February 7, 2017—The Joe Martin Foundation has selected Cherry Hill as the winner of the 2017 Craftsman of the Year award, the Joe Martin Foundation's top honor. Mrs. Hill has won just about every award that can be won in Model Engineering over the past 5 decades, and her work certainly exhibits the skill and attention to detail to merit all those awards. She has been a talent to contend with in competitive model engineering since the 1960's and is still producing amazing work. See her museum web page for photos and her story. Mrs. Hill will not be attending the award ceremony at the North American Model Engineering Society Expo April 22-23, but photos of her work will be presented there. Mrs. Hill has also generously asked that her $2000 winner's check be returned to the Joe Martin Foundation to be put to use in the promotion of Craftsmanship.

February 25, 2017—Photos of two of our newer museum displays were added to the "Displays" page. One is the Chippewa steam launch model by Gordon Wiles and the other is a model of the 1799 USS Essex American Frigate made by Norman Wuytens. Norman is also an avid clock maker and is now volunteering at the museum in Carlsbad restoring a very old clock with wooden gears that will go on display when he is done.

December 6, 2016—Paul Knapp added some individual sample components for the Riley and Ardun engines donated in November. he also added two more tether cars...a McCoy teardrop and a ratrod truck by Doug Parker. See the IC Engine Collection page.

November 11, 2016—Engine collector Paul Knapp has added a number of interesting engines to our display. Included are several tether cars and tether boats. One of the boats was made from scratch in 1939 in Zimbabwe by Harry Pingstone. Another is an early radio-controlled hydroplane with a custom built V-8 engine made by John Storoz in 1954. In addition, he brought in four spectacular 1/3 scale engines made by Ron Bement. Included are a Challenger V-8, an Offenhauser 270, a Riley overhead valve conversion on a Model A Ford racing engine and a Ford Flathead V-8 with an ARDUN overhead valve conversion. These can be seen by going to the IC Engine Collection page on this site.

September 1, 2016—The Erector Set collection has received many positive comments from model engineers who started their building careers by bolting together the steel girders and other components. We have now added several structures built from Erector Set components to better illustrate how the sets were used for the modern generation only familiar with Lego blocks. Included are a seven-foot tall model of the Eiffel Tower, a fire truck, several railroad cars and a rare boxed set from 1914. They are on loan from toy collector Gary Jarvis. Photos can be seen on the Displays page of the web site.

August 23, 2016—Photos of the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner model were added to the Displays page under the "ship models" section of this web site. Professionally built by Maritime Replics model company, it was purchased by passenger Kimberly Hogan and her late husband who sailed on the liner years ago and is now on loan to the museum.

July 13, 2016�—The Craftsmanship Museum has just been selected by the local business recognition organization as Carlsbad's top museum for 2016. See the Press Release. Given that Carlsbad also hosts the GIA Gemological Museum, the NAMM Museum of Making Music and the Green Dragon historical document museum we consider this quite an honor.

July 2, 2016—The museum hosted its 10th anniversary celebration. Free soft drinks and chips were offered all day to guests. Featured was the unveiling of the Birk Petersen collection at 10:30 AM. The Petersen family attended from Provo, Utah to see the collection dedicated to public display. Over 150 items made by Birk Petersen included everything from toys and models of farm implements to a box organ, a carousel and many, many engines of widely varying types. A selection of miniature, full-size and even oversize guns are also part of the collection along with two large scale, working tractors, a steam shovel, a well-drilling rig and a Buffalo Springfield steam roller that was featured in a year-long, six issue series of articles in Live Steam magazine. We thank the Petersen family for the generous donation.

June 30, 2016—We regret to announce that master watch and clock maker William R. Smith passed away May 10th, 2016. Bill Smith was the Joe Martin Foundation's 2000 winner of the Metalworking Craftsman of the Year award. The former engineer at the Oak Ridge, TN labs was not only a master in the field of clocks and watches, he also rebuilt and collected telegraph keys and wrote poetry. The numerous books and videos he produced on building clocks and doing horological shop operations have helped many a craftsman over the years.

June 29, 2016—A new page on Abraham Megerdichian has just been added to the "unsual projects" room of the online museum. While his career was as a machinist, his hobby also involved making small models of everyday items in metal. His collection of models from tools and a toolbox to a piano and violin, a vacuum cleaner to a semi-truck paints an interesting story of a many who loved to work in metal.

June 21, 2016—A huge new collection of work by Birk Petersen of Provo, UT has just been added to the online museum. Over 150 items were donated by the family of this prolific craftsman. A display of his work will be introduced in the Carlsbad museum at 10:30 AM on July 2, 2016, but for those who want a preview, visit his museum page. He built everything from engines to guns, generators to toys, tools to a carousel. The extent and variety of his lifetime body of work is amazing.

April 28, 2016—Seven new projects by Clif Roemmich were photographed at the 2016 NAMES Expo in Detroit and were just added to Clif's museum page. These include a Holt #77 steam farm tractor with a treaded drive as well as a 1909 Mercedes aircraft engine, a camelback drill press and several other interesting engines.

April 5, 2016—Though added to the museum in 2012, we had never included photos of the Isuzu-Morita Hose Cart fire truck built by Tom Showers. Donor John Ackerman sent along some photos of this unique vehicle designed to fight fires in very tight quarters like the back alleys of Tokyo.

March 30, 2016—A new woodcarver has just been featured in the online museum. Sheridan Preston carves not only birds and other objects from nature, but he also tests his wood skills by carving man-made objects like aircraft and sailing ships. Click on his name above to view his new page.

March 24, 2016—A model of a horse-drawn fire pump from 1880 in Holland made by Merl Thurman was added to the museum display. It was built in 1/8 scale by Merl Thurman of Livingston, TX. Also added to the "Displays" page are photos of two scratch built wooden fishing boats made by Theodore Snoddy.

March 3, 2016—A new batch of 41 engines including 10 tether cars and boats was just put on display at the museum as an addition to the Paul and Paula Knapp engine collection. See the Engine Colleciton page (last section near the bottom of the page) for a description and at least two photos of each new addition. These engines can be seen in person in the Carlsbad museum. In 1994, Eric Whittle of England won the IC engine contest at the NAMES show in Detroit. The engine was then stolen off the awards table. Jim Schiller put on a massive reward campaign with posters and calls to hobby shops, and the engine was anonymously returned six months later. Jim refused the $2500 cash reward, so Eric Whittle built a special "Robin" 1-cylinder airplane engine and presented it to Jim at the 1995 show. Both engines and the reward poster are part of this new display.

February 17, 2016—Two new books have just been added to our museum library courtesy of a donation by Roger A. Monroe. He shipped us Volumes 1 and 2 of Modern Machine Shop Practice. Volume 1 is a 3rd edition from 1899 and Volume 2 is a second edition from 1994. These large 11 x 13" leather bound books contain from 480 to over 500 pages of state of the art machining information as it stood in the late 1800's. The most surprising thing is how little most of it has changed. All the approximately 4000 illustrations in each volume are done as fine engravings, and the art itself is wonderful. We thank Mr. Monroe for contributing these books used by his grandfather and father who were all machinists. His grandfather worked as 2nd engineer on the steam plant at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and his father was also a machinist for Scott Paper working on one of the last live steam locomotives in use hauling logs to the mill in Washington.

February 4, 2016—Three interesting new miniature weapons were added to Antonio Rincon's page. One is a matchlock pike with knife blade on the end and spikes on the side--a wicked looking combination weapon from the 1600's. Another combination weapon was the shield/matchlock pistol. An ornate silver inlaid carbine was also added.

January 22, 2016—A group of US Marines hosted by the Wounded Warriors organization toured the museum today. They were all from nearby Camp Pendleton. They split up into teams and took our scavenger hunt challenge, finding items in the museum. Thank you for your service and sacrifice, gentlemen. See the Group Visits page for a photo.

January 19, 2016—CRAFTSMAN OF THE YEAR ANNOUNCED! The Joe Martin Foundation's 2016 Craftsman of the Year was announced today. The winner is George Britnell of Strongsville, Ohio. George is a long-time model engineer and retired Ford Motor Company craftsman who has built a variety of small projects including steam engines, a Case tractor, guns and internal combustion engines. Naturally, they are based on Fords. CLICK HERE to see a video showing and explaining the features of his latest project, a 1/3 scale Ford Flathead V8 with Cadillac flathead type exhaust. George will receive his award in person at the 2016 North American Model Engineering Society Expo in Wyandotte, Michigan April 23-24, 2016. The award includes a check for $2000 plus an engraved medallion.

January 15, 2016—Local TV station KUSI, channel 9/51 does a daily show called "Good Morning San Diego." Craig got a chance to demonstrate an engine or two and talk briefly about the museum in the segment that can be seen at http://www.kusi.com/clip/12142078/miniature-engineering-craftsman-museum . Dave Stall does the "car guy" segments and has been an enthusiastic visitor to and supporter of the museum. Thanks to KUSI for the free coverage. I hope lots of people were watching at 6:45 AM.

January 14, 2016—Miniature tool maker Paul Hamler has expanded his product line to include select miniature guns. His first project was a 1/3 scale Kentucky long rifle. Now he is completing a series of Colt M1911 automatic pistols in 1/3 scale. We just added some photos of the production process to his web page near the bottom of the photo section.

January 7, 2016—A new craftsman was just added to the on-line museum. Model Engineer Doug Kelley has restored antique engines, driven heavy equipment and designed large earth movers. In retirement he turned to model engineering as a practical matter to build smaller engines, but he has chosen some unusual prototypes to model. See his work on our newest page.

January 7, 2016—Another new addition to the web site takes our usually small model engines to something of an extreme in the opposite direction. Kelsey Barrion is a Marine Engineer who works on giant Diesel container ship engines. She describes what it's like to work on massive engines putting out thousands of horsepower.