale one with wood covering.

If memory is correct, there were quite a few plan packs that never were available in a kit, and the kits were always a premier item whilst plans were the staple of the business. That might be an incorrect impression on my part, but that was always what it seemed in a pre-internet world. All my inputs were by mail, magazines, and local model-building associates.

As an aside, I'm also a great appreciator of the Grumman Cats, both prop and jetpowered.

[bob turner]

As I recall, the stick models I made were Comet brand. Not sure of that. The Panther was maybe 18" wingspan. They made a B-26, which I put together when I was maybe ten. A huge model.

Yes, for me the best looking Grumman was the F9F-5 straight wing. I never flew a single engine jet - probably never will. Given the number of friends who have died in Bearcat and P-51 crashes, my desire to fly those has diminished. I will probably stick to Stearmans and Cubs . . .

[sarge]

Offline, Carey sent me some pages from some 1930s catalogues where Cleveland did indeed refer to the "C-D line" of model railroad kits and "Cleveland Design" range of aircraft so the record becomes straighter yet. Bad day if you don't learn something. Still in all, the company is Cleveland, but they did indeed use C-D in describing their model ranges way back before the war. So, I'm mostly wrong on that score then.

Bob, you might be right about Comet; triggers the little grey cells regarding being the start point for those P39s perhaps. Might have been Guillows, though, but Comet boxes are being pictured in the brain at the moment.

[Jay Criswell]

Many of the Comet boxes had the kid with a coke bottle of the workbench. Yeppers! Have lots of their kits too. Probably need to liquidate. Future estate sale is getting out of hand!

Jay

[bob turner]

Darn thing kicked me off in the middle of a complex post.

My Comet B-26 was in fact the A-26 shown in Sarge's post, only with a balsa nose cone and nacelle rings. I covered it in paper - the Bamboo Bomber.

Now back to trains. Hal Sharkey (RIP) left me this Lobaugh/Scale Craft half finished. Hal was way better than me; note the detail on the smokebox and the trailing truck. The tender is a darn old dirtbag wood block!

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[bob turner]

And that NP Challenger tender - my best wood block, and since the prototype was rivetless, probably as accurate as any. Way more accurate than the Lobaugh version, which was too short, among other things.

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[Carey Williams]

Hello Beavers

Bob very nice job with working the wood into steel.

Cleveland ....Is credited with the birth if 7/8" gauge , sometimes referred to as C-D gage (no typo see catalog ) .....later to be 3/16 scale ,and finally "S " gauge. Cleveland offered what looks like some very nice product... as finished in the catalog ..... I've only seen one Hiawatha set ( many moons ago) .....it was lovely ...considering you have a few blocks of wood and some graphics to glue on ... I'm sure the finished product was 100% based on if you had any talent building ... as this was not a Monogram snap together car kit from the 60"s .

Here are some of the Cleveland catalog pages from 1938 ( as referenced by the Sarge) .... same illustrations appeared in Cleveland's ads that ran in MR , etc . late 30's /early 40's .

If any one has any Cleveland product please post some photos... at York the gentlemen who bought out a good share of the Cleveland train stock ... still has plenty of graphics for the reefers ...NOS from the late 30's ...

Cheers Carey

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[John Webster]

There must have been more than a hundred model airplane kit manufacturers in the 20s to 60s era. Cleveland was top of the line for scale, detail and kit quality. Most of their offerings were in 3/4"=1" scale (1/16). Other manufacturers included Berkely, Scientific, Comet, Guillows, Peerless, Hawk and Sig.

Most kits consisted of printwood (sheets of balsa with the outlines of the parts printed on them-you cut them out with a razor blade), strip stock for leading and trailing edges and longerons, balsa prop blank, wire for landing gear and prop hooks, turned wooden wheels, celluloid for windscreens, tissue for covering and plans. Some had decals.

Modern kits often include laser cut printwood, plastic props, vacuum formed cowls and canopies, high quality tissue and nice decals.

Plans were available through magazine ads. Many of the magazines would run a construction articles with reduced scale plans and then sell full size plans through the mail. There is a website called outerzone which offers free downloads of hundreds of old plans.

There are still a few people who build stick and tissue models. They can be found at these forums which also offer free plan downloads:

http://www.smallflyingarts.net/

http://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_forum/index.php

http://www.stickandtissue.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl