For many years, plastic model kits from toy stores, hobby shops, and antique vendors have provided children with hours of fun. However, these kits are not merely toys to be played with and forgotten.
For members of the Reno chapter of the International Plastic Modelers Society, scale modeling is a serious art form and hobby that honors the past, educates in the present, and provides a method of relaxation. This small club dedicated to scale modeling boasts about sixty members and meets on the second Friday of every month at a fire station on Mae Anne in Reno.
Seventy-three-year-old John Herdener—a retired mechanic, teacher, and veteran—first joined the Reno IPMS club—nicknamed the High-Rollers—in 2001;
“Well, I was teaching at Hug High School; and they were doing their meetings there; and I stopped in at the hobby store that happened to be open at the time. It’s now long gone; the owner passed away,” said Herdener, “But he had one of the fliers on the table; and I, you know, picked it up and looked. ‘Oh, there’s a club?!’ And I saw that they met at Hug High School, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this makes it too easy.’”
Since then, and even with the change of the club’s location, Herdener has rarely missed any of their meetings.
Herdener, who was first inspired to build scale models during his childhood when he watched his father construct ship models, owns over one thousand kits today.
His current project is a 1/72 scale P-51 Mustang – a storied World War II-era fighter plane; but his favorite build to date is a replica of the Honda 750 motorcycle he used to ride before an accident led him to give up on biking.
Describing the incident, Herdener said that he was “coming into Carson, fifty-five mile-an-hour speed limit—I’m doing about fifty. I’m on the inside lane, and I needed to move over. So, I looked over; and there’s a car; and I look up; and the lady had turned in front of me. I was about fifteen feet away from her. Impact speed was forty-five miles-an-hour. It should have killed me.”
His model Honda, now a memento of his riding days, was featured in the pages of a magazine.
Fellow modeler Phil Schenfeld (in top photo, with a landing craft he made above) is, like Herdener, a retired veteran and club member;
Schenfeld has been involved with the Reno IPMS “High-Rollers” for about twenty-five years now.
In keeping with the club’s 2024 D-Day theme, he built a model landing craft—a project which took him eight months to complete.
Inside? Thirty-six different figures—each detailed.
“Some of the figures are pretty much stock out of the box,” stated Schenfeld, “but most of them have been modified to the point that they tell a story. That’s my whole thing, tell a story.”
For Schenfeld, the modeling hobby not only pulls him away from the stress of current events and politics, but it also serves an educational purpose—providing him with greater knowledge about the past.
“It maintains my dexterity. I do a lot of research,” he said. “When w–When I started this [landing craft] project, I knew about this much [little] about Operation Overlord. I could write a book about it right now—about just Utah Beach, which is where this particular thing is dedicated to. So, I love doing the research.”
Kody Kuczynski, another member of the Reno IPMS club and a student at Truckee Meadows Community College, sees the hobby as an instrument that develops the researching skills of its participants.
He also thinks the hobby provides its participants with an education in fine motor skills, in paint chemistry, and in photography, too.
Kuczynski (in photo above), who began modeling as a child, loves to build armor. Though he originally used cans of spray paint to color his models, he has since embraced airbrushing.
He says that “there are days where it’s like, I just wanna come home, sit at the workbench, and just be tuned out—have my headphones on, listen to an audiobook, podcast, or just music and just head down, working alone.”
Like many modelers, Kuczynski utilizes a diverse set of materials to finish his works. On diorama bases, he incorporates ordinary items like dirt and small sticks to replicate natural elements in a miniature setting.
Phil Schenfeld, who does some of his work in a modeling room at his home in north Reno, uses household products to finish certain of his model airplanes.
Using pieces of tin foil and a mixture of floor polish and Mod Podge, Schenfeld can give a model a metallic coloring without paint.
For those interested in trying their own hand at modeling, Herdener says to be patient.
“Seek the advice of other modelers; but, you know, don’t get discouraged if your first few models don’t turn out too great,” he said. “It’s—it’s a learning experience, and it’s meant to be fun. If it’s not fun, you’re doing something wrong.”
Audio feature, photos and reporting by Ariel Van Cleve