Military Vehicles

MILITARY MODELS

We originally chose to build select military models, not to glorify war, but rather to highlight some of the most innovative and creative mechanical designs developed as a result of war. And, in many ways, these models offer some of the greatest challenges 1:8 scale has, and therefore, some of the greatest rewards.

One of our most interesting military models is the 37mm Field Gun. Every feature of this model works just like the real gun.  The breach opens, the firing handle works, all the shields hinge into place, and even the elevation and windage wheels function.  

Our Jeep model, one of the many products of war and known all over the world, has been one of the most popular models we have ever offered (and it happened to be one of our very first).  This model set a standard for such automobile models twelve years ago and currently sits in The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.  And, although that edition sold out, we intentionally held back fifty (50) pieces, in the hopes that one day we could take it to the next level. 

In the very near future, we will be introducing our next-generation Jeep.  Our objective with this edition is to shatter our existing standards – and we are on track to do just that.  Instead of being soldered together, it will be bolted together, just like the real jeep.  The wheels will have miniature lug nuts, complete with a wrench, so the customer can “change its tire” if so desired.

MILITARY MODEL DEVELOPMENT

In contrast to Airplane and Automobile development, Military models are probably the easiest for us to develop.  And while manuals, microfilm, photographs, and 1:1 reference are all readily available for us to make our own drawings, we oftentimes come up against some rather unique challenges – figuring out how to make “less-than-perfect” features, as actually found on the real vehicles.

One example of this “less-than-perfect” challenge we faced, was the welds on the M5A1 Tank They are literally big, huge welds, with little or no thought given to making them look beautiful (and why would they). Our challenge was to make them look just as crude in scale, without making them look so bad that people would think our model was a piece of junk.  This was a creative license at its best (but we think the results speak for themselves).

Another “less-than-perfect” challenge was the brass castings. On all of our other models, we’re consumed with making the castings as smooth as possible. However, with our military models, we had to figure out how to create scale castings with the same rough surface that is found on the real vehicle. Again, subjective creative license was used (the determining factor ended up being how they looked in a photograph of the real thing vs. a photograph of the model casting).