Here’s my contribution to the R&GN Speeder Reconstruction Project. I was the last guy to get started, so Steve Bennett and Ian Holmes both had a week’s head start on me.

Photographs © Carl Arendt

This model was built from scratch in four days, so any omissions, errors, or glaring mistakes are definitely and exclusively the result of lack of time!

This one is to 1:22.5 scale (convenient, because 1mm is very close to a scale inch, so scale-thickness material is easy to find and use. Remember also that 0.040″ = 1 mm). Like the other two, this model is built around a 31mm wheelbase Spud motor block.

Its only claim to distinction is that it’s the only one of the three to use actual wood to represent the lumber portions of the prototype — chosen because wood weathers so well and so easily.

The greatest pleasure in making this simple model was the daily exchanges among the three of us via e-mail. It fascinates me to see how differently three modelers interpret the same prototype — we all worked from exactly the same dimensional drawings and photographs (thanks, Mike!) yet the results, while similar in overall shape and size, are very different in their look and feel.