Building with style

Henry Yantz, 12, stared down at the myriad of tiny pieces in their plastic enclosures.

The eighth-grader will have a scale model of a Crusader Mk. III tank when all the pieces are together.

That could take awhile.

The tank — and varied planes, trains and automobiles — were under construction at St. Paul’s Lutheran School on Thursday.
Henry and the other students diligently worked on the scale machines in the cafeteria at the weekly meeting of the after-school model club.

The Sedalia resident said the model tank “just might be my downfall.”

He successfully completed a WWII Japanese airplane, and told his mom he wanted a tank.

“I just said, I want a tank. Make it look cool. And she did,” he said.

The kit is rated a five, the hardest level for models. Henry said he will scrape and sand, sand and scrape, and otherwise encourage the tiny pieces to fit together the way they’re supposed to.

“Tanks are just plain cool,” he said.

Sam Hargrave, 12, of Sedalia, is a veteran of the group. Over the past few years, he’s built a Wright Brother airplane, an 1986 Camaro and the Spirit of St. Louis.

“I just really like building models. I like seeing how it grows from all the pieces to a finished model,” he said.

The seventh-grader is working on a 1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo model.

“I’m building the engine right now and that’s the beginning stage,” he said.

The model is supposed to be green, but Sam said he wants to make it black with maroon stripes instead.

He built a few models before he joined the club.

“I’d built one or two with my dad, but then I just wanted to see what it was like, and I got hooked,” he said.

Alex Stewart, 12, of Smithton, said she likes painting  more than building. The seventh-grader was hard at work on a pirate ship model, her first.

“It takes a long time, gluing everything,” she said.

A 1977 Jeep was in pieces next to her. Fifth-grader Julian Schmiedeke, 10, said he decided to join model club after a friend recommended it to him. The Jeep is his second model.

“It gives you more of an idea of how things are built,” he said.

Club adviser John Nail, principal and a teacher at St. Paul’s, said he and other boys in his neighborhood built models when he was a child.

“It’s something I did when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed it,” he said.

He started the model club four years ago with four or five students from his class. About 12 students in grades three through eight joined this year.

Students share materials and techniques, he said.

“I encourage them to read the directions and follow them closely. There’s a lot of things you learn from building models,” he said.