This Is a Little Like Building Ships

By HERBERT J. VIDA

April 30, 1991 12 AM PT

Paul Davis, 35, of Tustin fixes bicycles for a living, but his real love is making ship and plane models, many times building them without plans.

“He’s amazing and an inspiration to others,” said Greg Kelly, owner of Kelly’s Hobby Shop in Tustin, which has some of Davis’ handiwork on display. “He’s like a musician who plays by ear.”

And it is quite clear that he is humble about his self-taught skills.

“Am I an artist? You have to let other people judge my work,” said Davis, who did not start making models until he was 25. How people respond to the finished product--whether it is a ship or a painting--pretty well determines the answer, he said.

“If they think it is really interesting, it’s liable to be a piece of art,” said Davis, who will say he is not the best model builder around. “Otherwise it may be just a good job.”

Since beginning his hobby, he has built scores of models. His latest creation, a departure from his usual, is an 1820s-era mission church that takes up roughly three square feet. It has 21,000 pieces, and has roof tiles fashioned from 20 pounds of lead.

“The whole model looks very convincing,” Davis said.

His favorite model, though, is a 54-inch version of the battleship Missouri, which took six months to build. It is one of three models of large U.S. Navy ships he has built; the others are the helicopter carrier Tarawa and the battleship New Jersey. All three are exhibited at Kelly’s shop.

The models are not for sale, however--Davis has no intention of selling. They are strictly for display.

“I just don’t have room to keep them in my small home,” said Davis, who has recently formed a small Maritime Modeling Ship Club, partly as a memorial to World War II.

Davis is planning to recognize the 50th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor with a celebration and a club shipbuilding contest.

Davis’ model of the Missouri will be featured at the gathering, he said, since the signing of the peace treaty ending World War II was on the deck of the Missouri. “It made sense to make the ship to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war,” he said.

When he first started building models, Davis said, he wanted to see whether he could create his own style, one that would not show the influence of other builders. That is one of the reasons he has never taken lessons.

“I work of a theory of scale resolution,” he said. “If you look at certain models in movies, it may look pretty convincing, but in close-up it really isn’t.”

A true model shipbuilder would make it authentic, he said, pointing out that his model of the Missouri has 84 coats of paint. It was painted that many times, he said, so that its hull plates would be etched out like those of the original.

“The theory is that if you are going to invest time and energy, you should make it look like a work of art, much the same as they make fine jewelry, watches and paintings.”

Some builders, he added, want models to be so authentic that “they spend years building one ship.”