A Good Deed

Hello everyone, I’d like to introduce Shaun.  Shaun is a remarkable young man.  He is a Senior at Westwood High School.  He is weeks away from becoming an Eagle Scout.  He is a cadet officer with the Texas 861^st JROTC.  And he is my son’s best friend.  In spite of all this activity, Shaun volunteered to spend his Saturday, October 6, 2012 at the Norris Conference Center helping kids build models at the annual ASMS “Make-and-Take” program. 

One of the lessons I learned early in life is, “don’t volunteer for anything…ever.”  Thankfully Shaun didn’t learn this lesson.  Another was, “no good deed goes unpunished.”  As a result of Shaun’s visit to the Austin Model Show, he won a Trumpeter 1/24 scale Hawker Hurricane at the raffle table (coincidentally donated by King’s Hobby Shop).  I’ll let you decide if this validates or debunks the second lesson.

Shaun has never been a “serious” model builder, so I offered to lend a hand during the build.  He met me at King's Hobby and we jumped right in.  First, I gave him some advice on color choice.  Then showed him how to use an airbrush.  Here are some shots of his work so far. 

He tried his hand at applying a pin-wash and at dry-brushing.

Here he is carefully installing the photo-etch.

 He looks like a natural. 

Once he gets the Hurricane finished (unlike most of us, he’ll actually finish it), I’d love to have it in King’s.  But I understand his CO, Col. Juste Sanchez, has invited him to display it proudly in the Westwood ROTC Building.  If nothing else, maybe we’ll see it on the display table at our next show.  Regardless, we thank Shaun for his service to ASMS and we hope he enjoys his modeling experience.