Convention Shows That Model Building Isn't Just For Kids

CHATTANOOGA — Three large rooms at the Chattanooga Convention Center were filled Thursday with dozens of vendors and hundreds of mostly middle-aged and older men looking at the latest in plastic model building. Chattanooga is this year’s venue for the International Plastic Modelers Society-USA for its annual national convention, where modelers come to compete with their latest creations and to see what is new in paints, tools, aftermarket parts and the newest model kits. The host IPMS chapter, Chattanooga Scale Modelers, combined inside jokes from two John Belushi movies, “Animal House” and “1941,” to create the convention’s theme — a cigar chomping pilot in a P-40 with the legend “Was It Over When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?” Walking through the vendors’ room, visitors were greeted by tables full of new kits, older and rare models, bins of decals, specialty tools, paints, glues, cements, photo-etched and resin detail parts, airbrushes and other supplies. John Vojtech demonstrated what looked like a seamstress’ pounce wheel, except that it pressed rivet holes in plastic.