“The Modelmaker's Handbook”
By Ward Shrake
by Albert Jackson and David Day
352 pages; illustrated with more than 1,500 drawings and photographs
Copyright 1981ISBN: 0-394-50788-6
The two words that come to mind, each time I flip through this new-to-me book, are “Holy bleep”!
Given that this book is nearly three decades old, some of you likely have a copy already. If you don't, I'd say you're missing out on some really great information.
I'm sure that those of you who already have a copy, likely treasure it – which would explain why it's been on my “Wish List” over on Amazon dot com, for quite some time, now. When tax time arrived in the US of A, this year, the price for a used copy finally dropped enough that I could afford one. (Don't let that scare you off: I'm pretty cheap, and I have a rather lengthy book-and-magazine wish list! I tend to put many titles on mental layaway, until the asking price temporarily dips, then snag ‘em.)
Anyway, I finally picked up a copy. Based on the page count – over 350 pages – I expected something really fat and heavy. I was mildly surprised, when I first opened the package. It was pretty much “normal hardback book size” – not as large or as thick as I guessed it would be. The typeface, inside, was also smaller than I'd expected – not too badly so, but I can imagine some folks might wish the print had been larger.
I usually try to take some photos of the pages inside a book I'm reviewing, to give folks an idea of what to expect. In this case, I think a scan of the table of contents tells the tale best. I think most folks will be pleasantly surprised when they see how much info they managed to squeeze into even a few pages, on any given sub-topic, in most genres.
The main thing that I keep coming back to is that I simply wasn't prepared for how densely packed this thing is, with useful info. Not just every chapter, but every page. That kind of signal-to-noise ratio stuns me. The closest analogy I can come up with is to imagine someone clipping out every “great tip” or tightly-focused “how to” that they ever saw, in their favorite scale modeling magazine – make that several magazines! – and squeezing years and years worth of such clippings into a single, well-organized volume.
Very highly recommended. Thanks to my wallet for the review sample.