About the guidebook:
Covering everything you need to know about how to make your own Cold War era U.S. Navy fighter, this digital guidebook has 134 pages that show all the steps accompanied by 13,000 words to guide the "why" and "how" of the steps. Split into four main chapters, the book starts with the cockpit and includes three different ways to weather three different seats along with how to paint the out-of-box cockpit or spice it up with some aftermarket. Chapter two covers the landing gear and chapter three covers painting of the plane, the engines, and the weathering steps. The last chapter has some F-14 reference photos that have been color corrected and serve as inspiration and briefly touches on the importance of reference photos. While an F-14 is the canvas for this book, I wrote it with the intention that each step is applicable to any U.S. Navy fighter jet from the Cold War era.
How did I get into writing guidebooks?
Back in 2021, a few of my friends encouraged me to start posting on TikTok, and I decided that I would focus around making content about how to make scale models. I wanted to see the hobby grow and thrive for many more years to come and at the time, I didn't know many other 23 year olds who were doing the hobby.
I hadn't really built that many planes over my decade of building scale models at that point and I wanted to "accelerate" my learning curve at least a little bit so I decided to pick up a guidebook, that in the end proved quite lackluster and would be the spark for me writing my own. My biggest issue about the book was the lack of explanation accompanying each step and an entire plane build was condensed down to less steps and pages than you'd find in a magazine centerpiece.
I wanted to change this, so I kept practicing until I thought I was ready and then practiced some more. My goal for this guidebook, my first start-to-finish book, was to create something that had enough detail in it that a beginner could pick it up and make a good looking plane, whether it was one of their very first models, or someone who wanted to give planes a try and had built many other models, like me a few years ago. The guidebook I wish I had.
Why digital?
I wanted to make the guidebook digital for a few reasons:
I always found the 30mm x 50mm photo of the full vehicle at each step to be far too small to notice the differences and with the lack of words that accompanied the step, you couldn't even try to re-create the look. With a digital book you can zoom in and see what's going on at each step.
While a physical, A4 sized book is great to read, it takes up the entire bench and you end up juggling the book and your model trying to "follow along". It's 2024, and having a PDF on your phone lets you have the step your working on right alongside your model or you can pull it up on your workbench computer.
It makes the book more accessible. Back to the "why" I started writing in the first place, helping anyone pick up the hobby and make something great. A digital book is delivered instantly, anywhere around the world and I don't have to increase costs to cover a portion of shipping and the cost of goods sold like I do why my physical items.
Alright, enough about why I wanted to write my first guidebook. Here's some excerpts.
Wrapping up
If you'd like to get your own copy, you can find it here. If you do pick up a copy, please let me know if there was anything that you found to be confusing or if there was anything that could use more detail. I'm always striving to improve and I want to make it so anyone can pick up any of my guidebooks and make a great looking model.
Best,
Nick, "Through A Smaller Lens"
My favorite shot of the finished build
