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Louis Gardner
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Display cases as requested… Happy New Year!

January 1, 2017 · in Uncategorized · · 38 · 2.4K

Some of our Imodeler friends made a request in the comments section of my last article which was about the Tamiya F4U-1 #15 as flown by Capt. James Cupp.

It was requested that I post up some pictures of my . So without further delay, here are some pictures of several of my display cases. I have one Armor, one more in aircraft, and one aircraft case that is almost empty for now.

Some of these planes will look familiar as I have posted articles on them. These are all 1/48 scale.

(All that is except for the second to last display case shown). It has 1/32 scale planes on the top two shelves, and 1/28 scale biplanes on the bottom. The larger models on the middle shelves are 1/48.

The very last picture is my Armor display. All of my Armor builds are in 1/35 scale.

There are several unfinished projects in the mix here as well... namely a Heinkel He-111, Douglas A-20 in NMF.

Two photos near the end of the slide show are of my nearly empty display case which I recently restored by adding numerous glass shelves, some mirrors and replaced all of the wood. I just placed the "Great Lakes recovery F4U-1" and Airfix P-40 inside this one. Hopefully over this next year I can start to fill this one up...

I'm sorry about the quality of the photos. The displays all have mirrors and it makes it hard to capture decent pictures while the cases are inside my garage / hobby room.

I hope you all have a Happy New Year and that our New Year is healthy, productive, and safe one...

As usual, comments are encouraged.

Enjoy.

Reader reactions:
6  Awesome

42 additional images. Click to enlarge.


38 responses

  1. That penultimate photo looks like a freakin' Hobby Store, Louis...I may come to YOUR house to "shop". lol
    I see whatcha mean about the difficulties involved in shooting pictures with all the mirrors, glass and the multitude of reflections...but we get the idea and are jealous anyway! 🙂

    • Thanks buddy for the compliments. Yeah these are not my best photos for sure. I didn't post these to make people jealous. I did it because several persons asked me to. I simply wanted to share some pictures of part of my collection that's all. Thanks again and take care buddy.

      • I wasn't sayin' you posted 'em to make people jealous - it was a JOKE, son - besides, I was one of the ones that wanted to see 'em. Take care (and work on fillin' up that new case). 🙂

        • I thought it was a joke but I wanted to make sure that everyone else knew it was too. I hope I didn't let you down with the pictures. Hope you guys enjoyed these. The pictures don't really do the models any justice. I'm not bragging but most of the planes are pretty nice. There are a few "three footers" though. Take care buddy and have a great New Year. I'll be working on filling up the new display case for sure.

  2. Louis, that is a stunning collection! Congratulations!

    • Thanks Bernard. I appreciate the compliments. It's been a lifetime of building models since I started this collection. When I was a little kid I built a lot of planes, cars and tank models. Unfortunately those have all long been gone. I really started my "second" collection that you see here about 20 years ago. Thanks again.

  3. You've certainly been busy, Louis, thanks for sharing these with us. I only have room for one display case in my home, so I tend to change the display from time to time, keeping some favourites and adding new ones.

  4. Wow, what an awesome collection and quite nicely displayed. Thanks for sharing the photos.

  5. You've been one busy modeler Louis. That's really a very nice collection. However, lets be honest, did your wife have anything to do with your decision to move the cases to the garage?

    • Well...maybe. LOL

      I outgrew the spare bedroom that was my hobby room. The display cases no longer fit in there once I rebuilt the last one that is mostly empty.

      I mean they would have fit, but then nothing else (me included) would.

      Thanks my friend.

  6. Awesome display Louis. I don't build quickly as most of my building is on the weekends. Love the layout. Once I move in to the house which will be permanent is when I will make or find display cases. Otherwise mine our on shelf units open to the dust. Thanks for sharing

    • Thanks Chuck. I retired a little over a year ago from the Fire Department. Between building model kits and restoring cars I stay busy, probably more so than before. My other hobby is restoration and repair of Dodge and Plymouth muscle cars. Currently I'm working on a 73 Challenger. When I restore these cars I take them all the way down to a bare metal shell and place the body on a rolling rotisserie. I then go through every component and make them better than new.

      Until I got my display cases, I had my models hanging on fishing line from the ceiling. They always got covered in dust too. Several of the display cases were given to me, but I had to rebuild all of them. I replaced all of the wood and added glass shelving and mirrors.

      Once you get squared away in your new house things will fall into place. You will be much happier when they do.

      Thanks again my friend. Take care and have a Happy New Year.

  7. Yes, great collection Louis.

  8. Well done Louis. For years I anguished over a way to protect my babes. Finally building my own cases, with the idea of being as dust proof as possible, kind of like what you've done here. I have also converted some nice glass cases to also fit my needs. The problem I have now is that my house is getting too small !

    • Thanks Terry.
      I had mine displayed in the open for quite a while too. It takes a toll on them, especially the decals. Dust is a constant problem no matter how clean your house is. It always is attracted to your models. Murphy's Law I guess.

      I converted these cases by adding more shelves and mirror back glass. I also had to replace all of the wood in them. In fact my Armor case is actually an old "Oakley" sun glass case. (Repurposed of course).

      I had the same problem as you. My cases were just too big to fit all of them in our spare bedroom that I was using as a hobby room. That's when I decided to move them into our garage.

      I'm glad you enjoyed them. Sorry about the picture quality though.

      Take care buddy. Happy New Year !

  9. Louis...VERY impressive models and showcases. A few questions: about how many models do you complete in a year on average? About how many total models have you completed as shown in the showcases and over how many years? Again, great work. All good.
    Peace,
    Bob Bailey

    • Thanks Bob. Some years it varied with how many models I finished. On a great year I may have completed 30 or so kits. There were a few years where I didn't get many finished due to other things getting in the way. On a bad year I may get 4 or 5 built. I started building models when I was a kid. I don't have but a few models that survived over the years. This collection in my display cases is an accumulation of about 20 years worth of builds. Thanks again.

  10. Can not wait to see that natural metal A-20 with the striped tail I spied in a couple of photos! Are you using foil on it?

    • Yes it's almost completely covered in various shades of Bare Metal Foil.

      I stopped working on it when I accidentally pulled up the sprayed on finish aluminum on both ailerons... Real bummer. So close to have that happen. It's going to take some work to fix it, but she has good bones.

      I masked off the rudder stripes and sprayed them on. I want to make it look like an early AAF version. The exhausts have been modified too.

      Good eye !
      Thanks and Happy New Year.

      • DANG, Louis! I was wondering how you got the Havoc so shiny! Bare Metal Foil! I admire your dedication, particularly on compound curves.
        I don't see prewar schemes done often, and it'll be a knockout on the A-20, which is just a pretty plane anyhow.
        End of peacetime, though a lot of folks didn't know it at the time.

        • I'm planning on finishing this one soon. The original idea was to build it as a very early "B" model Havoc in pre WW2 AAF colors of bare metal with red and white rudder stripes and four position US stars with red centers. Then I had the mishap of pulling some of the paint off the ailerons. That caused me to set it aside for a while while I thought about what I had to do in order to fix things. Naturally things got worse by sitting. Sunlight reflecting off the mirrors caused the BMF to bubble on the original shade. The "Ultra Bright" and "Matt Aluminum " shades fared very well. So I have to strip the original shade of BMF from the plane and strip the ailerons too. Once that's done with I can get back to the original plan of a pre war NMF. Thanks again.

          • I really like the pre war era and the A-20 will look right at home sitting next to my early Mustang.

  11. Wow! Awesome collection and great work!

  12. Great collection!

  13. Awesome collection !

    • Thanks Bernd. I'm very happy that you enjoyed the collection. Soon I hope to post more of these with articles about them. I also hope to get some more built soon.

  14. Lordy, lordy, lordy. Freakin' awesome Louis

  15. Actually in a dark cellar, in boxes, these photos give hope to my models : for my part, for a matter of space in the appartment, l could get a display case and practise models rotation, why not ?

    • That would work. Years ago I did the same thing. I didn't have a display case at first. So I hung my planes from the ceiling in one room. Then I had a friend give me my first display case which needed a lot f work done to it. Once I repaired the case, I started a rotation with my models. It wasn't too long though and I ran out of room, and started looking for another case. But it can be done. Go for it. Thanks for posting. Have a Happy New Year my friend...

  16. It'd be easy to mistake the stash for a hobby shop. 🙂

    In fact this reminds me of the old Freiler's Hobbies from 35 years ago here. Of course, those cases were the models of a hundred guys, not one!

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