- Joined
- Aug 3, 2017
- Messages
- 2,437
Some of you know, of Gary already (https://www.martinmodel.com/), but I decided I wanted a new project, and his Gear Hobber kit seems just the ticket. SO, I drove the hour each way to visit his shop and check it out in person!
Gary is a wonderful guy, who was a blast to talk to! He's a woodworker with wonderful shop where he teaches woodworking (said 6 days week!). In addition to the woodworking, he does REALLY impressive Pattern Making for a ton of projects. He has a whole side of his shop dedicated to casting storage, where all of the castings for his website are stored after annealing.
He has a REALLY great collection of camelback castings in both Bronze and Iron (https://www.martinmodel.com/collect...ect-castings/products/camelback-straight-edge) that are all at pretty superb prices! I had to control myself from just picking up a bunch. All the way from cute little 6"ers (for your desk, no doubt!) to some 36" ones I spotted. All the castings I saw were pretty beautiful looking.
Additionally, he has some gas engine kits (https://www.martinmodel.com/collections/model-engine-casting-sets). I saw the first 3 from his website completed and in person, they are really cool looking engines. I think my next engine is going to be that John Deere. The flywheel castings are done in 'lost wax' so they are super smooth castings. That kit also has some pretty fantastic manuals (3 spiral bound books!) that looked really detailed based on my flip through.
Alternatively, the "Mery" engine (https://www.martinmodel.com/collections/model-engine-casting-sets/products/mery-engine-casting-set) looked pretty fancy, apparently it is a dual-direction engine, firing in both directions of the stroke. It seemed really interesting!
He also showed me a bit about his Black Widow engine, of which he has the castings coming in any day now! It looks like a pretty fantastic project
One thing to note: while chatting, I mentioned how sometimes forums like to do group-buys for stuff like this, and he said he'd be open to setting something up with us if the forum were so inclined.
Even if we don't decide to do something like that, you should keep him in mind! His castings are all really nicely commercially cast, with some really nice looking pattern work.
Gary is a wonderful guy, who was a blast to talk to! He's a woodworker with wonderful shop where he teaches woodworking (said 6 days week!). In addition to the woodworking, he does REALLY impressive Pattern Making for a ton of projects. He has a whole side of his shop dedicated to casting storage, where all of the castings for his website are stored after annealing.
He has a REALLY great collection of camelback castings in both Bronze and Iron (https://www.martinmodel.com/collect...ect-castings/products/camelback-straight-edge) that are all at pretty superb prices! I had to control myself from just picking up a bunch. All the way from cute little 6"ers (for your desk, no doubt!) to some 36" ones I spotted. All the castings I saw were pretty beautiful looking.
Additionally, he has some gas engine kits (https://www.martinmodel.com/collections/model-engine-casting-sets). I saw the first 3 from his website completed and in person, they are really cool looking engines. I think my next engine is going to be that John Deere. The flywheel castings are done in 'lost wax' so they are super smooth castings. That kit also has some pretty fantastic manuals (3 spiral bound books!) that looked really detailed based on my flip through.
Alternatively, the "Mery" engine (https://www.martinmodel.com/collections/model-engine-casting-sets/products/mery-engine-casting-set) looked pretty fancy, apparently it is a dual-direction engine, firing in both directions of the stroke. It seemed really interesting!
He also showed me a bit about his Black Widow engine, of which he has the castings coming in any day now! It looks like a pretty fantastic project
One thing to note: while chatting, I mentioned how sometimes forums like to do group-buys for stuff like this, and he said he'd be open to setting something up with us if the forum were so inclined.
Even if we don't decide to do something like that, you should keep him in mind! His castings are all really nicely commercially cast, with some really nice looking pattern work.
