# Anyone remember these shops?



## Pappy

*As a young boy, one of my favorite places to go was a Hobby Shop. There was one on King St., in my hometown, that was a part of ones home and if they were home, they were open. I would finish my paper route and quite often visit their shop before I went home. I was in to building balsa wood airplane models. The shop I visited looked almost like the one I've posted.*


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## Josiah

Yeah, I use to love visiting my local hobby shop.


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## ClassicRockr

When I was in high school, my cousin and I use to build/paint model cars. For the last couple of years, wife had a little craft going on during the Christmas holidays that we used local Hobby Shops for........collected pine cones from the trees around our apt. complex and turned them into Christmas Trees w/paint-sparkly stuff added an Angel or Cross to the top. They turned out great! This last Christmas, she made Seashell pictures out of real seashells. Some of the seashells she had collected and others she bought. They were great looking as well.


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## Pappy

Back in the fifties, when jet planes were becoming popular, I had several models, I built, hanging from my bedroom ceiling. Some of the first fighter jets I remember were the F-80 and the F-86. Real advanced jets for the time.

I also use to buy small bags of plaster of Paris and make model cars in a rubber form designed for that purpose. I would place steel axles and rubber tires in place and pour the plaser into the form. Let it set, paint and enjoy your fleet of autos.


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## SeaBreeze

There's still a couple of hobby shops in my area, it is fun to visit them, especially the ones with model train setups to watch.


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## Falcon

Oh yes, Love them. A good friend of mine owns one and it's HUGE!  If he doesn't carry it, it isn't made. Every scale, every size etc.
I've built many of the kits.


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## AZ Jim

I loved hobby shops.  I broke up probably 6 of those lightweight (Balsa) planes you launched with a "slingshot" and they had a prop and it used a wound up rubber band.  Those hobby shops were a kids idea of heaven.


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## AprilT

SeaBreeze said:


> There's still a couple of hobby shops in my area, it is fun to visit them, especially the ones with model train setups to watch.




I was just about to write something similar, get out of my head.  LOL!  I'm not into these things, but, when I've been dragged into one of those shops, I always get a kick out of the trains going around the tracks, I also don't mind taking over the remote controls of those toy cars and airplanes.    I was fond of both dolls and the remote control toys as a kid.

Oh and yep, I see hobby shops around these parts and everywhere else I've lived over the years.


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## hollydolly

Yes there's still a few old fashioned ones around here too but mainly they've been taken over by the Huge Hobbycraft superstores.....still fun to visit, but not got the same atmosphere at all as the little independents ...however the amount of stock they carry is astonishing, hobbies you never knew even existed much less tried.  
Do you have Hobbycraft in the US and Canada?


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## Cookie

We used to have little neighborhood hobby shops that seemed to sell mostly model airplane kits and the like and there was a model railroad shop down the street from me until just a few years ago. Now we have a monster hobby superstore called Michael's which stocks everything you could possibly imagine, but doesn't sell online, and hard for me to get to.  Most of the little neighborhood fabric, wool and bead making shops are gone too. We used to have a place called Lewiscraft for years, but sadly it went under too. I'll look for Hobbycraft, maybe they do online sales. Nowadays I get supplies via Amazon.  Art supply stores seem to be still doing OK though.


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## AZ Jim

Look what I found.  I wish I had a big yard, I'd get a couple.  They were such fun at 8, I wonder how I'd do now 70 years later.


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## Pappy

AZ Jim said:


> Look what I found.  I wish I had a big yard, I'd get a couple.  They were such fun at 8, I wonder how I'd do now 70 years later.
> 
> View attachment 14588



And I bet you would still enjoy, Jim.

I would spend weeks building the wood models and after I tired of them, I'd wind up the rubber band, set the tail on fire and watch the the plane go up in smoke.


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## hollydolly

I remember my brothers making those planes out of balsa wood or lolly sticks  and elastic...


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## Pappy

At one time or another, I built most of these models. 
F-80 Starfire
f-86 Sabre
B-17 Flying Fortress.


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## Falcon

Have you seen those German layouts on the internet?

One is an airport with planes taking off and landing etc.  The other is a train layout with trains running every which way.

I don't have the urls but you might find them on U-tube.


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## AZ Jim

Falcon said:


> Have you seen those German layouts on the internet?
> 
> One is an airport with planes taking off and landing etc.  The other is a train layout with trains running every which way.
> 
> I don't have the urls but you might find them on U-tube.



You were a pilot so gliders and models probably seem silly.  Do you ever fly now, Falcon?


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## Underock1

Pappy, I'm not familiar with Cleveland models, but they look like they might be out of wood. Does anybody remember Strombecker kits? They made a line of WWII planes. They were made out of pine and you had to sand the pieces into final shape. I was a kid, and getting the engines to fit into the wings of a B17 or B24, was murder!


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## Ken N Tx

Underock1 said:


> Pappy, I'm not familiar with Cleveland models, but they look like they might be out of wood. Does anybody remember Strombecker kits? They made a line of WWII planes. They were made out of pine and you had to sand the pieces into final shape. I was a kid, and getting the engines to fit into the wings of a B17 or B24, was murder!




.


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## Pappy

Yes, I do remember those kits. I tried to build one once. Think I gave up on it and went back to the balsa models.


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## Underock1

Thanks, Pappy. I built that kit, and just about all the others throughout WWII. My very first model was a P39 Airocobra. The last one was a B29, with a wingspan so wide that I had to angle it in order to "fly" it through the doorway. By the end of the war we had a whole cardboard closet filled with these things.


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## Pappy

I have a huge B-29, in the box, that I never finished. I hate the plastic models and never should have bought it. Has something like a 36 inch wingspan.


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## oldman

I did model cars that had the plastic parts on a piece of plastic that had to be broken or torn off. We used toothpicks to put the glue on, so it wouldn't run out over the edges and ruin the paint. I never knew that sniffing glue would make a person woozy, until I became that way one day and my Mom asked me what's wrong? I told her that I was feeling woozy and dizzy. She told me to put the glue down and take a walk outside. Felt better after that. The problem with the glue was that it would sometimes harden if the cap wan't put back on correctly. 

I also built a couple planes that were powered by some special type of fuel that we bought in a can. The planes were attached to a string. I don't remember seeing RC planes back then, but they may have had them.


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## Underock1

I have about ten plastic WWI planes built, but I learned my lesson. They are 1/72nd scale with 2" wing spans.
I have another dozen, plus a couple of galleons to be built "some day". Lol!


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## SifuPhil

I was born more into the plastic age, so I remember primarily those kits. Our local hobby shops carried the balsa plane kits, model rockets (Estes), HO trains and HO slot cars. They also carried chemistry set supplies, and being a certified junior mad scientist I spent a lot of money on those.

Primarily I was a plastic car and monster-maker (there was an entire line of Hollywood monsters you could build), with the rockets and slot cars as the more expensive pursuits when I could afford them.


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## Josiah

Although I'm enjoying all these nostalgic memories of balsa wood and tissue paper model planes with glow plug engines that hardly ever ran. But at the same time I'm really impressed with the contemporary RC models that really knock your socks off. They sure look like fun to fly.


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## Ken N Tx

Underock1 said:


> Thanks, Pappy. I built that kit, and just about all the others throughout WWII. My very first model was a P39 Airocobra. The last one was a B29, with a wingspan so wide that I had to angle it in order to "fly" it through the doorway. By the end of the war we had a whole cardboard closet filled with these things.


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## Underock1

That's the one. Thankfully no enginesto fit into the wings. Just nail the propeller on.


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## Pappy

Remember cutting out each part with a razor or Exacto knife and then using safety pins to hold the parts together so you could glue them? Many hours involved to build a complete model.


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## Underock1

Right. I love the detail and accuracy of plastic when doing a historic model, but there is no beating the satisfaction of making your own parts with the balsa kits. I built a few of the Guillow WWl models. They looked great, at least for the first two flights. Lol!


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## Pappy

The biggest problem I had was getting the tissue paper to tighten up. I used an old toothbrush to distribute the water so that it would look nice and tight after it dried.


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## Underock1

Ah. The old tooth brush spray gun. Lets see you do that with an electric one.


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## Rob

I've always enjoyed modelling since my early days. From plastic Airfix model aircraft to balsa cut-out gliders and powered aircraft. A couple of years back I started again with a modern compressed styrofoam powered glider with RC. The aircraft is designed to be flown under power to a reasonable height and when the engine is cut, the props fold back and it operates as a normal glider. Modern high powered electric motors combined with high capacity Lithium-polymer batteries have made the old 'glow plug' engines virtually redundant now.

As a teenager I had a 'Mammod' miniature static steam engine, which I had great fun connecting to various Meccano built Heath Robinson type constructions of extreme complexity that rattled and whirred to great effect without actually doing anything useful.



SifuPhil said:


> They also carried chemistry set supplies, and being a certified junior mad scientist I spent a lot of money on those.



I don't talk about my exploits with chemistry sets, Phil. You could buy the most noxious chemicals imaginable from a decent chemist's shop back then.

Flowers of sulphur, nitrate of potash and Darco-G activated carbon spring to mind. And as for weedkiller and castor sugar ... as I said, I don't talk about it.


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## Underock1

When I was a boy, we lived across the street from the old Thomas A Edison studio in the Bronx. At that time, it was a film studio.
My older brother had a job there. He used to bring home copious amounts of powdered magnesium. I leave the rest to your imagination.


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## Kathy G in MI

Haven't heard of Hobbycraft, but we do have Hobby Lobby, but I don't think it would count. Has fabrics, framing shop, home décor, holiday décor, some furniture, and I know craft stuff like beads, yarns, popsicle sticks, etc.


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## SifuPhil

Underock1 said:


> When I was a boy, we lived across the street from the old Thomas A Edison studio in the Bronx. At that time, it was a film studio.
> My older brother had a job there. He used to bring home copious amounts of powdered magnesium. I leave the rest to your imagination.



Rock, that wasn't the "Black Mariah", was it? I think that was his studio in Jersey ...


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## Underock1

No SifuPhil. This was in the Bronx. They made "Soundies" there for a while. A jukebox with a movie in it of the performers. We had a number of the popular artists. You can find some of them on YouTube. I had a baton that my brother got from Cab Calloway once. They also filmed a TV series toward the end. Ralph Bellamy in "Man Against Crime". There were times when we had to wait to go shopping because they were "murdering" someone in the court yard. One of the big laughs was the day we had a half dozen fire engines scream up, only to watch them bring out a burning doll house that had set off the alarm. It was interesting.






After we moved out the neighborhood went downhill badly. The studio was vacant and was totally vandalized for its plumbing and everything else. It was torn down and a new apartment house stands in its place.


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## Ken N Tx

Kathy G in MI said:


> Haven't heard of Hobbycraft, but we do have Hobby Lobby, but I don't think it would count. Has fabrics, framing shop, home décor, holiday décor, some furniture, and I know craft stuff like beads, yarns, popsicle sticks, etc.



Hobby Lobby has models.. I have also bought doll house kits from them..


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## chifan7

I used to Try to put car models together. I discovered after a couple of attempts , that I just didn't have the patience to put those little bitty pieces together.


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## jujube

The last "true" hobby shop around here closed a couple of years ago.  All we have left now are the Hobby Lobby chain type of stores.


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## Guitarist

Underock1 said:


> I have about ten plastic WWI planes built, but I learned my lesson. They are 1/72nd scale with 2" wing spans.
> I have another dozen, plus a couple of galleons to be built "some day". Lol!



Are any of them Revell models?  One of my boyfriends and I used to build plastic WWI model planes about that size.  I had a wonderful Albatros D.III and he had a Fokker Triplane.  At the time I drove an Opel, so when I was out on the roads I was really flying that Albatros.  He drove a "P51."


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## ↑umop-apisdn↓

I certainly do remember the old Hobby Shops and i loved them . Model airplanes meh i had a few , but for me it was all race cars and monster models. My little brother was scared of my room , the Frankenstein model got him everytime. I had them all too.


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## Guitarist

Among the long-ago stores I miss are the ten-cent stores (five-and-dime), and the drugstores with soda fountains and pharmacists who knew your and your family, where kids could go safely alone and have an ice cream treat but the store staff would look out for you, not let you overindulge (on comic books as well as food treats!).


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## Butterfly

SifuPhil said:


> I was born more into the plastic age, so I remember primarily those kits. Our local hobby shops carried the balsa plane kits, model rockets (Estes), HO trains and HO slot cars. They also carried chemistry set supplies, and being a certified junior mad scientist I spent a lot of money on those.
> 
> Primarily I was a plastic car and monster-maker (there was an entire line of Hollywood monsters you could build), with the rockets and slot cars as the more expensive pursuits when I could afford them.



One of my forays into the wonderful world of chemistry almost burned the garage down, whereupon my dad (no sense of humor there) chucked all my brilliant experiments and experimental supplies into the garbage and threatened me with serious bodily harm if I ever brought any more into the house ever again.  I knew I was in VERY serious trouble because during the ensuing lecture he called me YOUNG LADY a lot, a term that was usually reserved for capital offenses.  

Not wanting to become maimed and/or homeless at the age of about 11, I gave up chemistry forever and took up raising white rate, which my mother didn't like even a little bit.  Sometimes you just can't win.

I entered my rats into the science fair at school (it was an enthralling study about whether rats with scraggly tails spawned other rats with scraggly tails).  Unfortunately, some of the rats got loose at the science fair, which caused a lot of screeching and mothers jumping on chairs and whatnot, and cleared the gym in record time.  I got in trouble about that, too, and thereafter ended my scientific pursuits for good.


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## oldman

Falcon said:


> Have you seen those German layouts on the internet?
> 
> One is an airport with planes taking off and landing etc.  The other is a train layout with trains running every which way.
> 
> I don't have the urls but you might find them on U-tube.



I have seen them on YouTube. The place is called "Miniature Wunderland" and is located in Hamburg, Germany. The airport set-up with the planes taking off and landing is an amazement of its own.


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## Eric

Great thread I always like hobby shops haven't been in one for years made a couple of airplane models as a kid don't remember what happened to them now. Cool mini airport oldman.


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## Ken N Tx

Some of the hobby shops down here have remote control race tracks in their back yards!!


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## Byrd

Pappy said:


> *As a young boy, one of my favorite places to go was a Hobby Shop. There was one on King St., in my hometown, that was a part of ones home and if they were home, they were open. I would finish my paper route and quite often visit their shop before I went home. I was in to building balsa wood airplane models. The shop I visited looked almost like the one I've posted.*



I remember those from my childhood days also. I have family in Turkey, so we used to fly over multiple time every year. Our hometown village was rather small, but still well-known, since it's one of the locations where the famous battle of Gallipoli was fought. 

Anyways, it had those kind of stores all over town with various hobby-related merchandise. My favorites where always the little miniature soldiers made of plastic. Those stores weren't really organized well. I guess the turkish ones just threw any- and everything in there they could find. I must have had thousands of many different eras and spent days trying to set them up in my room just to have someone open the door and ravage a whole battalion 

Loved hobby stores!


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## hauntedtexan

We had a fantastic slot car race track at our hobby shop back in the 60's. They even had a track that resembled Indianapolis Speedway that ran elevated above everything else for the unlimited hobbyist.


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## Marie5656

*The town I grew   up in, Batavia NY had Adam Miller Toys and Bikes.  I should say HAS, they are still there.  The closest we had to a hobby shop.
Here in Rochester we have Dan's Crafts and things witch is the ultimate hobby shop. The attached pictures are from Adam Millers


*


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## Grampa Don

The photo in the original post looks just like the little hobby shop in my home town when I was a kid.  It was conveniently located right outside the gate of the school.  I'd love to walk in there again.  An old guy ran it.  Most of the kits were wood then, and I built a bunch.  I got an Xacto knife set for Christmas when I was 12, and the first thing I did was slice open the base of my hand.  I still have the scar.

I still build plastic kits.  Here are a few.



I like doing the fiddly bits.

Don


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## Pappy

Grampa Don. I used single razor blades building my models. I still have the scar where I almost cut the tip of my finger off. Being a kid can sometimes be dangerous. :sentimental:


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## NancyNGA

Grandpa, I especially like your Mustang.    Had a '67 fastback once.  Metallic lime green.  Cute car.


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## Grampa Don

NancyNGA --  The Mustang is a replica of the real one I bought new in '66 when I got out of the Navy.  It broke my heart to trade it in, but we were expecting our second son and it wasn't really a great family car.

Pappy --  I suspect my folks thought the Xacto set would be safer than the razor blades I had been using.  They didn't count on my ineptitude.  I did learn not to pull the blade toward myself when carving a block of balsa.

Don


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## Pappy

I can still remember the first jet model I built. The F-86 Sabre jet with swept wing. Early fifties. Mostly balsa.


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## Grampa Don

Those early kits were pretty simple, just a few blocks and sheets of balsa and an instruction sheet.  If you were lucky, there might be a couple plastic parts, like wheels.  The Guillows stick and tissue kits are still being made.  

I never mastered the art of making a plane that flew well.  And, they didn't survive a hard bounce worth a darn.  The big guys and adults would fly their U-control planes on the Jr. High field, and I'd go over and watch.  Some of them were amazing.  I built one gas powered plane.  It didn't even make one circle before doing a loop and self destructing.

Real hobby shops are disappearing fast.  I'm on a modeling forum, and I frequently see posts that so-and-so shop is closing.  The internet is killing them, and kids don't seem to make stuff much anymore.  It's mostly old guys like me who keep them going.  Prices may be a factor.  A Comet kit once cost 25 cents, and a tube of glue a dime.  You'd pay about $30 for a similar Guillows kit now.

Craft stores seem to be doing well, and some of them sell a few plastic kits.  But the selection is pretty poor.  And, if you are looking for advice or help, forget it.

Don


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## kaufen

I tried to build one once.


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## Trade

I remember there was a shop like that in downtown Clearwater that where you could buy one of those basic kites for 10 cents.


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## Falcon

A good friend of mine currently owns a HUGE  hobby shop in town.  Model kits, trains (every gauge),, planes, ships etc. and now

is carrying drones (with cameras).  I can't think of one thing that one wants that he doesn't have.  I love to watch the trains run
around in his front store window.


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## SifuPhil

I had a bit of a shock the other day. For some reason I Googled "HO Scale Craftsman Kits", thinking I would see the usual $50 sets.

Boy, was I wrong. 

This is part of a shipyard diorama that retails for $320 (if it's still in stock ... seems these types of kits sell out quickly).


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