From 17 August 2011: The Library Fleet
Normally I refrain from writing about problems in the world. Most of them I can’t do anything substantial about, and blogged ranting doesn’t do anything either. retroDynamics is meant to be simply a lightweight, positive distraction. However, one relatively minor thing – well, minor in the grand scheme of things - that has a retroDynamics aspect has caught my attention recently: the potential closing of many libraries in Toronto in order to ostensibly save money and reduce taxes. On the one hand, some reassessment of how library services are deployed might indeed be called for because as time goes on demographics and needs change, but on the other hand, the way in which it is being pursued suggests that the cost savings rationale is a cloak for an ideologically based attack on libraries and general access to them. For many reasons, I think public libraries are one hallmark of a decent society, and seeing them under attack is troubling.
The public libraries in Scarborough played a big role in my life when I was growing up. We visited Bendale library, and later Cedarbrae library, about once every one or two weeks, and usually checked out several books on each trip. We also attended short films and puppet shows. One summer Cedarbrae held Saturday evening movie screenings. After dark they’d project an old black-and-white Hollywood movie – usually some sort of B movie from the ‘30s or ‘40s - outside on their back wall. It was free for anyone who wanted to sit on the grass and watch. It wasn’t until much later in life that I appreciated how all that vastly developed my literacy and appreciation of reading, writing, movies and culture in general. And all of it was free of charge. I’m not so sure we’re so strapped for cash these days that we can’t still pop for this sort of thing – maybe we just prioritize things differently today. Given the internet and massive pervasiveness of digital culture, the role of the library in society is no doubt different than it was back then, but I don’t think the need for unfettered access to the diverse cultural works of our society has gone away.
A few years ago when I was getting back into model building I decided I wanted to try and build some large scratch-built spaceships from plastic odds-and-ends – sort of in the tradition of props built for movies and tv in the pre-CGI era. I eventually latched onto the idea of honouring the Scarborough Public Libraries of my youth – which are today part of the Toronto Public Library system – with some good humoured plastic spaceship awesomeness. The results were mixed, but I feel like I want to pursue this idea again, and with some experience under my belt, hopefully the next round will be better.
s.pl. Bendale
My first build was the small s.p.l. Bendale (for Scarborough Public Library Bendale). I submitted it to the Reader’s Gallery on Starship Modeller and was happy that it got accepted. And much to my surprise I received some pleasant – and ego swelling :-) - email in response.
There seems to be a tradition that goes along with spaceship scratchbuilding: writing the vehicle’s back story. I couldn’t pass that up and gave it a go:
By 2081, settlement of the far reaches of the solar system definitely had one adverse affect on Earth civilization: the holdings of the royal and ancient - but unfortunately long disbanded - Scarboro public library were scattered all the way from Mercury to Pluto. Colonists could just not part with their beloved tomes and carried them jealously wherever the whims of fortune took them. So, to right this wrong and reclaim the legacy for a new generation, many long retired library board members, along with sympathetic supporters from the underground rebel book alliance, convened to consider their options. They needed a ship - a fleet of ships actually - to go to those distant places and collect those treasures. And collect them with punishing over-due fees. Professor Emeritus Vincenzo Air reported on a long forgotten chapter in propulsion technology: the curvilinear j-Fforde drive; an interplanetary drive named in honor of the author Jasper Fforde, discoverer of Book World earlier in the century. The basic principle behind the drive was a targeted seeking of the 'spine' in local space that, once found and accessed, allowed a spacecraft to jump to any location in space via 'pages' in a matter of seconds. After an immodest allocation of funds, and a number of years of development, the first prototype book retrieval spacecraft outfitted with a curvlinear j-Fforde drive - the s.p.l. Bendale - was ready for testing. Many hardcore due-date ignorers were on Mars, so the shakedown voyage was to Cydonia for a face-to-face showdown. Prof. Air insisted on being the test pilot, but he was a little too fast on the draw and gunned it so hard that he kinked the main drive unit. When later asked by reporters how fast it would go, he replied, "It's a real page turner". Among the stacks back on Earth, his title of Professor Emeritus, was quickly replaced by Lead-foot - well, at least outside the range of his hearing aid. And what about those fee dodgers? Some tricks of illumination allowed them to avoid facing-the-music on this sortie - but there is always next time!
Ok. Well, I’m not going to give up my day job to become a novelist. Here are a few pictures taken during construction.
The Bendale before painting.
After this one, I wanted to build something much bigger, and inspired by 2001’s Discovery. That one was the s.p.l. Cedarbrae. Starship Modeller wasn’t interested in this build, but I did submit it later to one of their online contests under a different name: Age of Discovery in honour of its movie roots – classic movies and the library seemed to go together in my mind for reasons mentioned earlier. It wasn’t a winner, but it taught me a lot about building a big spaceship.
s.pl. Cedarbrae
I modified a car wheel stand to support the Cedarbrae
The Cedarbrae continued the back story tradition:
Soon after the first successful trans-planetary trial of the s.p.l Bendale the library board decided they needed to continue to develop spaceships for all their present and future needs. To make this happen they created the New Academy for Spaceship Assembly in order to build their fleet and train future generations in the subtle, and not-so-subtle, arts, sciences and technologies of spaceship creation.
The academy was founded on the principles laid down by Calculus, Shelby and Gromit in their ground-breaking book "Principals of Practical Spaceship Assembly". Their key idea was that through the continual practice of actual spaceship building flowed the well-spring of insight required to refine and advance spaceships in all their forms.
Of the few old school training methods still employed at the academy was the construction of display models of the academy's major design projects by apprentices. The time-and-space tempered model of the soon to be built s.p.l Cedarbrae was one of the biggest built to date.
The central section is built around a spine made of 1-1/4 inch ABS pipe. The plastic vitamin and supplement bottles that make up the core modules are drilled at either end with a 1-1/4 inch door drill and then slid over the pipe. Removing the labels from the bottles is a little tricky. The old technique of using a hand-held hair-dryer to gently heat the label and peel it off was applied many times. Any residue from the label's glue can be removed by lightly scrubbing with a critic cleaner and then cleaning up with warm water. The main engine outlet on the back end was an inlet cover from a broken hair-dryer. The forward module that contains the shuttle bay is a plastic protein jar, and the fairing between it and the other modules on the spine is a foot from a discarded computer floor-stand. The semi-spherical flight-deck extension is from a Christmas ornament kit. The airlocks on the lower portion of the flight-deck extension are snap-caps from vitamin bottles.
The two outer j-Fforde Drive propulsion cylinders are the cores from paper rolls used in a large computer plotter. The output ends are fitted with nested PVC pipe joiners.
The library book retrieval craft in the shuttle bay is a Bandai Thunderbird 2. The kit's box says the T-bird's scale is 1/450. At this scale, the s.p.l. Cedarbrae would be 2,175 feet long (about 2/5 of a mile), or roughly 3x the length of 2001's Discovery which was the inspiration for the s.p.l. Cedarbrae.
The shuttle bay, along with its sliding doors, is made from sheet styrene and given some detail from plastic spares sourced from 1/25 scale car and HO-scale building left overs.
The dish antennae on the shuttle bay module are from AMT/Ertl's Moonscope kit. The larger antenna located about halfway down the spine is a two-part affair: the support is from a Braun electric toothbrush, and the dish is the only surviving part from a long gone MPC Pilgrim Explorer.
When it came time to paint, the entire ship was primed with Krylon flat black and then base coated with Krylon silver. A wide range of spray can colors were used to paint the ship in an afternoon long painting spree. After drying for a couple of weeks, watercolors were generously applied for further surface effects. Squares and squiggles were applied to some modules with waterproof black pens of various size. The whole thing was sealed with Testor's Dullcoat.
Lead model reviewer Vincenzo Air wasn't too thrilled with the scruffy outer grime that would soon coat this new giant capable of reaching the outermost boundaries of the orbits of the outer planets; however, that was a small price to pay to retrieve those precious barbecue recipes accidently stuffed in a book of verse and shipped to the highly eccentric Pluto: Planetesimal of Poets and Superannuated Accountants. But that's a whole other story....
The bridge
The shuttle bay
Looking towards the back
Looking towards the bridge
Engine exhausts
One of the modeling goals was to incorporate some sort of shuttle landing bay; hence, the Thunderbird 2. Here are few photos showing the Cedarbrae’s construction phase.
Lots of paints were used on this thing!
Before painting
Painting is half done
The last one I worked on was the s.p.l. Birchmount - well, I actually built the basic structure at the same time as the Cedarbrae, but detailed and painted it well after the Cedarbrae was finished. This one came about after playing around with some plastic junk I had in my scrap pile. Unfortunately, once I had the basic shape all glued together I lost interest in superdetailing it and after some rudimentary detailing, simply spray painted it and called it quits.
s.pl. Birchmount
No back story for this one, but here are few construction photos.
Yeap, those external fuel tanks are shampoo bottles.
The spaceship parts supply prior to a directive from she-who-must-be-obeyed to consolidate
Although I hardly added any detail to this one, I still rather like the shape of the thing. But, by this point I’d lost interest in building spaceships, and no other libraries were suitably ‘honoured’. Although, I have some ideas for future builds, they won’t save the Toronto Library system, only dogged lobbying and a grass roots effort might.
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