Customizing your own Mahogany Model

Taking a piece of solid mahogany wood and sculpturing into an aircraft model is art. These men and women in the Philippines who produce models for The Hangar Models Company are purely incredible craftsmen. The trade started during the Vietnam era, when US Air Force and Navy Pilots would be stationed in the Philippines either at Clark Air Base or Subic Bay and be looking around at the Philippine furniture when one bright airman asked the young Filipino if he was so talented at carving intricate wood figurines, could carve a model of the aircraft that he flew. The popularity of these mahogany models quickly grew, but was mostly known to just the airmen who were stationed in the Far East until the early 1970's. Plastic models were popular, but could not be "customized" in the logo or squadron unless you were extremely talented or knew of someone who could paint your squadron patch and tail number on that particular plastic model. What the highly skilled men and women in the Philippines accomplish to do is to take the picture of the aircraft, car, boat or even your house, and skillfully produce an exact replica. Obviously, the higher detail and quality the pictures of the item that they are replicating, the more detail of the final product.

The Hangar Models Company has a vast amount of detail drawings of almost 30,000 profiles of aircraft. Anything from the Cirrus SR-22 with the correct location of Garmin antennas to the F-15E loaded with AIM-120's and GBU-15's. To a pilot, its all in the detail. When you walk around an airplane thousands of times, you want your desktop model to reflect the small but important details of that aircraft. The same goes for the large Fire Trucks that we have produced for various customers or the large Naval Ships that are up to 48" in length.
The Hangar's largest project was for the Iowa City Bank in.... Iowa City, Iowa. The owner of the bank was a B-24 Liberator pilot shot down over the Poleski Oil Fields during WWII. He was building a new bank building and asked The Hangar Models Company to build a 10' long, 13' wingspan (that's in feet!) B-24, just like the one he was shot down in over Romania. The model is still in the rotunda of the building. It's weapon bay doors open every hour for 30" and then close and the 4 propellers counter rotate. If you ever get over to Iceland, please check out our large 14' replica of the first Boeing 727-100 for Icelandic Airlines, which is proudly displayed in their museum.
For your modeling aspirations, we at The Hangar Models Company will need a picture of the project that you would like copied. The exact colors, antennas, tail numbers, and squadron identification markings, will all be mirrored to a scale model that will add satisfaction for years to come. The solid mahogany stand can also be personalized with company logo, squadron patch, company logo or name. Come to our Internet store and check us out!