A Scale Modeling Life with Bruce MacRae: Episode 117

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, dave.

My modeling mojo is alive, but scattered. We just finished up Wonderfest, which I frankly think was one of the most enjoyable Wonderfests I've ever been to. We've got the Nationals breathing down our neck. I've been modeling not as much as I'd like to, because it's summertime and I've got a yard to take care of and a pool and all of that stuff but I'm jazzed. I'm jazzed, I'm happy. I love the guests we've got, I love the episodes we've been putting out and, frankly, it's hitting on all cylinders. I couldn't be happier. My model sphere is good. How about yours?

Well, you got a little bit ahead of me, but that's all right. That's your model sphere. I tell you yeah, it's summertime and the living's easy.

Yes, well, I'm not sure about that.

June is. We're 11 days in. It's kicking my butt already, man. The lawnmowers in the garage still hip popping and hissing because I just finished up like 8.30 pm. Yeah, that's not my style.

Yeah, and it's not even hot out yet. It's unseasonably cool.

Well, that helps the grass grow actually.

Yes, it does.

It's kind of in that perfect zone, but that's neither here nor there. Yeah, wonderfest, that was a blast man.

Yep, we had a great time.

Well, we really made a point to try to get into it to the degree we could in a day and we did pretty good. It makes me excited about next year and what we might be able to pull off, given given the, given the degree of planning we didn't have for this one. Right, we did, we were just late to the game. Yeah, I think a little foresight and a little talking to some folks in the wintertime instead of two weeks before the show might help our position a little bit.

Yes, yes yes, it will.

Well, folks, if you want to hear that, it was in the last week we dropped an extended 12-minute model sphere. In fact, we call it the totally massive model sphere because we got about almost an hour's worth of extra content in there from the folks we talked to at Wonderfest. It was a lot of fun, man, that was good. I'm glad I came into town. I'm glad we did that.

And I'm glad I mean we got to see a lot of listeners, the number of people who stopped us, or that we saw them and recognized them. It was just. It's great to see the, the, the listeners in person. I really enjoyed that.

Well, and I just dropped in the show down in Knoxville the week prior, so it's two in a row for me. So, yeah, good stuff. Glad, everybody starting to recognize us and stops us and say, says hello.

Yes, very much.

Well, my model sphere since you already gave yours is pretty good. I'm excited. I'm with you, man. I like the guests we've got lined up, I like the ones we've had, so it's kind of kismet. We had the two episodes, you know, with Paul Gloss for the Scale Model Generalist, and then Jake McKee came in with the episode that honestly, it wasn't what I had envisioned but it turned out really great and just to show scope creep and having to learn new things. So I think we really drove it home to try new things and not be afraid to do that. Yeah, that was dumb luck, folks. That just worked out. So we had a listener pointed out on the dojo that it meshed well, or at least maybe it's on the Facebook page for the podcast. But somebody pointed it out that it was a good compliment and I appreciate that it really did. In retrospect, yeah, couldn't have planned that any better, I don't think.

Hey, like Napoleon, I would rather be lucky than good.

All right, it's a lot easier. Yeah, that's my model sphere man Just kind of liking what we got going on right now.

Good.

Well, since we're recording, obviously there's got to be modeling fluid involved. What modeling?

fluid do you have? I managed to locate a bottle of Buffalo Trace on a Lexington store shelf.

That's kind of a rarity, but it shouldn't be. I know, I know it's weird for people you know, not from Kentucky and bourbons from Kentucky, so they think every bourbon is available in every store. But it actually doesn't work that way.

In fact this well, they had some back on the main shelf, but this one was actually out front on the special shelf with stuff that's a lot more expensive. I'm like, what's that out of here? I guess because they can't ever get it. But yeah, what?

about you, man, what you?

got going on. What about you, man, what you got going on?

Well, I've got a beer from Stone Brewing called Stone Delicious IPA.

It's a CBD beer.

No, it is not a CBD beer Just a regular beer. It is an IPA and it is definitely IPA forward. We'll see how I survive this one as we get through the episode.

You said stone twice in as many sentences. Oh, okay, so that's why I'm asking.

All right.

Well, dave, the listener mail keeps coming in through the email channel and, I assume, the Facebook direct message as well.

Absolutely.

Well, we would be remiss to not dive right into this, because this is often said as our favorite segment and it's my favorite segment. I don't know if it's your favorite segment or not. Absolutely, I like listener mail, so we'll get to that in a minute. First up, john McAvoy. John is deciphering the musical references in episode 116. Let it Snow by Vaughn Moore. I don't know who wrote Let it Snow, but a whole bunch of people have sung it. You probably listened for about four hours to people singing Let it Snow. That one was unintentional, but something you said triggered that one.

Oh, okay.

And then ACDC Highway to Hell. Yeah, that was the one I deliberately put in there.

Deliberately snuck in.

Deliberately snuck in and Bob Bear asked if that's where we're taking to Wonderfest and I said yeah, because it runs right by your house and I said yeah, because it runs right by your house, ray Lapius, from Freeland, michigan, which is in the middle of the state mid-Michigan, somewhere. His friend's calling Ray Ray.

All right.

Is that?

like Tay-Tay. No, no, no, Ray Ray is completely different. Ray Ray was oh gosh, Was that what's happening?

I don't know, but that's a deep, deep pull man Deep cut.

Sorry, I think Ray Ray may come from what's happening. And yeah, you're right, that's an obscure pull.

I'll have to look it up. Go Google that folks.

Yeah.

It could be. I got to go look. Well, Ray checked out Squadron Hobbies and found it to be a great experience. That's not unexpected. No, not at all Sure, that went well. He wants to talk about episode 115 because it caused an epiphany for him. It helped him decide that he's not an undecided modeler. He is in fact a generalist and, to illustrate this, on his bench currently is a 125th scale dump truck and a 148th scale A-10 Warthog.

Wow, that is eclectic.

That's right, and the history bug bites him from time to time, and especially the Eastern Front, particularly Stalingrad. He wants to do a dio of a Junkers 52 at a nearby airfield. Oh, I can't remember the name of the principal airfield in Stalingrad.

Port Scova, isn't it? No, the one where the T-34-.

She was a model who was married to the lead singer of the Cars. Poritskova, isn't it? No, the one where the T-34s? She was a model who was married to the lead singer of the Cars.

No but Poritskova I'm close, the one where the T-34s came onto the field full of JU-52s.

He's looking to do a winter dio with them, you know, perhaps loading the wounded on board to evacuate them, and he wants to know, outside of snow effects and winter camo, what else details, methods et cetera come to mind to suggest in the diorama just how cold it was in that operating environment. He thinks extreme climate is an important ingredient to the scene.

Well, the one thing that you saw a lot in the extreme winters in Russia was the use of fires to warm the oil in the engine. So a lot of aircraft would have, in the case of a JU-52, like a 55-gallon drum under the engine and they would actually have a fire going in it to heat the engine, to heat the oil, so that they could actually start it is like starter trucks and fuel trucks and anything.

Any vehicle soft skin vehicle running around the airfield in extreme climate typically, is going to have the bonnet, you know, the hood, the bonnet and the radiator blanketed with a heavy quilted bonnet blanket for lack of better word to call it or radiator cover. They use that stuff a lot in extreme weather. You know the figures are going to help do that and in 72nd scale. That for me that'd be difficult, for steve houstead it probably wouldn't be difficult well, but he can do it in 48 scale.

Uh, he's saying 72nd, it's a, it's a yunkers 52. So well, there's a 48 scale y. He's saying 72nd it's a, it's a Yunkers 52.

So well, there's a 48 scale, Yunkers 52. But he he might not have eight square feet to display, that's true.

He's being sensible.

Yes.

And you're going to steer him away from God's one true scale? Really?

No, no, I'm not, but okay.

Just huddled around these barrels that Dave's talking about Anything?

that's not moving. A lot is going to have icicles hanging all over it. Well, and there would be a lot of sledges, you know, sleds that everything would be pulled by sled rather than by cart or something like that. So you'd have wooden, handmade sledges that the folks would use to pull stuff to and from the airplanes.

Well, let's tip this one over onto Steve Hustad's court. Steve, when you hear this, why don't you write us back and let us know anything that comes to mind from your experience? That might help convey extreme cold in a small-scale diorama. That'd be helpful.

Yeah, that might be a whole episode.

We got a friendly one from Steven Reed. Steve's down in the Savannah Georgia area and he attended a show down in the south there somewhere. There was another email that I did not print that he told me which show it was and Mike Ida-Cavage was the chief judge there and he sent us pictures of him and Mike and saying that PMM alumni met thanks to their shared love of the show on June 8th 2024. So very good. So you got somebody I just met since we started the podcast. Steven was one of our first guests, and then Mike Ida-Cavage, who's somebody from my early part of my modeling journey that we've reconnected with since we started the podcast too. So that's really cool. Thank you, thanks, steve, thanks, mike. Comes full circle, doesn't it? It does? Maybe Comes full circle, doesn't it? It does? Maybe we'll see them both at Nats. That would be cool, that'd be great. Finally, from the email side of things, dave is Michael Karnaca from New York City. Big surprise there.

All right, I'm prepared. I've steeled myself for the question.

Hello gents, looking forward to listening to your Wonderfest bonus episode soon, when I get time. Great picks and great coverage on the facebook page. Well, I appreciate that we set out to do better than we'd done before at wonder fest and we we did do that, but, dave, I think we can still do better oh, we can do better.

We can always, that's right.

So that was our warm-up. That's right. It'll be hold my beer next time. Yeah, that's right. Mich Michael was wondering if there is a seemingly endless Let me start over If there's a seemingly impossible finish effect that you wish was available in a bottle from a manufacturer. Personally, if someone offered fog or mist effect in a jar, that somehow magically worked, yeah. He would be eternally grateful and would want to use it immediately. Probably be toxic as hell.

Yes.

But oh well, he wants to know what type of product that we would look forward to if it was available.

I can tell you the one I think of. And what's that? Fire and smoke.

Fire and smoke fire and smoke.

I've I've seen fire and smoke portrayed on any number of dioramas and I've seen some really good efforts, but as you get close to any diorama it just tends to turn into a cotton ball with an LED in it. Yeah, exactly, it tends to the effect tends to fall apart as you get reasonably close, and I'm not sure it's even possible to model that. I know Steve Husted's thinking about it and thinking hard about it.

I know Steve Husted's thinking about it and thinking hard about it. I've seen a few on Facebook, some of the Facebook pages and groups where there's some modelers who have done that and I think in a photograph where you can control a lot of the focus and the view angle and the lighting and all that, sometimes that works pretty well in that instance. But for a standalone display on a show table where you can get up close to it, yeah, that's tough.

Yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about, that's real tough.

Yeah, I don't. That's a hard one, yeah, so what's yours? I'm going to be completely facetious here, and I need a six-pack of Mr Modeling Time.

Yes.

And a side of Mr Modeling Finisher.

Yes.

I think if I had those, if I could either airbrush it on my model or crack the top and do a shot, whatever, I think I would love that. As far as weathering takes, I don't know, I think that's tough. Yeah, fire and smoke, fog and mist, yeah, those kind of environmental effects, almost that are nearly impossible to do in scale. So, I don't know, mr Modeling finisher.

If you find, mr Modeling time, I'll take a 12-pack.

I'll pick that up if I see it, but don't hold your breath.

You got it.

Well, what's happening on the direct message front, Dave?

Well, we've got a number of direct messages. First, charles Rice reached out just to remind everybody. When you go to a show, buy a couple of raffle tickets. It helps the club and you never know what you might get. He went to a show recently, paid $2 for a couple of raffle tickets and ended up with 48 scale armor hurricane. So it's a good idea. So you're helping the guys who are putting on the show and we know that some of these things are run on shoestring budgets and they make an effort to put on a raffle. Try and help them out. You never know it might work out for you.

Christian Gurney of Bases by Bill I want to say a special thank you to him.

He reached out because we've been working on a little secret project that I can't exactly reveal to you now, but he's been extremely helpful and we're working on it and he's put in effort and done a fantastic job.

And I just want to thank him because he reached out to let me know some sample items were on the way. Brian Thorson he's a member of the dojo listener member of the dojo and he wanted to know if it was okay. He's one of those modelers who has his Facebook profile, but he also has a modeling persona and his is Valhalla I think it's Valhalla Scale Models, valhalla something and he wanted to know if it was okay to join with both his regular profile and his modeling-specific entity. And I told him, of course, yeah, we've got absolutely no problem with people doing that. Now he was having a little problem joining it and I'm not sure exactly why, so we were trying to troubleshoot that. But regardless of that, yes, if any of you are already members of the dojo but you have on Facebook something devoted specifically to your modeling endeavors, you're welcome to join that one to the dojo as well.

Yeah, it just gets confusing, juggling both sometimes. Yes, it does.

Yes, it does. I'll resemble that remark. I occasionally post from the Plastic Model Mojo entity.

When I mean to post from my own, that does happen and I was only posting from the mojo yes dojo, uh yeah, oh well, I'm getting better man, yeah, uh, jason sizemore, who's a member of the local mmcl.

He is the sucker that I got to take over. I'm sorry. He's the volunteer who stepped up to take over the newsletter the Tactical Notes newsletter that I had done for our club for years. He reached out because I had posted a bunch of Wonderfest photos photos and, because of life and everything, he hadn't been able to get to Wonderfest and he asked permission is it okay to use those photos in the upcoming newsletter? And of course I told him absolutely it is, and I don't have any problem if any other of you out there, any of you listeners out there, are newsletter editors for your local club. Anything that I post on the dojo, any photographs that I post and I take, please feel free to. If you need them for your newsletter, want to use them for your newsletter, please feel free to do so. Now, anybody else's that gets posted, you need to ask their permission.

Same for me. You can use my stuff, Kevin Hedrich our friend from Kit Masks.

Oh yeah, we've been having a lot of people, a lot of listeners, telling us that they've interacted with him and how satisfied they are, what great service and what great people the folks at Kitmask are. Well, kevin reached out to tell us he's been interacting with a lot of our listeners and absolutely how much he's enjoyed it our listeners and absolutely how much he's enjoyed it and also to tell us that they are about to have a big expansion of their line.

They're about to drop 100 new kit masks into their inventory. So I hope he doesn't end up hating us man. Yeah well, I hope he doesn't end up hating us and I hope he doesn't end up stop modeling because of us. But listen, when you find somebody who provides good just like Christian Gurney at Bases by Bill or Dr Miller when you find somebody who's got a good product and they are responsive to their customers and go out of their way to help their customers, I want to sing those people's praises, I want to drive customers to them. I want the listeners, the modelers, to know hey, these people are out there and they're great, Utilize their services. So that was just nice to hear. So that was just nice to hear. And finally, from the DM side, John Colasante. He was down, he's a listener, he was down.

Ah man, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, he was down in Lexington, in your neck of the woods. Yeah, Because his daughter's a horse person and he was at the horse park in Lexington which, by the way, is a beautiful facility if you ever happen to be in Lexington and so he was down there for her horse event and he was asking for bourbon recommendations, and so I think both you and I gave him some recommendations. So I think both you and I gave him some recommendations. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to stay around for Wonderfest, but we were able to give him some recommendations. He was able to pop in and pick up some bourbon and hopefully he's enjoying it as we speak.

Yeah, john, next time you're down here, just let me know a little ahead of time. Man, I hate, I hate, I missed you. I really did, cause that would have been so fun and you know, I know you're busy with your daughter and that's great. I'm glad you liked Lexington. It's a great place to live and I think you saw the beauty of the place.

And I tell you generally, though we get this from time to time hey, I'm down here. What's a bourbon I can get that. I can't get back where I'm from. Well, ironically, like I just mentioned, with the Buffalo Trace, believe it or not, folks, some of the better stuff is actually easier to get where you are than right here where it's made, because so much of it gets exported and the folks around here are just bat crap crazy about buying it, inflating the market and a lot of stuff that I would recommend I can't get here. It would make more sense for me to ring you up and ask you hey, go see if you can find that. If you do, bring it to nats and I'll pay you for it yeah, believe it, or that's probably a more likely scenario.

That is absolutely true and listen, if any of our listeners happen to be in Louisville or Lexington, reproductions or whatever, if your time and our time permits. There's nothing we enjoy more than interacting with the listeners. Again, you're all modelers, so by definition we already have a common interest and a common language and we'd like to see and we can give you recommendations Is that it, man? Is that all you got? That's all I've got from the DM side.

Well, folks, we really love this segment. We can't say it enough. You know I'm going to do something a little different. I want to hear from folks who've not written into the show before and I want enough people to write in to make me regret making this call to action. We haven't had an all listener email episode in a long time. All new listener email All new. Yeah, if you've written in before, push pause. Some new folks you've not written into the show before. Got a question, got a whatever man. Send us an email and you can do that by emailing us at plasticmodelmojo at gmailcom, or you can send us a direct message through the Facebook direct messaging system, through the Plastic Model Mojo Facebook page, and look forward to hearing from you. Make me regret it. Stack me up, please.

When you're done listening. If you do us a favor and rate the podcast on whatever podcasting app you're listening to it, we'd appreciate it. Also, again, if you would recommend the podcast to another modeling friend you have who isn't listening to the podcast. That's the best way for us to grow and Mike and I definitely want to reach more listeners and we need your help to do it. So please recommend our podcast to your modeling friends who aren't listening currently.

And after you've done that, please check out the other podcasts out there in the model sphere. You can do that by going to wwwmodelpodcastcom. That's modelpodcastpluralcom Consortium website set up with help with Stuart Clark up in Canada. The Scale Modeling Podcast Stu's created a little website that aggregates the banner links to all these other podcasts for your easy access. You can go on that website and click the links and listen to you. You can't listen anymore. In addition, please check out all our other creator friends out there in the model sphere.

We've got a lot of blog and YouTube friends pumping out a lot of good content. Stephen Lee, sprupiewithfretz long and short form blog always good content. We've got the Inch High Guy, jeff Groves, who's going to be a guest a little later this month. The Inch High Guy blog all things 72nd scale. If you like 72nd scale, you're going to like what Jeff's got going on. Steve and Lee, for that matter too. They're both 72nd scale guys. Model Airplaymaker Chris Wallace, up in Ottawa, 48th scale aircraft model primarily Great blog. Great YouTube channel Always some really good, informative videos. Jim Bates, scale Canadian TV. He's got a vlog on YouTube Scale Canadian TV. Check that out. And finally, evan McCallum, panzermeister36 YouTube channel. Like and subscribe there. Please Help him get to 100K man.

Yeah, we need to get Evan to 100,000 subscribers, so please go to his channel and not only watch his videos, which are fantastic, but subscribe.

Finally, if you are not a member of your national IPMS chapter IPMS USA, ipms Canada, ipms Mexico or Israel or whatever country you happen to listen to us in please consider joining your national organization as well as your local club. The national organizations are run by volunteers who try to make your modeling experience better, a lot of which happens behind the scenes, and modelers don't know it's happening, but those folks are putting in time and effort and I'd appreciate it if you would go and join your national organization. Also, if you're an armor modeler or do modern historical figures post-1900, please join the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society, amps. Amps is an organization of like-minded guys who all have an interest in armor modeling, and they're more than willing to share their interest with you, and we had a great time at their national and are already planning to go to the one next year, so we'd love to see you there and see you there as a member of the AMPS national organization.

Well, Dave, I think it's time for a word from our sponsor.

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Well, dave, our special segment tonight was born in our trip to AMPS International Convention in April. Yes, it was, and I won't let the story get double-told. It's in the front end of the segment, but we had the pleasure talking to Mr Bruce McRae for a good long while.

Yes, and, and, and. Even though we talked to him for a good long while, we barely scratched the surface.

Well, let's see what Mr Bruce McRae had to say, dave. Well, let's see what Mr Bruce McRae had to say, dave. Well, dave, we had a nice encounter at Amps. While we were there, our guest slid up to our table to introduce himself to us and tell us about his enjoyment of our show, which we greatly appreciated, and then he sat down to take a load off in our guest chair and in about 10 minutes into that conversation, I was like you dope, why didn't you push record? Folks, we have Mr Bruce McRae with us tonight. How are you doing, bruce?

I'm doing just fine. I didn't know you could record there. Duh yeah, push the big red button there.

Duh, yeah, push the big red button. Well, you know, we were taking a breather too and you just kind of slid up there, uh, and we had a nice little conversation and then, yeah, the big boot hit me in the back of the head and I was thinking we need to have you on as a guest because you made a pretty big splash at amps. By the time it was all said and done, I'd seen some of your 35th scale dioramas on the Facebooks and the interwebs. I believe one of them I thought I saw in print.

Yeah, back in the seventies, when there was only scale modeler, I had a dozen articles and a couple of covers, and and then. I had I had another one in oh in the amps magazine. I got a cover on that with my links.

Yeah, maybe that was it. Well, bruce, before we get too much into the nitty-gritty, won't you introduce yourself and give us a little bit of your background, sure?

I'm bruce mcrae. I'm 71, so I guess I'm an old fart now, and I got involved as a miniature maker when I was like six or seven, maybe 59. I saw some kids building. They weren't building, they were playing with a model and I was observing because I didn't know what model kits were. And they abandoned the box and I snuck over and I opened it up. It was a Revell kit, one of those early rocket kits like tactical rockets, and all that was in the box was the sprue. There was no kit, just the sprue. But I had never seen inside a box, so I was playing with the sprues. This is amazing.

So I informed my dad I want a model kit. So he took me to the store, which was Savon's, and this was in Southern California, and he said what do you want? And I went I want that one. It was a Revell Destroyer, so he bought it and I wish I remember which one it was. Might have been the Sullivan's, maybe. Anyway, he said well, you need a bottle of paint. Okay, what paint do you want? And I like paint, oh, yeah, I guess. So ships are in the water and the ocean is blue, so blue, and so you know, it was the tester's little square bottles, gloss blue. There were no flats yet and to this day I wonder why. Why wasn't I looking at the box art going? The ship is gray, anyway, I didn't.

So I was six, who knows. So I took it home, I built it and I painted it, used the tube cement. I'm sure I got fingerprints on it. I'm sure it looked like hell. God, I wish I still had it today.

And my dad was amazed. He was a lawyer and no good with his hands but great with his logic and voice, you know arguing court. And he says, bruce, how did you build this? I says, well, I just looked at the pictures. You can't read. How can you build a wild kid if you can't read? I'm six, I couldn't read, but I showed the pictures. I got the part. I kind of lined it up, test fitted it, glued, it built.

Ever since then I never, ever stopped building models to this day. You know, sometimes we get into like junior high school and all that you know, you start to discover girl sex and rock and roll. No, I was building models and that's all I did. So eventually, what happened for me about the mid 70s or early 70s I'll go back about 69, junior high school, I discovered the remember those old profile pamphlets. They were thin. Yes, red and white cover. They have an airplane. I discovered those and went, hey, look at all this.

I started wanting to detail my models more. I found the B-17. You open it up and it's got that beautiful inside cover of the Memphis Bell like five color views. It had details on it that weren't in my Revell kit. You know that beautiful old B-17F Revell made. We all built it, right, oh, yeah. So I copied what I saw there. I don't understand why, but somehow the arrogance of a 15-year-old and it's amazing how much we think we know.

And Revelle was a 20-minute bus ride for me. It was in Venice. I was in Santa Monica at the time and I took my bomber down and my pamphlet and went marching into Revelle to basically fix them. You guys don't know, obviously, what you're doing. I mean, why didn't you put this in the damn kit? Yeah, yeah, actually, I still blush when I think about it. So what happened was the receptionist gave me this really interesting smile which I didn't understand at the time called down Mr Lloyd Jones, who was oh my gosh, yeah, okay, good, one of the big shots from the original days, right, yeah, and he very politely listened to me tell him and show him the magazine and this stuff and what was wrong with his model. And he smiled. And I understand now. The smile was like, aren't you cute? And then, when I was done, he let me finish. He said, bruce, I want you to understand something Revell is not in the business to make models, we are in the business to make money. Oh, and then he gave me a complete, thorough tour of the plant.

Oh my gosh.

Understand. I had never seen a model plant yet. I'd been building them, you know, but at this point, practically all my life. He took me through the art department, the R&D department oh, by the way, that issue of the pamphlet that I had, he says I have one on my desk and he took me through the model shop where they were building wooden bucks. And then he took me down to the pantographing where the guy was cutting into steel using the bucks. And then he took me into the production facility where they had these huge machines pumping model kits out.

And I watched this lady pull a tree out of a mold, pops out, takes it down, does a couple snips, drops it into a box, puts the box cover, wraps it in plastic, goes into a case and off it goes into a truck. And the first thing that came down, I watched he picked it up 30-second scale, off. It goes into a truck. And the first thing that came down I watched he picked it up 30 second scale corsair oh the first, the first time they made one 30 second was like new.

They were just starting this in 68.

I think this was oh yeah, that was, that was a great kit for the great kit and he dropped it into my hands and like this's like, this is for you. I was like, oh God, really. I mean this was like five weeks of income for me, right, yeah, Allowance. And the box was still hot from the plastic. Anyway, he took me out to the lunchroom, could seat about 200 people. It was a big room and two of the walls in l-shape were solid glass cases of floor to ceiling and they were full of revel models built and I went through, looked at these and the first thing looks so here I'm like 15.

I've never seen a model show. I've only been the hobby shops and I've never seen a model show. I've only been to hobby shops and I've never seen hundreds of museum quality models. I had no idea you could do that to a plastic kit out of a box. And he said have you ever heard of the IPMS? No, sir. He says well, we have our meetings here first Friday of every month. You need to be here, oh my, To tell you what happened. Was I never missed a meeting in the next 11 years?

I'll bet.

And when I went in, the first thing that happened to me was I went to my first meeting and I was just gobsmacked guys, maybe about 30 or 50 people about that many models. And I remember a Tony and it had this exquisite camouflage pattern, you know, a bare metal with the green, and I just like practically wet myself looking at this thing. It was so amazing and I asked questions and they would have a monthly media. Well, I'm sorry, a monthly contest at the media. And you know know, best model. And I said to myself that damn it, I am going to win me a bunch of trophies. And so I had two years as a junior and took about a year to get my, my first award, and I basically asked lots of questions but theged the hell out of them and everything I did was hand-painted and it looked it too. So basically I just asked questions and bugged them and started to figure out and I guess things clicked and I started winning and I got out into an adult. I started going to shows, I got a car so I could go anywhere.

For me in Southern California IPMS this was a golden moment when we had one chapter, the LA IPMS. Within about four years it blossomed into about 10 chapters all over the basin and I went to every meeting. I hit the mall. I was going to shows. And well, not to brag I guess I am that as an 18-year-old I went to a show it was called the AFV Show, the only one they had in Pasadena Ended up taking first, second, third and three categories in best of show I'm 18. They practically wanted to kill me. This happened many times. I've always wondered myself, after being out of the hobby for 30 years, that coming back to it, they have a no sweeps rule. I wonder if they remembered me.

The Bruce McRae rule?

Yeah, exactly Nobody remembers me, but they remember, don't let anybody sweep. And so what happened for me is that I competed heavily for 10 years and I developed my skills and I pushed categories that didn't exist yet like diorama. There was no diorama back in those days. There was other and I started making those and I started winning. The people went that was cool, I have to do that. People piled them behind me. We have to have a diorama category. Okay, now we have one. Now we need a large and a small, because a little diorama of a guy and his tank, that was a diorama in those days. And here's five tanks and 20 guys. Well, if they're equal skill, how could the other even place? So we had a large and small. Then eventually that turned into figure and armor and aircraft and ship and car. You know it eventually accelerated. But I have a feeling that I might have pushed that forward in the early days and I still love doing dioramas.

So what happened for me was in about 1979, 1980, I was starting getting some movie work and I remember I went to a space park APMS show and I had a shadow box and I suspected and I realized I was right Some kid had reached inside and plucked this scratch-built sword out of a pile of treasure that I had and ran off with it. And that was the point I kind of realized. You know I've already taken like 255 first places. I'm getting busy in the movie industry. That really soured me having somebody steal something. You know, man, I don't need any more awards. You know I'm going to get more into the movies and that's what I did.

How did you first get into the movie model business at all? I mean, what was your initial introduction into it? How did you get your first job, as it were?

It worked kind of like this Since when I was busy doing the model shows and the contests and the meetings, I was doing box art work for several model companies Entex, ravel, bandai, amt and in those days all of a sudden they went why don't we have a photo of the model built so the kid can see what he's getting in the box, rather than this beautiful painting? And so they needed somebody to build you know professional, quality, grade product to put on the covers. They just couldn't have the guy's 10-year-old build it. So people like me all of a sudden were in demand. The longest job I had was at Revell as the in-house model maker, so I actually worked there building box art and models for shows. I did about 50 box arts there and that develops your skill and your ability to build on a schedule. And from that I moved. I would also be entering shows.

And what happened was I got oh, by the way, I managed a hobby shop for a year. By the way, I managed a hobby shop for a year 1973, arrow Hobbies. And so I was at a show with this scratch-built stormtrooper because Star Wars had come out. It was the following year I literally scratch-built one before there were any kits of this thing. He was about seven, eight inches tall. I still have him and I had him on display at a Mac show in Long Beach and a couple of guys were talking about it, looking at it and, uh, I said thank you, and they looked at me as is that yours?

Yeah, yeah, built that. That's not a kit, no, that's all scratch. And the hands came out says, hey, that's really marvelous. Would you like to work in the movies? And I went like, yeah, make me an offer. And they said, well, we're going to be starting Star Trek, the motion picture, and we need some more people and you obviously have the talent. So I had had a few movie jobs prior to that, all kind of really minor things, but this was the big door that opened for me.

Now, were these guys part of the production company or were they part of the subcontracted model maker company that the production company hired?

It kind of works in a lot of work for paramount. They'll, instead of owning their own shop, they'll say, hey, you guys over there at boss films, we need these shots made and you're the effects, so you will build the models, you will, you will photograph them, you'll edit them, you'll send us the footage and here's so much money and we have it done and then they don't have to actually support a shop. Many movie productions will have a shop just during the production itself, like Dracula. I was on the MGM lot for that for three months building Dracula's Castle and some other miniatures, and we were actually being paid directly from Paramount. I'm sorry MGM, but mostly it's effect.

Shops are separate and there were a number that could have come and go and I sort of lucked into. The shop I was offered was called Brick Price Moving Miniatures, or BPMM, we called it, and he was sort of starting up and he had a contract for Project UFO producing their models and he just got the contract to do props for Star Trek, the motion picture, and so I fell into that. I worked there for eight to nine years and we did features and but generally they would hire out to get stuff so they wouldn't have to be responsible for their own shop. Ilm was, of course, a little different, where they started a model shop with their company in Van Nuys unions and he went off to the to the bay area and built his shop and unions were much easier to deal with and that was a good move for, for, for him bad for me because I didn't.

I didn't move up to san francisco. Well, I was offered a job on on the empire strikes back, but I realized that I'd have to. I didn't want to live up there because I didn't want to be beholden to one studio, right, because they have a lot of power over here. Well, you know, if we lay off, you don't eat, and at least in LA there's a dozen places I can work and you just move from place to place. So to also answer another question of yours, is that when, as a model maker and I'll expand on this that you move from show to show.

Now there are different shops like Boss Films, dreamquest, apogee were some of the big ones, and I'm working at Boss, which was my favorite, and if they have a job, they call you in, you start working and if another movie shows up, say, hey, bruce, can you stay, we're going to start air force one, I'm here. But there's a point when a shop doesn't have a movie and they're bidding for another job but they can't keep a crew on, right, so you're laid off, and then you immediately get on the phone hey, gene, what are they doing on titanic? Oh, they, they need a painter. Here I am. You know, sometimes you have feasts and sometimes you have famine.

When you worked for them? Were you an employee or an independent contractor? Sorry, that's a lawyer question.

Oh no, I've been down that road. Frick Price had us working as independent contractors, so he would just pay us our hourly wage and we dealt with our own taxes Right, so he would just pay us our hourly wage and we dealt with our own taxes, right. Uh, union shows dealt with you as an employee because you'd be working for paramount right, so they could take the union dues out actually no, you pay the union yourself.

Oh really, oh, yeah, yeah, that was a separate thing. You you did. Oh, I'll tell you about unions in a moment. The horrors, oh God.

The one good thing about Brick Shop was he got us all into the union because you had to put your time in to apply, and that was for the Star Trek, the motion picture, and the deal was this they were kind of slick. What you do is you got to work 28 days consecutively and then you could apply to become a union member, and that would be Local 44, which was the prop makers union. That's where model makers went. Gotcha happen is they would lay you off at about the 25th, 6th or 7th day, rehire you and then you get to go again trying to get 28 days in and you might get laid off again.

It could typically take a person from three to five years to actually get the right amount of time together and go in. However, you weren't through the door yet Once you got your 28 days. Then you had to take a test and of course, you would never see the results of your test, but they were not eager to let everybody in. But see, the unions had this thing now going. We got model makers and people want models in movies and all the prop makers here are, well, nail pounders. They're carpenters.

Gotcha.

See a prop is building a wall for a live action set. All their problems are dealt with with. Hammers.

Right as opposed to a model maker. They're almost set dressers or set creators.

Yeah something. We're really an entity unto ourselves. Well, what we found out was that the prop makers, the seniors, kind of jealous of us because they're like, oh golly, I like working with them. Little dollies, that'd be fun, yeah, except you don't need a 16-inch penny and a nail and hammers. Come on, guys. Except you don't need a 16-inch penny and a nail and hammers. Come on guys.

In fact, we once I'm getting sidetracked we once had a job where it was for Airplane 2. And we had to hire union people before, and then they would call on who was next on the list and then they would send that person to you and if he doesn't work out, you send him home. No, thank you. And then they send you another one until you're happy. Well, we got this nail pounder. And he says I need you to put together an airliner. You know it's about 10 inches long airliner, right, really basic, okay. And so he says can you handle? Oh yeah, I used to build bottles when I was a kid. Okay, let's see how that works. And then I came back about two hours later and said hi, how you doing. You got this thing done yet, and he's. Well, I got the wings together, but. But I got a problem. See this wing here, it's you know it, it it went together, it's solid. And the other wing has this hole through the top and the bottom.

You already see the picture. Oh, I know exactly what he did.

He says well, the problem is the one wing went together really easy. I just kind of lined up and glued it. But the other one, it had these pins in the way. I had to shave them off because they were in the way. It wouldn't go together.

So he says thank you very much. You don't need to come back tomorrow so you worked on Airplane 2?

Yeah.

Oh my, so your jet airliner made the prop noises.

Yeah, yeah, that was very funny, yes, it was. So anyway, what happened is eventually, for us, you have to take a test. So we went in to take this test. Well, it turned out they said read this book, it'll answer all your questions. It was a carpentry book how to make staircases and hang doors. We're model makers. We don't do that. So, our boss, they want to turn our shop, the BPMM, into a union shop. So they said, okay, well, we're going to get you guys all in here. You made your time and we'll give you your tests. Well, we didn't know anything about carpentry. So we filled out the forms and we did the test. They took the test. We don't get to see how we did.

Then they call us in to face a what I call a firing squad. It was six grumpy looking men at the table staring at you. I was like a court martial and they'd ask you questions that are they were all like technical questions that weren't in the carpentry book, because on a union lot, nail pounders have their own slang. What's a wild wall? It's not in a carpentry book. That's a wall that's removable from a set so a camera can go into that position. And we all failed. They even set me up with questions. I would say, oh, I think it's this. And then they would give me another question going oh, it's not that, it's this thing. I mean, they set you up to fail and of course I I didn't pass.

They let our boss to join the union. After all, it was his't pass. They let our boss join the union. After all, it was his shop. They should probably let the boss join the union if it's his shop, right. So we came back. Later A TAF Artliac came and it says you can't stop people from joining with that test. That's illegal. We got our hours in very quickly on search track and went back and they just had to let us in. It just terrified me of the whole union experience. I really didn't want to deal with them. They were very scary people. So, anyway, enough of them.

So now in Star Trek, this is the motion picture, this is the one everybody remembers, that restarted the Star Trek franchise.

Sure, did the original series.

What did you build on that particular motion picture?

Well, what happened was we were all excited, being model makers, we wanted to build the Enterprise or any spacecraft. And our art director, Daryl Anka, went to a meeting with our boss to tell us what we're going to build, Give us our plans. And he came back and he had this very sour look. I'm like Daryl, what's up? He says, well, this is what they gave us. He says we're going to make hand props, phasers, communicators, tricorders, luggage I mean just anything belt buckles, anything. A person had to hold no spaceships, no, no, Apogee is doing those and Trumbull, Right, Okay. So we ended up making about 2,500 hand props. So we made phasers. We had our dummies, we had the ones that worked. There was a big day where they needed it. Well, I mean it lit up.

When you say worked, you don't mean worked, worked.

No, no, like we. When you say worked, you don't mean worked, worked, no, no, like we didn't disintegrate the car next door. God, I could have retired right there. Yeah, no, instead we were making the props. Some would light up, right, you push the buttons, they would light up and the light would key up for the phaser firing. So the effects guys could make the beam fly when they knew when, and some were just dummies. Some would get crushed and thrown around. And belt buckles and God, I made 450 bio belt buckles. They decided you wear this belt buckle, kind of like a big Texas one kind of like those awards we got last year, and it would have readouts. So if somebody's injured they could poke the buttons and it would give you readouts of what's going on with the guy, rather than having a medic run over with a with some equipment. You notice. That idea disappeared after that film. So anyway, uh, we did a bunch of props and that was exciting. The best part about that was, since we weren't at Paramount, we'd have to deliver and each of us got a chance to deliver a box of props to the property master there, which means we got to see the sets.

Now I'm a Star Trek fan from when it was live on TV when I was 13, and I love the show. Never missed an episode. I was 13. And I love the show, Never missed an episode. And so when this came back, I mean this is awesome. So I come on to stage nine and the first time I was there there's a guard at the door. You got to show him. Yeah, I can go in. I go see the property master. You're trying to ooh and ah without being too obvious. I had to empty my drool bucket several times and then, the second time I came, I was supposed to go to stage 18, which is where the V'ger set was, but I knew where stage 9 was. They had all the interior sets for the Enterprise. So I went there first. You know, maybe I'd get a chance to look at it.

Interim Kirk's Quarters, the bridge, you know everything. And I went in there and just the house lights were up and nobody was in there and I went this is my chance, I'm going to go play. So I ran over to the bridge, I sat on Kirk's chair, mr Solo fired 19 more torpedoes than that Klingon cruiser and then I went over, I transported myself, I went to sickbay, I laid on the bed. I went to Kirk's quarter, I sat on his bed and thud, it's not a bed. It looked like one, but it's a solid piece of wood. I was expecting a mattress. Yeah, so your bum goes bang right. Then I went you know I ought to go make sure that Dick Rubin's lockup is really not here, and okay, so I went over to his lockup and I jingled the lock. It's obviously locked and you know you get that sense that you're being watched. That little spidey sense. Yeah, get that sense that you're being watched. The little spidey sense. Yeah, I had that and I turn around right behind me.

It's mr spock in full makeup.

Leonard neboy yeah, neboy was right there with this large fat man who's probably his agent. Yeah, and they have. You know, the stars have like a, a roll-around trailer that they can go in, close the door and relax, take a nap. You know, read lines. And that was his, and his door was open. He would have been looking at the back of me while I was checking Dave Rubin's door and so I turned around. I don't think he saw me anywhere else. God, I hope not. And I'm immediately going. I'm looking at spot full makeup and I've met Nimoy a couple of times before, but not makeup and not by surprise. And I quickly steeled myself and, Mr Nimoy, I'm looking for Dick Rubin. He's not here. Do you know where I could find him? And he says in this very tired voice I think he's on stage 18. Why don't you go try there? Thank you, and I took off, went to 18. Everybody was there Kirk McCoy, Scotty, everybody. God, that was fun, oh.

God, that was fun With your experience in the movie industry. What are some of your standouts that you enjoyed the most or were most?

proud of. Well, you could probably say it's a little like saying what was your favorite child. But I would say mike could answer that question. He has one child, dave's, my favorite child, oh there you go I would say the favorite films I worked on was titanic.

That was very challenging, it was a lot of work and it was unique because I wasn't able to actually do much building because I was supervising 23 people. When I showed up I was going to be their lead painter. I've been lead painter for many shows, painter for many shows and I was going to be painting a 44 foot titanic. And I arrive and I said I'm looking at it, it's not ready for paint. And I say, well, gene, what's going on? I mean the model's not ready to paint. He says, well, yeah, but I need you to run the model, the mold department, because we're getting crappy molds. Really. Yeah, yeah, let me show you the molds. And he showed me the anchor to the Titanic. It's about the size of your hand and there were knobs on it of resin, like if you stack maybe six quarters together and that's a solid blob of resin. We've got to carve and grind all that away to get down to the part, and a casting for anything should take you, you know, a minute to clean up the flash, prime it and paint it, you know, because we don't have time for that nonsense. So he had me redo the whole mold department. So I grabbed I had five people that I didn't know and I told well, whatever you've learned about making molds, forget it, we'll just. Let's just try it my, my way.

And I showed him what to do and in a week we were producing hundreds of perfect parts. And my boss came to me and says I know I hired the right guy because we don't have to clean anything up, they're all perfect. Yep, that's why you hired me. But I had to basically tell people what to do, how to do it, make sure it got done and make sure they had what they needed to do and answer any questions that they had. And then out of every hour I had 10 minutes that I could actually help somebody, but I couldn't get involved in building anything because I got to get up in 10 minutes and go check on the puppies. Go here going. Oh, no, no, no, no, no here on the paper. On the paper Bob, did you fix that? Why don't you go do that over there? And so I did save. I usually would mask because I could walk away from that.

Right.

And. But what I did save for me personally, I got the. The word Titanic is painted on the both ends of the bow and the stern. And I hand paintedpainted those myself, so I could say I did something on this damn model.

Now, was there one single 44-foot model or were there multiple models of different sizes, different shapes, different conditions?

Got it. What we had was the Hero Titanic. It was 44 feet long, 17 feet tall, 10 feet wide. You know, there are people that don't have yachts that big Right. We had actually two shipwrights build the hull out of wood for us. And no, this model never saw water, right, it lived in a hangar. You know where they built the spruce goose? Well, we had one of those hangars. That was our shop for filming and building, rather historical. So what we did was one was the hero, which cost us $600,000 and it came right on budget, and the other was the wreck that you see on the bottom of the ocean. That was only half of it, but it's the same scale.

They, at another shop, had built the rear end of the model. That was just as big and that's what stands up on its end when it's sinking, right. So they had that because they needed actually water around it. See, one of the deals with motion picture and footage is water and fire are the most difficult things to do in miniature, because flames and water you can't miniaturize. A flame is a flame and a water droplet is only so big, right. And we all remember those World War II movies with the destroyer steaming at you and throwing droplets the size of Volkswagens. Yes, yes, right, because the model was too small. Okay, unlike where we saw Das Boot, that U-boat looked fabulous going through the water, but that thing was like 20 feet long. So you got the scale. So the rule of thumb is quarter scale. If you go into that, it's going to look like a toy.

So, with this ship, our, the models we worked on, our hero and our wreck never saw water. Cgi was our water and our sky and our seagulls and people on the decks. Uh, the wreck. This is fun. We turned it upside down and filmed it that way because the camera moves on a track. You know what motion control is? Yes, okay, so the camera's moving a track and we would have to mount the track to the ceiling. We have to build a ceiling to hold it and have the model on the floor. Much easier just to turn the model up and leave the tracks on the floor where they are already. So that was.

It was funny when we had the wreck and we'd finished it. We roll it upside down and then we lift it up and then we mounted it inside. Things were dropping and pinging and pounding and bouncing around from just all the bits. When you build something, stuff would fall out. Oh, by the way, something about the wreck, before I forget, is we invented a term called rusticles, and these are the rusty growths. We made them from Cheetos. You're kidding? No, now, not the puffy ones, but the crunchy ones, yeah. So we got cartons of Cheetos and painted them and applied them.

And ate a few along the way.

Actually, that ended pretty damn quick. There's only so many you can eat and I'm going to paint them.

Yeah, you get orange all over everything.

You really, do you really?

once it paints on that. That that ends. One thing I managed to get for myself was a. We had to to show Cameron what the rust effect will look like and he has to approve it and he can be very fussy and so you don't do anything without his stamp for approval. He's got to bless it. So I built out of some of the parts we had a funnel and a couple of bits and put it on on a board and we did our rust effect on it. I picked the, the solution we got that it actually has iron in it and you paint the stuff on. It's a a two-process product and it actually physically rusts and it looks fantastic because it's a real rust and we show that to the camera. He signed off, went okay, this is what we're doing, guys, and so we put our piece together. We set it up, we painted this I had about 20 painters on it because it's big and the clock is ticking and it came out fabulous. We rolled it outside for some photos you have seen those photos on the ones that I posted and it just looks glorious all the rusticles and everything. Oh, by the way, I should mention that on the Titanic and many of the models I work on like Air Force One.

I often hide an R2-D2 someplace Because Star Wars was such a hit. It opened up my career in the movie industry Because all of a sudden everybody went we've got to have models, we've got to have miniatures, we've got to have spaceships and we need model makers, and that opened up my career big time. So it was for me a kind of a homage to George Thank you for a career. Next 30 years I'm going to put an R2 somewhere to say thank you to you.

Like Spielberg, hanging one upside down on the close encounters.

Now to be fair that wasn't Spielberg, that was Greg Jean, oh well right.

I'm not sure Spielberg even knew about it. Generally you don't tell people stuff like that, you just do it. The rule is it has to be quiet, unobvious. But you know it's there, Because if somebody really spots something like that, that could be the last time you work. We just blew $10,000 in footage and we can't use it. Yeah, that's bad, but R2, he's been on many. Have you seen Air Force One? Yep, One of my favorite films. I mean I got to build in one-tenth scale. We did an Air Force One, which I think one of the finest 747 miniatures I've ever seen.

Done 20 feet long, that's a big model yeah and we had four f-15s same scale, they're like six feet tall. We had 21 mig-29s. One was a, one was a hero, the rest were pyros.

You know I mean by pyro yep good, okay, and if I say something you don't understand, just ask. We had a Herc 130 and four KC-10, kc-17s, one Hero, three Pyro, and I got to paint them all. What a joy for Model to make that many military aircraft. Oh boy, that was fun. So Air Force One always had an R2-D2 up on the top of the tail. He's there in every shot.

Now I've got to go back and watch the movie Look at it.

So look at the very top of the tail. Now he's not, you know, silver, white, blue. No, that would be a little too obvious. I mean, the art director there and the DP had no sense of humor, right, so they see him. He'd like explode blood everywhere.

But the camera crew was in on it and see, the model was interesting because it was on a gimbal, like a marionette. Most models are mounted from underneath on a pylon and they'll move on a track or the camera will move. Usually the camera moves. It can pitch, yawn and give you all the angles and so it looks like the plane's flying at you and it's just a camera. But here we took the aircraft, it was suspended on a computerized gimbal off the ground so there was nothing under it and we could make it pitch, yaw and rotate and it could be repeated to a thousandth of an inch each move we programmed. This is really an awesome piece, and so when it went, when it was lifted off the ground, it would be, oh, about six feet up from the floor or seven, and that tail was really high. Well, with r2 on the top of the tail, no one's gonna see him.

I remember one point I was the last guy I would. Uh, I was. I was in charge of the paint department and many times I was the only painter and so I'd be the last guy to make sure the model's ready to shoot for any shot. And then we, when I tell the guys to lift it, they hoist up, we would start shooting. And I will always keep R2 in my, in my front pocket, and I would pull him out the very last thing. I'd stick him on with a little blue, blue tack and off it goes.

And at one point it started going up because our director was, was, was, was, having a cow. Come on, we're gonna go, we're burning daylight. You know, we're at a soundstage, who cares? And I realized he was still in my pocket. So I told the crew bring, bring, bring it down, bring it down. So they brought it down and they were at me and Dave's looking at his watch, pumping it, and I get R2, put my back to him, put him up there, do a couple of fake brushes with my brush, up it goes. And then we shot him. So he was there for all the shots. Every aircraft that blows up has got an R2.

Now when you say you paint, were you airbrushing? Were you brush painting, particularly in in air force one?

yes, whatever I needed to do that that worked the best. All tools are used, though I have to say it was a joy to pull out my v2 by vl to airbrush for a fine stuff, but often I was using like an automotive gun.

I mean, when you have a wing, just one that's four feet on one side and it's like nine feet long, right, you ain't going to hack it, you've got to use a real automotive spray gun. I used to have to prime like gallons of primer at a time. I fought with somebody 55-gallon drums of primer on big models, right. I went through some 55-gallon drums and primer on big models, right. And of course the deal is when you prime something like that you've got to keep your arm moving in motion so you don't get over-spray and you don't get the dusty effect and your arm starts to ache as you're working your way down the fuselage. Oh, it starts to hurt. That's still a gallon of liquid you're pushing. Let me tell you about R2 on starship troopers. Okay, I put them all over that too. We had a 18 foot roger young bottle and this was at boss films and the. The crew would have like three months to build the model. I had like three days to paint. It didn't seem right to me. The problem with painting stuff like that is I'm the last guy that's going to handle the model before it goes to camera, and so all the pressure is on me. You know, camera waiting for paint. How many times have I heard that? So what happens is I had some assistants who would lay down. We had to lay down this. The Roger Young was basically in kind of a green military color and it had lots of paneling, small panels to make it look big. So we used post-its to make squares and then I would this is where I used the VL. I knew it airbrush and five colors already pre-mixed in bottles and I would just work from one to the next, one to the next and the guys would stay ahead of me and I would just walk around spraying, spraying, spraying, get the next color, spray, spray, walk, walk, walk around it. It does take you days to do that. And I was placing the R2s. I put five on this, I got one in. Now All the signet are on, Everything's great.

I'm really on the final touch-up and all of a sudden I get the spidey sense and I realized Dave up. And all of a sudden I get the spidey sense and I realized dave jones, my, my supervisor, is standing looking over my shoulder at the r2d2 and going oh, is he gonna have a problem with this? I was hoping he wouldn't see that. You know what he does now won't hurt him, right. And he says bruce, is that r2 there? Yes, dave, is there more than one. Yeah, how many? Five, five, yeah. Well, they're not gonna be all you know. You know white, silver, blue. Oh no, dave, these are military r2s. We're also gonna be. They gotta be on the outside of the hole to fix the ship, right, I mean, where else would you put one? He's like okay, and he says where are they? You find them. So he went like, anyway, he found all but one. I showed him what the other one was and he kind of walked away. I'm thinking, well, I think I got away with it, or he's gonna tell me to take them off. He wouldn't fire me for it, but he could tell me to remove them.

The one thing about dave jones he worked on the original star Wars film in Van Nuys. He was one of the model makers that built the original Star Destroyer. So we're talking about a major geek, right? Yeah, but he's a supervisor and he has to talk to the people above him and I went to lunch. I came back from lunch. I'm heading back to my paint booth, which is a huge booth, and someone's in my paint booth is a huge booth and someone's in my paint booth. I mean that's my shop and I can walk very quietly when I want to, and I moved up and looked in and guess who I found with this camera?

Dave jones was taking photos of the r2s and I very quietly walked behind him and stood with my arms crossed like he turned around and he practically hit the ceiling when he jumped. It was very satisfying, hi, dave. Hi, he tucked his camera away. Hey, yeah, I'm back. I'm gonna finish this up today. We should ready to shoot tomorrow. That's great. He. He walked, walked away and went. It's safe. Art is you're all safe buddies. Stay where you are well.

Well, bruce, while you're doing all this work for the film industry, are you still doing the historic type stuff, the kits at home, my stuff, your stuff, yeah.

Okay Well, you've probably heard this before so you won't be surprised. No, you work easily 12 hour days on set building miniatures and doing stuff like that. The idea coming home having dinner and then cracking open a model kit just isn't working for you anymore. I imagine not. I tend to. What I would tend to do to relax is I sort of discovered computer games, started killing things on the computer die, art director, die, die, die. That was fun. One thing I did do, though, to kind of keep my hand in it, I did occasionally go to model shows just to see what's going on. I remember going to some scam shows to see the miniature yeah, I always, always liked those and to see where the state of the art was climbing. Every time I went to one from you know when I did last time I entered I think it was 1980 and so you know we're 1990s now and.

but I did love war gaming and historical and and middle earth, always a tolkien fan, love the books, and what I did was I did miniature wargaming. I would like to build gaming tables that were dioramas, that were as they call eye candy. You're going to game, have good looking pieces, you know, and so I did that. They weren't competition worthy but they looked pretty nice and we all had a lot of fun gaming with my stuff, my stuff. But once I retired from the industry, basically in 2007, I noticed things had been slowing down. Cgi took a lot of work, but what was worse was the work was simply leaving Hollywood, going to Canada and, of course, new Zealand, australia, eastern Europe, and we had what we called flight per production runaway production, thank you, bruce.

And I was working on a hollow man and I had a buddy who was a producer and says, hey, what's going on with this runaway production? He says, well, let me tell you, bruce, we have at the moment, well, feature films right now, currently hollywood 12, really, yeah, and there are 90 in canada and it's going to get worse. Oh, it got worse. And basically canada was offering very good deals, incentives. Hey, come up here, we'll save you 20 on your production. What's 20 percent of 20 percent out of a 40 million dollar movie?

yeah, yeah it's a lot of money. Who's gonna say no to that right? So a lot of it was going away. Cgi liked to claim that they were taking all of our work, but they would often film our miniatures and then cgi them. They take our models and then and then then photo capture them and then manipulate them. One of my jobs at BOSS was on in fact it was on Air Force One. I was the liaison between CGI department and the model shop and they would ask me to come over and look at their CGI footage of like F-15 and say these are the colors, Is this right? And I say, well, you know the area that you got gray, that's actually metal. Oh, okay, Let me fix that. Let me fix that Metal, metal, metal. So I would correct stuff.

And still the real thing always looked better when you retired and when you hung up your movie props. How long did it take you to go back to for want of a better word historical modeling, or classic modeling, or hobby modeling? How quickly did you drop back into that About?

20 seconds. What happened? My last film was Die Hard 4, and we blow up the power station.

Yeah, and it was magnificent.

What a great way to make your last movie with a bang literally.

I just watched that the other day.

Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, in fact I'll post my photos on Dojo, on dojos. So what happened was I went out to Las Vegas to see a. My wife teaches Scottish and English country dance and I've been doing that with her for 30 years and she would teach class out there. And so I went out there for one of the classes and there was an air show at the Nellis Air Force Base. So I went to that and I was walking down the end of it it was toward the end of the day and I say, oh, there's one more exhibit. It looks interesting, it's got a military vehicle and some stuff and it's all the way down at the end my legs are dead already. I've been out here all day.

I walked down and I saw a guy going hey, he looks kind of familiar, looks kind of like a guy I used to work with. That's Jim McGeechie. My God, it's Jim McGeechie. I haven't seen you in years. I used to work with him in the studios. He moved to Vegas to work in aerospace. He looked at me and says, bruce, I was just thinking about you. We need another guy in the model shop at Bigelow Aerospace. You want a job? And I'm like, yeah, thanks, I can guarantee you at least five years of work. No problem, we're in. So I ended up there and since we were doing aerospace model work at lunch, I bring a model and work on it there at lunch and on my breaks.

And then the local hobby shop, which unfortunately is no more COVID, killed it. Hobby Town, usa would have a model contest twice a year and the guy said come on, bruce, why don't you pull something up? Let's go do it. We started winning. The three of us were just killing it because we're all professional model makers and they were just kids and hobbies and that kind of got the juices flowing going. Look at all the interesting stuff in the industry that I've missed in 30 years and you know the, the paints, the technique, what's a filter. You know all this stuff. And look at the model kits my God, they've come a long way. And so that got me rolling and I started getting the juices going. Now I'm retired from aerospace and that's all I do at home now is build, build, build. So much fun. Oh, let me tell you about the nemesis of the model maker, what it's like to be a model maker in the industry.

Okay.

The guy who gives you the most trouble is a art director. Art directors will typically you build the model to what he's asking perfectly. It's got to be perfect because they'll, they'll, they'll jump all over you. And he goes oh well, why don't you sand all dimensions down? 13 and a half percent, that'll be better. And walks away. It's a night shot. I mean, give me a break Anyway. But whatever they say is gold, you've got to do it.

On Hunt for October, we had a perfect Akula, four feet long. We spent about a month scratch building this thing. We made a mold of it, we had a casting. We assembled the casting, it was primed, ready for paint and then ready to go in front of front of camera. Mcterran, the director, comes by and he looks at it remember, it's four feet long, 80, 48 inches and he says why don't you cut four inches out of the middle? It'll make it shorter, it'll look meaner. And he walks away and I I looked to my boss, which was greg gene at the time went what the hell is that Four inches out the middle? And he says that showbiz, that means our mold, our $5,000 mold, is trash. Yeah, that's right. We'll be making a new mold after you get to cut the model down. Now tell me honestly, boys, honestly, you've both seen that movie, right?

Yep.

Okay, if that Akula had been four inches longer, it wouldn't have been nearly as scary, right?

No, it would have been the exact same.

Yeah, exactly Now. There's a rule that we use. It's called the burning clown rule. You've probably never heard of that one.

No, this is what you do to art directors. They're not going to give you a problem that we use is called the burning clown rule.

You've probably never heard of that one. No, this is what you do to art directors. You're not going to give you a problem. I mean, not all of them are, like you know, spawns of satan, but but fewer are like kind of normal people, but but most of them are, are idiots, and what they would do is you build the set exactly the way they want it and then you take a clown and you set them on fire and you put them in the top corner of the model. The art director will walk in. He'll look and go, okay, okay, lose the clown, okay, and he'll walk away. And now you remove what is easy to fix and he's happy because he got his say, he made it his. So you give him something easy that you can fix.

I had an art director for a model of a as a show called the tower. It was for tv movie of a of a modern office building. It's all automated and it's trying to kill the two people that are locked in it overnight. The elevator is about, you know about an eight inch cube and it's aluminum because it's modern. And the art director says I want this to be, I want a certain kind of look to this aluminum. Okay, you have bronzing powders which come in a variety of colors of aluminum and yeah, we have those and I want a sample of each one so I can decide which will look best on this. And I want you to cut, for masonite, two-foot square pieces and paint those, and I had about 10 colors to do. The bottle is big enough to hold in two hands and this is a sheet of light that's four times bigger. What a waste of material, right? Okay, well, that's four times bigger. Yeah, what a waste of material, right? Okay, well, that's the call. So I mix and I paint all these, I line them up.

He shows up the next day and he says, okay, which one do you like? Oh, I think this one. He picks it up, he holds it, he's going I like this one, but there's too much red in it. Red, it's literally aluminum powder with a tint. There's no red in this. And I look up and I'm saying, oh, our ceiling is kind of a redwood color. You know, this thing's a mirror, right, so it's reflecting, and you don't want to make art directors look stupid in front of them because they'll always remember that it's like. You know, I suppose it might be reflecting something. No, no, no, here, get some blue bronzing powder, mix it into your paint and that'll kill the red. Sure, whatever you say, he walks away.

I go to my boss. Boss says who's going to do it? Bruce, you don't have any blue. I know it takes two weeks to get this powder. Oh, he's coming tomorrow. Yeah, I know. Hey, that's okay, gene, go back to the office and yell at somebody, I'll take care of it. So the guy comes in. I kind of mix the stuff up. He comes in and he's like oh, I got it all done for you. Oh, but let's walk outside, because you know this is all fluorescent green light. You want to go outside where it's daylight. You get true light out here. Yeah, good idea, we go outside. A hand to him. He's like wow, this is incredible. Like you're a little heavy on the blue, but this is what I want. What's reflecting the blue sky? It's the same piece that he saw the day before. The day before, but he wrote all. He signed off. I used it. Everybody was happy. By the way, it was all in darkness. You never saw the color, but that is very typically the kind of things that happen to a model maker.

When you retired and got back into modeling what you've been doing, that, I think, did you take it to the Nationals in Las Vegas. The original diorama, the Jeep.

Oh, my original Jeep diorama yeah.

Which I call the Wine Tters, the wine tasters, the original one not the one that was, not the one that returned.

Right, that's right. Um, I took it. I think you might be confusing two shows In Vegas. We had nationals here in 21. 21.

And last year we had the Texas one and I brought both dioramas and put them together. Oh, okay, I had the new one and the original one, okay, and I put a little signage next to the original one because it's not going to win anything. I mean there are seams running up the legs of the guys, right? I mean, come on, but it took a whole bunch of awards back in 72. I mean two best of shows, but today it could not place. But I put it there with a little signage saying, hey, this was almost 50 years ago and this is the same idea. But the skills I have today. I had several people come up and say I remember this in Scale Model Magazine and I was so impressed with the original. It was kind of fun to have people see that.

I remember that and I remember the original article. Oh, do you Probably has it. Oh, do you Probably has it. Well, I don't know that, but did you ever actually get paid by scale models for any of those articles? Not a nickel. I have heard that.

Yeah, basically I've never been much of a writer and though the computer makes it much easier for me to write, but you know those are your typing. It wasn't a typist, it was handwriting. I think it's old, a lot of erasing. And he would pay if you gave him an entire article. That is, you write the article and you supply the model for the photos. I was happy to supply the model, but I really wasn't into writing articles.

So Sid Shivers used me a lot. I had a dozen plus maybe 20 articles, but I supplied the model. He would photograph them and they come in and out and I gained a national fame through the magazine. And so when I managed, when I in 73, I was managing a hobby shop, I had a place to put my models out of my bedroom. I could put them in glass cases in the shop and people started coming in going I saw it in Skidmore and that one and that one and we started bringing people just to look at my models and to meet me and to sell them stuff. The boss was very happy about that. So yeah, I still get people today on the internet and of course and live will say I remember this model back then. That's kind of neat.

So now, what inspired you to not necessarily rebuild, but rebuild the wine tasters diorama again?

Well, when I decided to kind of get back into this, I started building dioramas again and I started learning again and looking at the new techniques and trying and learning how to paint figures again. And I kept looking at that diorama. I mean, this is the most successful diorama I've ever made. I think it's taken like 11 first places and two best of shows, or like it's this most popular I. You know it's looking mighty long in the tooth. I could punch this up. I'm a better modeler. Now, 50 years later, I hope I am right. And, uh, I wish I could say the same thing. Oh you, you've gotten better, I'm sure. And so what happened was I kept thinking I could rebuild this and I started looking at it, going God, I have to take this whole thing apart. I've got to scrape all these seams off everything. And then it occurred to me no, mcrae, don't do that. This is what it was. Leave it alone. This is a piece of your history. Leave it as is. Go build a new one, because you'd have to tear this thing all apart.

It wouldn't be the same thing again right start a new one and you don't have to actually copy it. You can do some things that you couldn't do back then. And so if you notice there's there's no mp jeep around the corner that they're going to crash into, right, I was thinking about doing it, but the way I was laying out I realized there wasn't room for this and the MP is still getting splashed. So I added two guys over in the corner looking at him and laughing. I thought that was much, much, much better. And the Jeep has a trailer with a liberated barrel of vino right.

We liberate things and I had a GI writing it, kind of like that great scene out of a guy writing the A-bomb down.

Dr Strangelove Dr.

Strangelove, yes, yes. So he's writing on his car and he's twirling a bra, yeah, which I made out of paper and I went. Well, what if he's facing the other way saluting the officer he just splashed? I mean, he's an officer, he's got to salute him right, and then give him a wisecracker face right, and then maybe two guys yeah, there's room for two, you know. So you get this sort of this mission creep as you start. Oh, what about? Well, I have this building. There's a balcony I could put a little girl looking down, waving at the gis. There's a cat up there with her. Yeah, because I always like to put a cat in one of my scenes after one of my old cats balan. And then, oh, I got this great cameraman that I, that I picked up. And what if he's on the other side filming the whole thing? Guy getting splash of the drunken gis in the Jeep and horned heads to the rescue right.

Yes.

And, of course, the techniques I had learned to get to this level. I went yeah, I could do this. By the way, I sat thinking about that for about three years.

Really yeah.

Yeah, I kept going oh, maybe next time, maybe later. I was even going to go to Italy and I was going to take photos. So I have some stuff in my head in detail, like what does an Italian doorknob look like? Right, right, you know I can't photograph them here, and so what I did is I. Unfortunately, our trip got canceled due to COVID.

Yeah.

We were three weeks from getting on the plane and we had to no better cancel. I'm glad we did, because we would have probably gotten stuck in there. But instead, what I did when I went at this I went to the computer and I went to Google Earth and I went to Italy and I went down. You can actually put yourself on the street.

Yes, you can.

And I walked on the street and took screen caps of details of Italian buildings. I mean, how awesome is that?

Yeah.

Absolutely that technology when we were kids.

I just got you in trouble.

Yeah, right, yeah, you're right. What did you make the building out of?

Oh well, what I did is I've seen lots of people doing it what I did is I built it out of sheet styrene. Okay, I really understand styrene. I would have normally built it out of rigid foam right, because I can carve into it to get to get stone walls but I realized it was going to take a lot of foam and the structure and the size of it. I use sheet styrene. And then what I did is this material called balsa foam that I used in the studios. We had a whole bunch of it on dracula and they were throwing it away and I took boxes of it home with me. You know, see, there's gonna go in trash can or into my garage.

The balsa foam is different than that extruded stuff that they use for construction, for paneling. When you push that stuff, it springs back a little at you. Well, balsa foam has no memory. You push it, it stays there. It's really interesting. It's a very fine grain, so easy to carve. I usually use a toothpick to carve it, a round one, gotcha. And so what I did is I took a flat piece of it and I basically carved all of my stonework into two pieces that were of a various size, and then I made a rubber mold. I'm really good at making molds.

I wonder what you got that skill, Imagine that. And then I poured urethane. Oh gee, castings. Yeah, I'm really good at castings and in fact, by the way, just to sidetrack, I spent a delightful afternoon with Steve what's his last name? The guy who does the value gear.

Monceau, steve Monceau.

Yes, yes, and we were talking mold making, because you know we both do that. So, anyway, I would make a paper thin casting and then I basically applied it to my plastic walls and then cut out the doorways and I would glue those on and then I had, which means I still have the mold. If I want to make more of these things, Rather than carving it once, I have to do it again and again and again. The roof tiles were done. You know, roof tiles have a very have a geometry to them that has to be perfect, Because they have to. One has to nestle inside the next.

Right.

And then the next one's reversed, and then reversed, and then reversed, and nestling all. If you don't get that right, they don't work. And I couldn't do it. And a buddy I used to work with in the industry called me up, name was Kim Bailey and he said what are you doing? I said, well, I'm trying to make these damn tiles. I don't know if I can do it. Then I have to make a lot of them. Well, why don't you give me your dimensions and I'll build them in CAD and I'll print them for you? You can do that. Oh yeah, piece of cake. Oh yeah, give me the dimensions. So I sent them the stuff. Five days later I had 600 tiles.

Yeah, 3d printing is amazing.

I couldn't have done that? Yeah, and it was so so, so fast. So that way I could put them on individually so they have a little drift, you know, like the real ones do, Unlike buying a sheet with all perfect and then I could break some and they have some broken ones you know.

So all the windows and doorways and the balcony, that was all made from good old, evergreen plastics. Just cutting the bits and gluing them together to get the shapes you want. I carve into my styrene wood grain. I'm pretty good at that. It looks good, especially when you give it a wash. Then I figured out how to spackle to get that spackle. Look where some of the spackles fall away over the centuries and you've got bare rock, bare stone. By the way, old dogs can still learn new tricks. It took me 50 years to realize I can take spackle which I've used forever. You know, if I add some acrylic brown paint to it it won't be white, it'll be the color that I want it to be. You know like what an amazing concept it took me this long to figure it out well.

Another diorama that you had at amps a few months back that got a lot of attention was an act of mercy. The world war one scene oh yes, thank you.

Yes, that was my latest. Literally I got that done a week before the show. Yeah, that was a challenge I was given. If you look at most of my stuff, you generally see there's a thread. My pieces tend to be kind of uplifting, maybe funny, thoughtful, human, and I really don't do dead people or people in pain and agony. Yes, it's very real, it's war, but I don't really feel I need to do that right. I like to show the human part of warfare and it is certainly there. And so bob lamassaro said to me one day, coming back from a show, he says bruce, you know, you got this, the. Why don't you try something a little more gritty, a little more tension? You know?

anxiety I was like, like what? This is a really alien idea to me. And he says you know, like Sherman Tank crashed through a hedgerow with Germans scattering for their lives, you know? Something like that? Okay, I'll think about it.

Well, when I was in France I did the 50th Normandy tour for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Did it with vets Fascinating, that's another story. Anyway, there was a museum in Verdun I went and saw and it had this really striking diorama I mean, this was 30 years ago, it was figures were about 12 inches tall-ish. There was a French soldier standing at the rim of a crater and with his weapon he's extending it to another soldier, a Frenchman, who is up to his armpits and sinking in the quicksand of a shell crater, reaching for the rifle with complete terror on his face. And it just struck me so fascinating I took a couple of photos of it and it stayed with me. Well, 30 years later I still was there thinking about it and I thought what if I do that? So I kind of worked it out and I found some figures. The closest I could get were two Americans that I was able to convert into the poses that I needed. I found the right hornet heads and I found a German figure that I only needed to fly literally from the armpits up. I worked him hornet head, nice, big, bright face, all terrified. I got some beautiful hands reaching clawing and I got them in the mud and I kind of worked it out, reaching clawing and I got them in the mud and I kind of worked it out.

And as I was kind of working out this thing, then it occurred to me I've got this area opposite, this line of thought going. What if I put a skeleton? You know people have dead skeletons in these scenes all the time. It's almost a cliche oh, a dead skeleton in the mud, big deal. And then it occurred to me what if he was death? What if death was hanging around watching? Now, he wouldn't be visible to them, but he would be ever present. And I thought, well, you know he's been at this for a long time now. Maybe he's going to sit down and wait. I mean, in fact he should just relax. He's got a scythe, his hourglass, he'll just, you know, sit there, cross his legs. Maybe he, maybe he'll have a smoke, you know, just kind of waiting, waiting his time to come up, see what's going to happen.

And I thought that made an interesting touch. So, as I called it, you know, an act of mercy. You have two Yanks rescuing a helpless German soldier and while death patiently looks on, a guy had asked me online. He said well, how do you know if they're going to rescue him? I mean, you know, because he doesn't have his hands on the rifle to pull him out. I said, well, I leave that to the viewer. And then one said well, what was the dumb idea handing the German a loaded rifle? And I said how do you know it's loaded?

Well, had you ever done a World War I diorama? Because you really captured the terrain effect that you see in a lot of photographs and films of the Western Front in World War I that muddy moonscape type.

Actually the answer is yeah, I did one when I was about 11. Okay, so I don't think that really counts, and it was a vacuform battlefield.

Clearly your muscle memory was pretty good, it got better.

Yeah, I learned a couple things, but no, but what I did do is I went online, I looked up World War. I barbed wire and trenches by the way, I handmade all my barbed wire, yeah and there's seven feet of it I had to make it doesn't look it, but there's seven damn feet of that and it took an hour and a half to make one foot. So, yeah, that was something Because of the internet. I looked up World War. I trenches, bud, and when I build, I have a folder called projects so this one had been Mercy is what I call it and I look up photos that I think have stuff that might be interesting to inspire me, and so I fill that up with photos and then I go through looking at stuff. I end up going like well, what does RoboWood and Barberite look like? How is it actually made? How deep is a shell crater? What's the level? So I started looking at this stuff and I eventually go this works for me, this is good, this is good. So I try to at this stuff and I eventually go this works for me, this is good, this is good. So I tried to keep it real, and I even found a photo of three Germans helping to pull out a French soldier that's in the exact same way and he's up to his hips and they're trying to pry this guy out of the mud. So, yes, it did happen.

Yeah, so the internet provides me with a lot of inspiration, work, and there's all these new products and, oh, the other thing I do with every project, because I'm I seem to be picking things that stretch me, that I've never done before, you know, like ocean or cascading water at the edge of the world or stuff like that. And with this it was mud, a crater water in the mud, and I experiment. How am I going to physically make mud? Well, I had a mud product from AK I'd saved for a year.

Opened up, it was hard as a rock. Oh, thank you very much, threw that away. There I went, 12 bucks for nothing and I ended up making mud almost literally out of white glue and mud for my yard and adding stuff to it and crushed cork and stuff, and I would experiment and try experiments and I go through all kinds of experiments until I find that worked, sucked, and then, once I figured out, now I could apply it to the actual piece and I don't waste time going oh, that looks like hell. I gotta strip this off. No, I never have to back up, because I'm sure that I got it right by time. I'm ready to apply to the real thing, especially if you're putting a figure in it, right.

Yeah.

You don't want to have them all nice and painted and then go oh, that doesn't look good.

That's a concept that one of our recurring guests, steve Hustad, has drummed into my head to experiment, experiment, experiment and yeah, what you just said. You don't have to go backwards and undo something, because you know what you're going to get, because you've taken the steps to prepare for it.

Yeah, and you go online and you see people have already done a lot of this work for you. You start looking at it and you try to go well, he did it, but I can't do it, let's try something else, right?

So yeah, the Internet's awesome.

I post all of my notes. On what I do, I keep notes and on my websites I keep a tutorial. These are my notes Because maybe the next guy that comes along says, how did you do the ocean? And I get those comments a lot and say, well, here, go to this website, go to this link. It's all there. If you have more questions, ask, ask me. I'm always here to help. Link it's all there. If you have more questions, ask, ask me. I'm always here to help and I get lots of people thanking me for the tons of photos and the notes that I put up.

Let's talk about one more of your finished works.

Okay.

And then we'll move on a little bit to something else before we wrap up. Sure, heidi is not really amused. The Panzer III with the irate little BDM girl, yep oh very good, bdm, you got that.

I'm impressed. Yes, that all happened. Well, kind of due to my wife, I was looking at stuff online, so this was like 2016 when I did this and I was kind of like I want to make a diorama, let me try this. And what I did is there was this figure of a gal I call her Heidi, hands on hips bend at the waist, legs spread, looking down, and I went what a marvelous figure. It was from a company that made metal figures 35th a lot of women, and it was a Japanese company, I think. He's like one guy runs a show, kind of like Steve, and I'm going God, that figure. What could I do with that? And my wife said just buy it and you'll figure it out. So, my Scottish soul, I kind of went okay, I'll just spend 20 bucks and buy that damn thing. So I did, I kind of played with it and I thought about it and it started to evolve.

What is she doing? Well's balling somebody out. Okay, why? Well, I want to put a tank in this. Just bought this panzer three, so I want to use that. I have the hatches open because I always wanted to do the guy's hanging out of the hatches. That'd be fun.

And then I like, oh well, why did she hit the guy? Okay, he so. Did she slap him? Did you punch him? Did you kick him in the shin? Did you kick him in the nuts? You know like what? Did she slap him? Did she punch him? Did she kick him in the shin? Did she kick him in the nuts? What did she do? Well, I went through all this. I think slapping might be better to do rather than in the jewel box and he'll be standing hobbling one foot, he'll be falling down. So it kind of works out. Why did she hit him? Because he ran over her bicycle.

It's 1944. Bikes don't grow off trees in 1944 in Germany. It's a training crew. Oh, this is coming together. The guys in the tank, they're looking down, they're laughing their heads off. They ran over the kid's bike. The driver make room. He comes out, he apolog out, he apologized, he gets slapped. He's looking all shocked, got the great face for that. And then, and the, the other gunner, who, the loader, who can't see the action, is this being explained to him by the commander who's pointing him pointing oh, look at this, fritz got slapped by a little girl. Oh, this is so funny, the guy hanging out looking right at him, awesome.

Then I went I saw a set of figures came out of some germans. There was a pig and they're kind of standing around. I went, oh, hey, guy's got his hands on his hips, he could be looking. Oh, this works. So I got one guy, benny over, who was touching, who's like touching this, this pig. He's like got his hand on the bicycle. I'm like yep, that's really crushed, that ain't coming out. And the other two are kind of like laughing, looking. And then I had, well, two of those figures could be over here about 45 degree, looking this direction. So I create kind of a triangle of everybody looking at the one spot, Heidi.

And then I had this one place, the corner from the tank that goes down, and I said somebody ought to be there. So I put a park bench. I thought what could be in the park bench? Somebody sitting, what about a civilian, like an old guy or maybe his daughter? And they're looking up and seeing this. But converting little girls and old men was tough. Then I found this set with this one German officer who's sitting. All he had to do is change his head out to a laughing head, and so now you have lines of sight going all to one place and you have some dimension of the whole thing sloping up so it's not dead flat.

It's not the old classic 45, like you know Chappelle told us to do and you got a diorama. The key with these is that the figures the face, is just as important as everything else, and the eyes need to be connected to someone else. That, as you have figures. I'm so tired of dioramas of like five guys standing around a tank, everybody looking in a different direction standing around. Oh God, I'm so bored of dioramas of like five guys standing around a tank, everybody looking in a different direction standing around. Oh God, I'm so bored by those. Come on, kids, think of something else you know? Or Germans pointing into the distance yeah, I've seen that one too, you know. But have them, the guys doing something together. They're interacting with each other. You know the guys like pointing at a shoe. You're like you know, can you believe this? You know, like the shoe's falling apart. Yeah, it really sucks, bob, you know you stepped in that. That crap. You know something? Don't have them looking at the viewer. Have them dealing with each other in some way. And so that's Heidi is kind of classic.

In fact, I got a perfect score on it at AMPS, which was kind of fun, and they said all the line of sight. The story is obvious. I like adding details around it because the theory I've had since the first days was if you come and look at a diorama and you say, okay, I see it, there's this and there's that and there's that, but what if you come back 20 minutes later and you look again and you're like I didn't see the cat right there or I didn't see this detail? I like the idea that you come back and see something you didn't see before.

So in dioramas I find that's very popular to make them very cramped, very tight, but I kind of like them to be a little bigger, not quite so claustrophobic, I guess, but that you have more of a sense that there's a world around them rather than almost kind of a cookie cutter feeling. I understand that idea and certainly it's popular, but I like to have at least an inch from my figures to the edge of the table. So there's a sense of a world, an ambience. In fact, when I did the ship going over the edge of the world, did you ever see that?

Yes, yes, yep.

That I actually wanted to make it bigger. I was going to have it three feet tall and about a foot wide of the type, because I wanted to get that sense of this long fall and they're literally out at the edge of nowhere, you know, and a little ship like that would work but it wouldn't fit in my cabinet, so that restricted the height because I can't ever have to be able to to dust that ship with that rigging bruce, we've really enjoyed your work, especially the amps.

We got to see so much of it, oh, thank you and where are you planning on attending the ipms national convention this year?

no, because, because what happened was it was like well, we can afford one trip, but I went. I've never been to amps and I've never been there, so it's like let's go to hand, I gotta pick one up, we're gonna go to amps well, I understand but I think next year in fact, we might get to do both next year.

I really like to go back to amps again. I really enjoyed that show. Well, I understand that hit on the way out here, you know, and there was the roscoe turner ipms show. I got to hit the week before amps and that was fun and I met guys who were going to amps. And this november I'm going to get to hit three shows. One's an armor show by a non-ipms group in fort benning, georgia. They have an armor museum and they're having an armor contest and armor contest and Tennessee has one within a week of it. And then there's another one at Wichita Kansas, wichita, kansas. Yeah, so I'm going to be able to hit three, plus we'll get to see some other museums. There's one at Pensacola. That sounds really fun.

Oh, the Naval Air Museum. Yes, the Naval Air Museum is the finest military museum I have ever been in in my life. Oh, wonderful. Now I'm prejudiced. I'm a founding contributor to the foundation. It's a great museum, you'll love it.

Well, if you're connected, it must be good, right.

And Pensacola is the only other place. If I didn't live in Louisville, the only other place I'd live in the United States would be Pensacola, florida.

Oh, okay, okay, Nice. Oh, by the way, my B-17, the Memphis Belle that I got down to Revelle. That got my entire career started right. I got on this trip to Amps. After the show, we went to Wright-Patterson in Dayton. Yeah, in Dayton I got to see the Memphis Belle for the first time in my life.

They just put it on display in the last couple of years.

And it was such a thrill Like. This is the model I built. This is the plane that did my career. So it was a real kind of a special moment to be able to see that finally. All my life I've probably seen every episode of 12 O'Clock Hobby Okay.

Yep, bruce, where can folks follow your efforts and see your work?

Ah, okay, they can see me at. I have two Facebooks and one is Bruce Azumi and that's H-A-Z-U-M-I and that has all of my stuff, by the way, like my miniature, my movie work and I'm a star, I'm a stormtrooper in the 501st legion, so it's got all that stuff my, my golden retriever photos and vacation so a lot of stuff there. However, I opened up a second one the beginning of last year, which is only my miniature work. So if you don't want to wade through my personal life Stormtroopers, golden Travers go to Bruce McRae's Magnificently Marvelous Manly Miniatures.

That a hell of a name. That's right.

That has all. Now. Both sites have the same miniature work in it, but the Bruce McRae has got only my miniature work, professional and personal.

Well, it's been a real pleasure talking to you at AMPS and here tonight.

Same with me, thank you.

And we're really looking forward to what you got to show us next. Yep, and looking forward to that, we might possibly see you. You said Benning, it's Fort Moore now Right, yeah, we might possibly see you, you said Benning it's Fort Moore now, yeah, but yes, that's the show that, if we go down there this year, that we're going to go to because it has the attached model contest.

Right, right.

Yeah, they open the armor collection like four times a year and the show's being held in conjunction with one of the times they open the collection to visitors. Yes, definitely that's one reason why we're doing that. Yeah, I was thinking about going to see. We were talking about hitting it from this last trip, but I went well, let's go do the model show and that and some other stuff. So that's November. Would you be possibly going to the one in in tennessee?

I think it's the week after it would depend on where it is. If it's in the middle tennessee, possibly. If it's out near memphis, that'd be a no gotcha. I think that might be murphysboro we've been there before, not yet show it. We, individually and together, we've been there as participants, so it's possible.

It looks like we will get together that show and if the LN works, then I'll see you a week later, why not?

Well, all right, bruce. We encourage folks to go check out your work and we look forward to the next time we see you, and we thank you for joining us tonight. It's been a lot of fun listening to your stories.

This was so much fun and, by the way, you've only grazed the top of the iceberg.

We realize that, so maybe we can have you back.

Yes, I would love to Absolutely. I'll save you some new stories.

Well, thank you. You take care of gentlemen.

That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. That was that was a lot of fun. Uh, folks, you all don't realize it, but but we could have gone on a whole lot longer with bruce. He's just a great guy, very personable, very funny, has one of those people who's lived a life and has just tons of great stories Plus great modeling insights as well.

Well, it was great because we knew about the Hollywood stuff based on our chat with him at AMPS.

Right.

That went unrecorded. But I didn't realize the the Ravel connection he had.

No, neither did I. That was just a complete shot.

Really, really interesting, and I'm I'm sure we're going to have Bruce back, and even for the short bite at Nats or wherever we see him next.

Yes.

It won't be Nats. I don't think. I think we can. The best shot we got for him is maybe down at the Fort Moore. Yeah, possibly in the in the winter. But yeah, looking for the next time our paths cross with Bruce, because that was a lot of fun and that's a lot of scale. Modelers dream of that kind of thing.

Yep, dream of that kind of thing.

Yep, exactly and a lot of folks who kind of get there, maybe not to the hollywood, but are involved with some kind of cottage industry or something kind of learn to regret, feeling like they want to do that.

But yeah ah, you know, bruce is kind of both barrels. He, like he said in the interview, he didn't do it while he was employed doing it but didn't miss a beat once he got out. Just wasn't getting paid for it anymore. But he's turned out some great diodes and I look forward to whatever he kicks out next. Man yeah.

His work is beautiful. Cool guy, cool guy, and from now on I will look for an R2-D2 whenever I see one of his models to whenever I see one of his models.

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Dave, it's the Benchtop Halftime Report. What you got going on Well.

I'm a little bit scattered. I'm working a little bit on this thing and a little bit on that thing and not really feeling focused, but I am at least modeling some. The flyhawk bt7 is 90 95 construction complete and I'm hoping this weekend, depending on what else goes on in my life. I had big plans for last weekend and it did not work out. But what, what? Whatever goes on, if it's possible, I have big plans for this weekend for the bt7, the a a7M2, the SAM is coming along. Basic construction is done.

Now I am doing one of the things that everybody hates to do. I sprayed primer along all the seams and now I see all the stuff that I have to go back and fix On the plus side. It's not as much as I feared, and now I see all the stuff that I have to go back and fix On the plus side. It's not as much as I feared. They're really not to pat myself on the back, but I got the scenes pretty good. So, while I've got work to do, it's not as much as I thought it was going to be You're getting better, man, maybe slowly, and that is oh, speaking of slowly, that's the one other thing. You know how I talked late last year and earlier this year about building faster. I need to get back to that philosophy. I really do it's. I've kind of gotten away from it a little bit and I need to build more, build faster and hope that the progress in quality follows rather than leads in front. You got to be careful man yeah.

Well because you've, you've, you've. The drum you've been beaten for the last several episodes is how much you like the build phase? Yes, yeah, which means, which means stuff stagnates in the paint phase and you start new stuff.

Yeah, that is absolutely true. Well, he was club president, but a former club president, stu Cox, who got the nickname Optimus Primer because he would build and then prime the model and stop and start building the next one. So Stu would end up with five or six models ready to paint. So, yeah, I've got to fight that, I've got to get focused, I got to build faster. And, man, if you can find a case of that, mr Modeling Time, I would give my left kidney for a case of Mr Modeling Time.

Well, I'll give you a pass on the B-52. Okay, thank you, I'll give you a pass on that one.

Evan will harass me on that. Maybe this weekend.

That was started under kind of the same premise as a group build yes it was. Your brother could live out every day of the rest of his life not see another B-52 and not regret it one bit. Yeah well that's true.

He put in his time. It was time well served.

It was but that Crusader man.

Yeah, I know, Got to get back to it. I'm just again Mr Modeling time and a little bit of Mr Modeling focus, or sick day, yeah, sick day, get it done, man Get it done.

How about you? Not a lot, but some significant things.

Yes. Singular significant thing was the last weekend, weekend before last no, it wasn't this last weekend, but it was the weekend before it yeah, I'm masked off.

The demarcation for the e16 between the imperial japanese navy green and the underside gray.

Yep.

And then, over the course of the last week and a half or so, I've been painting that you, shall we say, pulled the trigger on the airbrush. I pulled the trigger on the airbrush and I like what I got.

Oh, I love it. Yeah, I was I really like what you've got.

That's a dark, dark color, and Husted made sure emphatically that I lightened it considerably, and I did, in fact I went beyond that For the first layer of that dark green. Not only did I thin the paint with MLT, I added a bunch of to me a clear gloss to it.

Right.

So I was trying to get that stuff as translucent as I could get it, and it's kind of hard with a paint that's made to be opaque. You can't really do it right. Right, but you can get close. But yeah, I got there and I preserved a lot of the underpaint the underpaint which made me, made me smile, made me happy.

Yep.

I got the, the fuselage and the and all the horizontal upper surfaces done, the wings, the, the horizontal stabilizer. Now it's time to peel a little bit of the mask. I had to overspray mask on the on the pontoon floats.

Right.

I got. I've got that off now and and I'm mustering up the courage to to mask the mask off the light gray areas on the on the pontoons, to paint the green and it's going to go pretty well. I had a little bit of negative modeling. Taking the mask off, the pontoon floats, there's just so this connection points are fragile. Yes, and I made them worse when I cut away the bulk of the forward pontoon struts.

Yeah.

Put those photo-etched die breaks in there.

Right.

Yeah, I think if I did that again I might do it a little different. But there's not much holding that together and they have a lot of flexibility in them.

But by the same token you realize that this wasn't as big a challenge as you thought it was. You were able to mask that stuff off in over a couple of nights and then over one weekend you were able to lay down all the green I mean, other than on the pontoon floats, yes, and that's your suggestion, was to do it in phases. Yes.

So I'm going to with the pontoons. I have a little bit more masking to do on the undersides of the wings because of the spray directions Right Top, I don't need to worry about Right, but luckily the green or, excuse me, the gray that you know, I have to mask the bottoms of the pontoons, but I've got a nice sharp edge to work against there.

Exactly.

Because kind of like a boat haul right.

Right, there's a, there's a chime, there's a definite marking point.

Right. The gray and green difference on the on the upper sides of the pontoon are they kind of run from the struts outboard or toward to the front and to the rear of the aircraft? Yep, so I'm going to just take some thin. I'm just going to take a wider piece, excuse me, a wider piece of Tamiya tape and cut a wavy line on it and then run that from the pontoon strut to the edge of the upper surface of the pontoon on front and then on the back, and they'd fill in the middle and it shouldn't take long to do that at all Nope, and then the airbrushing will not take you any time.

No, and then I get to peel all the mask off.

There is something so satisfying about that, man. Let me tell you that is the most satisfying. Don't. Don't get in a hurry and peel the canopy masking off too. But hey, it's a mistake that's been made before I know and I've not with the canopy, that's.

It's a good thing to bring up. You know I'm not going to peel it off prematurely, but I have gone back and made double sure I've covered the frames with the exterior color.

Yeah, yeah, because you don't. That's a surprise you don't want at the end.

You could probably touch it up with a brush, maybe.

You can if you've got a very steady hand, but it still is a pain in the butt.

So, folks, that's where that's at. I've not done anything new on the KV-85. I've not even done anything on that 3D-printed flak panzer I've got. I got to get this plane done because I got to start something new.

Yes, you do, absolutely, I agree.

It's a lot of fun. I'm learning a lot with this aircraft, so the next one won't be so challenging.

Well, I'll be interested to see what the next one turns out to be. Anything else, nope, that's it.

Dave, normally we would have what broke your wallet here, but we've been pretty good since HeritageCon.

Yes, we have, and with the Nationals coming up, you're kind of I don't know about you, but I'm squirreling away my change and trying to find every last little penny so that I can have a decent bankroll when we hit the floor at the nationals.

We're going to give this segment a little skip over. Dave's bought something, and by the time Nats gets here, I'll probably have bought something too. So until that stuff actually arrives, we're not going to talk about what broke our wallet, because it's really not. It's really not broken too bad. So, dave, let's, let's get into the modeling fluid wrap-up you got it.

We're at the end of the episode. This delicious ipa from stone brewing, 7.7 alcohol by volume. It's very hop forward, frankly, a little more hop forward than I would like. Oh, dave found his limit. Yeah, this is probably right up against my limit, but it's also not undrinkable. It's not one of those ones where you know some, some hipster brewer has decided let's see exactly how obnoxious we can make our beer. It's still drinkable, it's just not gumball head. It's not what I would choose. If I'm faced with a bunch of beers, this isn't the first thing I would choose, or even the second. But if I'm at a party and this is what the host has, I'm not going to turn it down because it is drinkable and it got me through the episode. Now I hardly have to ask about your modeling fluid.

Buffalo Trace just cracked the bottle tonight. I walked in there it was. I was like ooh. I was like that's probably what I'm going to get. But let's go look at the selection. There was a bourbon recommended, not recommended. There's a bourbon that was asked about to me while I was in Knoxville.

Yeah.

I think it was Bill and I've been looking at it and I'll pull the trigger. It's rabbit holes, what it is.

Right, I've seen that and I've thought about that.

And I'm like yeah, but it's like right at the $60 mark. Yes 50 to 60 bucks. I'm like, nah, we'll do that60 mark. Yes, 50 to 60 bucks. I'm like, no, I will do that next time.

Yeah, I've been looking at the exact same bourbon, my friend.

But they had the Buffalo Trace, their standard label. They make it 20 minutes from here, 30 minutes from my house.

Yeah.

It should not be as hard to find in Lexington as it is and it shouldn't be getting the price it's getting in Lexington than it is. Yeah, to be honest. But folks, if you, if you're not in Kentucky and you're out there and you're looking for one to try Buffalo trace, you can't go wrong it's. It's a nice smooth bourbon, really good. If you're coming to Nat's and you're coming from out of Kentucky to Wisconsin, you happen to have an extra bottle, I'd be most grateful. Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah, absolutely, the Buffalo Trace is. You can't go wrong with it.

Neat or with ice, you're going to have a good experience. Even if you're fairly new to the bourbon game, it's smooth and you're going to have a good experience, Mike.

now we are truly at the end of the episode. Do you have any shout outs?

I do, dave, I've got a few. Okay. Well, I want to shout out the folks who've chosen to help us out through their generosity. Of course, mark Kincaid, bill Moore, ned Brown and Dean Muir have all chosen to support us either through Patreon or PayPal, and guys, we really appreciate that. That was a that was a nice surprise this month. I appreciate that very much and the reason is I'll give a little hint to what we got going on we are trying to move Plastic Model Mojo to kind of a new platform to help us not only bring you the podcast but to bring you a lot of other stuff, and all this kind of stuff helps. So we really appreciate it.

If anybody out there would like to join these guys and their support the show and what we're trying to get going for the future, check the show notes of this episode or any of the last two or three. There are links to ways you can support the show. We've got Patreon, we have PayPal Buy Me a Coffee and even the Plastic Model Mojo merchandise store. All those help us fund the show and give us capital, in a sense, to bring you something new. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to move to a new platform. So if anybody's ever needed a reason to help support Plastic Model Mojo currently that's it, and we appreciate the support and anything anybody can do to help us along that way is greatly appreciated. It really is.

Yes, and I'd like to second that Absolutely. It's. It really helps, with us trying to do more than we're currently doing. We want to bring you more. This community has really surprised us. I don't think Mike or I ever thought that this would happen when we started. So, yes, thank you very much for all of you who do support the show financially.

My shout out for this month is both the guests that we have this month and the guests that we've had the last couple months. The willingness of people to come on and be interviewed and to bring their talent to our audience is really fantastic. I mean, none of these people have to do this. None of these people are getting paid to do this. They are like most modelers. They are good people and they are more than happy to share what they know with other modelers, and I'm super proud of all of the episodes that we've had since January of this year and I am extremely grateful to Bruce McRae and to Inch High, who's coming up for our next episode, and to Inch High who's coming up for our next episode. I'm grateful for those people willing to take the time and share what they know with us.

Well, I want to shout out one more person, Dave. Okay, Dr Paul Budzik launched his. Well, he started a Patreon that's got some kind of embedded video. He's using a different service other than YouTube.

Yeah.

And he put his first video out there. It's a well, actually his second, but his first feature length video on the latest Tamiya P38. Mm-hmm, and it's a really good video. I really love what Paul does and this video is no exception. But, folks, you need to go out on Patreon, look up Scale Model Workshop and Paul's kind of moved over there. He's moved to this platform to have pretty much total creative control over everything and check out Scale Model Workshop on Patreon and I encourage everybody to contribute there and get access to that stuff, definitely. Well, dave, we are at the end of this man.

I am so looking forward to what's coming up over the next month, month and a half. I am barely keeping it together, man.

Well, we got to get through June so we can get the national convention man.

I know, I know.

Well, until then, dave so many kids, so little time We'll see you next episode. Take it easy, yep.