![]() ![]() More often than not, the wood was hard, brittle, and extremely heavy, making it difficult to cut out parts and resulting in heavy models. This could be a tedious process for a kid armed with nothing but a recycled double-edge razor blade broken in two with the back taped to preserve and protect those young fingers!Īnother standout with the kits from that era was that the balsa quality often left much to be desired. They needed to be cut out by the builder. Printwood, for those who are unfamiliar with it, was simply the parts outlines stamped in ink on a balsa sheet. In modern times, although Comet and Sterling are no longer with us, Guillow’s has gone more toward the Comet style of construction to produce a line of great-flying, laser-cut Free Flight (FF) kits.Īnother major difference between the earlier Comet, Guillow’s, and Sterling products that were virtually identical in design style to Guillow’s kits, was that Comet kits were supplied with printwood, where the others were die-cut. The design styles of the two were quite different, with the Comet kits generally being the better fliers, although Guillow’s and Sterling were easier to build because of the "keel-and-former" style of fuselage construction.Ĭomet kits simply built lighter, so they were naturally the better fliers. From there, it was onto the slightly larger "stick-framed" Comet kits, as well as the 17- to 20-something-inch wingspan Guillow’s kits. My track record at making these old kits fly was not especially good, but the kits were inexpensive, and it taught this young modeler a thing or two about modeling. The model was of all-sheet balsa construction and similar in design to the Top Flite JigTime series.Ĭomet also offered similar-style kits in the Struct-OSpeed series. My first wood kit, built in 1958, was a Carl Goldberg Cessna 180. Thenīack in the day, I cut my teeth on kits from Comet, Guillow’s, Sterling, Jetco, Carl Goldberg, Scientific, and many others. The Comet-style design concept is shown, along with the kit contents from a typical rubber-powered sport model from back in the day. Comet also offered numerous scale models, including multiengine rubber FF kits, such as its earlier B-25 in the "Start ’em Flying" series, and the later A-26 Invader and P-38 Lightning kits.Ġ5. The Comet Phantom Fury is a typical example of early rubber-powered FF sport models. As with many designs of that era, the model can be built either as rubber- or glow-powered FF, or glow-powered CL.Ġ4. ![]() ![]() The Sterling P-6E Hawk is a classic example of the typical die-cut FF kits from the mid-1960s. Based on that criteria, and having a number of vintage kits stashed away, let’s take a look into how model kits have evolved throughout the years.Ġ3. I want to make it clear that I stake no claim as a modeling historian, but in my 62 years of cutting balsa and gluing pieces together, I have seen firsthand how modeling has flowed with the advancements in technology. From that, the question arose, "What about doing a comparison of the early model designs with the more modern kit offerings?" Having built a number of kits in many modeling veins throughout the years, I thought that was a great idea, and was certainly worth exploring. The kit had been built and converted to electric power from its original wet-fuel configuration. In an email exchange with a modeling friend not long ago, the Sig (formerly Berkeley) Privateer came up. The wood quality in this kit was quite good and finished nicely using modern adhesives, acrylic paints, and decals printed from scans of the original paper graphics sheet. The 14-inch wingspan Curtiss Robin was built from a vintage Comet Struct-O-Speed kit. The kits range from the oldest 40-inch wingspan Sig Sinbad to the most recent Guillow’s Piper Cherokee.Ġ2. The photo shows a variety of model kits available throughout the years, including those with printwood and die-cutting. ![]()
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