About

Join other woodworkers and those new to woodworking for the monthly general tmembership meeting of  BARN's Woodworking & Small Boatbuilding Studio. It's free and open to all — no need to register.

Professional modelmaker Alec Vassiliadis will discuss the craft of modelmaking and why it is useful even in the age of computer-aided design and 3D printing. Besides explaining the many uses and styles of models, he will discuss the range of materials and tools that modelmakers use, as well as the importance of scale. Modelmakers often work in miniature, but sometimes they scale up instead. Details on a ring, for example, are easier to see when the model is larger than life.

Vassiliadis studied models from a very young age. He built lots of scale models of planes, cars and boats, and painted, altered and sometimes destroyed them. "So, naturally, I gravitated to architectural school, where I excelled at building models," he said. After working as an architect for about a year, he gave up on paper as a medium of design and fell back into building models. It did not take long before he was turning his life passion into a profession. He has been building models professionally for the past 40 years.

His projects, shown in pictures below, have ranged from the Seattle City Hall to courtroom interiors for the federal building in Seattle. He turned 737 jet parts made for wind-tunnel testing into a display in the entry to Boeing's Renton plant so clients can see how initial design flows through to completion. His working model of a medical scanner became a tool for traveling sales people who wanted to show the machine's fully articulated arm, which bends in five different axes for a full range of motion.

Examples of Vassiliadis's work include the Seattle City Hall  (above) and to courtroom interiors for the federal building in Seattle (below).

Vassiliadis turned 737 jet parts made for wind-tunnel testing into a display in the entry to Boeing's Renton plant so clients can see how initial design flows through to completion. 

His working model of a medical scanner became a tool for traveling sales people who wanted to show the machine's fully articulated arm, which bends in five different axes for a full range of motion.