A review of the Model Builders' Manual by Mat Irvine

I recently bought a copy of Mat Irvine's new book Model Builders' Manual.

It's an excellent, high quality book with lots of information on a wide range of topics related to building plastic model kits, which include the hobby's history, companies, model ranges, basic building techniques, photography, and much more. My only question I have is: who's the target audience ? - other than me and Vince of course :-)

Mr. Irvine refers to the book as a 'starter' manual for any potential model maker, and notes that it also includes enough extra topics to be of interest to more experienced model builders. I love all the information on the history of the hobby, and learning about the companies and models they've made. I especially liked the chapter called Scale as it filled me in on a lot of questions I've had about the various scales and their origins.

The history part of the book reminded me of Louis Hertz's Complete Book of ... series, and to a certain extent Martin Evans book, Workshop Chatter: A Bedside Book for Model Engineers, that I bought earlier this year*. When it comes to the non-construction related chapters, Model Builders' Manual is solidly in that Hertzian lineage of books that fill an important place in helping interested readers learn about the who, what, when, where, and why in a hobby's history, as well as snap-shoting where we are today.

It does include chapters that introduce basic and advanced construction techniques, but doesn't step the reader through all the details of any particular project. When I look back to the days when I was a kid and was just getting started, what I desperately wanted to know about were construction techniques. The more the better, and in as much detail as humanly possible to communicate :-)

My first model building instruction 'book' was Revell's pamphlet, How to Build Better Car Models. It was number 3 in a series of 6 that Revell published in 1973. In the '70s I bought model car kits in the Simpsons toy department near my childhood home. As well as kits, they had a Testors paint stand, some rudimentary brushes, and these pamphlets were positioned nearby. These 32 pagers were focused on construction techniques and only construction techniques. These days though the internet provides a much better source of how-to construction information. Maybe that's why Mr. Irvine's book takes a higher-level approach to this information: it's something of a guide to navigating and making orderly sense of all that stuff that's online.

Model Builders' Manual is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. I'm now looking for other books by Mat Irvine to see what I can see.

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* I came across Workshop Chatter quite by accident while doing some searches on the work of Vivien Thompson. This book kept popping up, but it wasn't obvious why, so I thought it might contain information about some of her projects. I was able to find a cheap copy online, but found that although it contained nothing about her, it was a fun read in its own right.