I have been building model boats and ships since I was in grade school. Like most kids I started out building model kits where the challenge was mostly in painting the models. In junior high and high school I started building models from scratch. Most of my early scratch models were terrible and ended up in the trash, but I kept at it after I quit building kit models. While I was working I built very few models, but I honed and developed my skills by building small things at work. Then in 1999 I retired.
When I retired I moved to a small village on Mount Desert Island here in Maine. For those that aren’t familiar with Mount Desert Island (MDI), it is the main location of Acadia National Park. As such it is the primary tourist destination in Maine during the summer. MDI is also a major boating destination. Because of those things MDI is thronged with tourists from early summer until mid-fall. There is also lots to do here in the summer, particularly if you are into boating like I am. The flip side of that is the period from late fall through spring when the tourists are gone and most of the businesses oriented toward tourists are closed. During that part of the year it is QUIET here. There is little or nothing to do outside the home for about six months each year. In other words it can be pretty dull here in the winter.
To combat boredom I got back into boat modelling during my first winter here on MDI. I started out by buying a kit model of a friendship sloop and building it. It occupied quite a few hours, but except for the painting wasn’t particularly challenging. While I was building that model I got to thinking that it would be nice to have a half model of my Allied 36 sailboat. I went on line and checked out various model builders and was stunned by the cost of a half hull model. There was simply no way I was going to pay $350 to $400 for a half hull model of my boat. So I decided to build my own half hull model. After a bit of on-line searching I located the designer of the Allied 36 and got a copy of the hull lines from him. When the plans arrived, I got started and built a half model of my boat.
My first Half model of my Allied Princess 36
At the time I didn’t have a band saw, so I decided to build the model plank on frame from balsa strips. Not knowing any better I built the model on the mounting board and painted the balsa directly. The result (picture above) wasn’t particularly good, but I learned a lot about the process. In addition to not being exactly beautiful the model was also very fragile.
When I built the model of my boat I was also running the Allied Princess Owners Group on the internet, so naturally I put a picture of my model on that web page. It wasn’t long before a couple of Allied owners asked if I could build models of their boats for them. Given that I actually had demand I decided to start a small business building half hull models.
The idea of a model building business had initially occurred to me when I was pricing having a model of my boat built. The reason I considered starting a business was simple. I had spent almost all of my working career in Canada. On top of that most of the work I had done in the US was either for the federal government or in academia in states where the state universities I worked at were not covered by social security. The result was that when I moved back to the states in ’99, I didn’t have enough work credits to qualify for social security or medicare. So I needed to earn some money. While Mount Desert Island is a great place to live, it isn’t exactly a hot bed of quality employment opportunities. That lack of jobs was compounded by my particular qualifications. I have a great education (two BS degrees, a MS and a Ph.D.), but frankly there are zero opportunities on MDI for employment as a geochemist, analytical chemist or research chemist. My options to earn some money came down to working in the tourist industry as a shop clerk or waiter, doing grunt work in a boat yard, or starting my own business. I didn’t want to go into retail, the idea of waiting tables was rather unappealing and although I did all my own work on my boat I didn’t want to work in a boat yard because that work is mostly during boating season when I wanted to be out on my boat. I had been thinking about starting a small business, but until the opportunity to build models for money came up I hadn’t had any decent ideas. So, I decided to start building models.
The first three models I built were models of other Allied Princesses. Building those models I greatly improved my result as you can see in the picture below.
An early Allied Princess 36 model
I showed a couple of my early models to boating friends, which resulted in them asking me to build models of their boats. I built a half dozen models my first year strictly by word of mouth.
Building the Business
After my first year building models professionally, I had pretty much run through my list of boating friends. So I decided that I needed to advertise. I thought about building a couple of spec models and taking them to a boat show until I looked into how much it cost to be an exhibitor at a boat show. So I decided to take a different route. Initially I built a few spec models of Hinckley Bermuda 40s and Friendship sloops and put them on eBay. I managed to sell several models that way, but didn’t get as much money as I would have liked. However, there were some models that didn’t sell.
An early model of a Friendship Sloop built as a speculation
Given my poor result building models on spec, I decided to start a web site. Now being cheap I made my own web site. I had some experience creating web sites because I had been putting my courses on line for more than five years when I retired. So I created my web site, registered it with Google and waited. Much to my surprise, I started getting inquiries after only about three weeks. I was off and running as a small business person.
My first year I built about a dozen half hull models. Then a potential client asked me if I could add some more detail. I said sure and built my first detailed half model. That boat was an Able 48. That model was quite a challenge since I had to figure out how to build the various detail components. I actually ended up using a lot of the skills I had used in my working career as a lab scientist.
My first detailed half model
Over the next few years I gradually built more models as well as more complex models. I also gradually raised my prices. The business continued to grow until it got to the point that it was eroding my boating time. I first tried to deal with having more work than I wanted by raising my prices. My first price raises had little effect, so I made a big jump and raised my prices by 50% in the hope that I would get less work. It didn’t work out as I planned. What happened is that I started getting commissions to build models of more expensive boats.
A display model of a restored Bertram 31
The more models of fancy boats that I built the more requests I got. I had inadvertently moved into a higher stratum of the boat modelling industry. I even started building radio controlled sailing models.
A radio controlled gaff rigged schooner model
This continued until about 2012 when I decided to start scaling the business down. To down size I simply stopped building models from May 1 through October 15. Although that gave me more free time in the summer, it didn’t really have the effect of shrinking the business. Instead I soon found that I had an 18 month backlog of orders. That made me really uncomfortable, so I decided to take a different approach at the beginning of 2014. I set a limit on how much money I wanted to make from modelling and only accepted orders until I had enough to make that much. That worked reasonably well except that I found that I was fully booked for 2015 in early January of that yer. I just finished my last model for 2015 and I am already fully booked for 2016.
My last model for 2015
For 2016 I have also decided not to build any more detailed models, so I am almost back to where I started. I am on track to end the business at the end of 2016. After 2016 I intend to continue building models, but only for myself or perhaps as gifts for friends. Over the last 16 years I have built nearly 200 models, but I only have four of them at home.
So that sums up my experience as a small business person. I have to say that I have not adhered to the traditional model. I grew the business, but only so far, then I started down sizing. My goal was never to make a lot of money. I have been in business for two reasons. First, I wanted something to do during our very quiet winters and second, I wanted to establish my social security and medicare eligibility. For more than half of my business career I have been trying to shrink my business rather than make it larger. So I guess I am a bit of a heretic in the way that I have practiced capitalism. I never wanted my business to get big enough to hire anyone, nor did I try to actually make a living. In may respects, I wish that more businesses in this country operated the way I did. After all quality of life is more important than money. Personally I simply can’t understand why someone who has enough should want more.
Todd Dunn 