To plan and produce cut-out model books involves many unusual problems. The models must accurately reproduce their full-size originals, and must afford both ease and precision in assembling The books are ordinarily made to sell at low prices. They lend themselves to strong visual promotion, especially on television. Wallace Rigby has produced large-selling model books for Garden City, Grosset MacKay, etc., and tells here how they are made. Photo shows a complete train model made from a Grosset book by Rigby

Above: Wallace Rigby seated at his drawing board, where his models and books of models are planned. The boat in the background is made of artist's Bristol board, and houses a real little jet engine. The engines in his jet plane and jet boat models are so constructed that no flame can injure the model or the user. (Right above) the dies made by Commercial Dies for Rigby's "Easy to Build Models of Naval Craft" (Garden City); and a finished model from this book, U.S.S. North Carolina. (Below), models from an earlier Rigby book, issued by McKay

FIRST known as Giant Model-Books, the books of die-cut models that I have been making for some years were not my own idea, but were thought up by R. A. Redhead of the London Daily Mail in 1935. They were used very successfully as sales boosters for that and other newspapers, and became a pattern for my succeeding books. Sales have run well past a million and a half, and I have tried to keep "on top of the game" by never issuing designs I knew would be impossible for kids (of all ages) to assemble. I am not saying that the assembling is not frequently a task for patience, but I have found that if a model of great prototype accuracy is to be the result, the assemblers accept the challenge. And this involves certain interesting techniques.

Before explaining how the books are made, let me sketch in some of the background, and mention how the books and models have lent themselves to television selling.

As a boy, I was flying model gliders when the Wrights were making their first historic flights. After a period of service as the youngest sergeant in the British Army in World War I, I became known in London's Fleet Street as an all-round advertising man, purveyor of slogans, designer of posters and showcards and electric signs, and sold printing for a while. Then I had to free-lance. One day I tried to show an editor a model of the plane in which Amy Johnson had flown to Australia for a world's record. He wouldn't see me. He sent down his little Cockney office boy in stead so I flew my model for the boy (after all, he was my future public) and he went up babbling to his editor. The editor sent for me in a hurry and finally ordered a half million reproductions from me! Thus I was launched, and thereafter--up to 1935--I designed single models for five-and-ten sales or for give-away premium use by Amalgamated Press and other publishers of "boys' papers." Then the Daily Mail ordered and used my first Giant Model Book as part of its premium promotion and the Mail and Daily Express used successive model books. In 1937 Whitman reprinted one of the Rigby books, and in 1939 the New York Daily Mirror used a special edition. The Miror book resulted in a year's contract with King Features, under which a weekly model, "Modem Models by Rigby," appeared in the Comic Weekly. This was not too great a success, as one could not honestly expect kids to glue down newsprint onto suitable building paper.

It was during World War II that Garden City and McKay accounted for the bulk of the million and a half copies or more of my model books that have been sold. Titles included the McKay "Book of Models" (15 models at $1) and "Book of Scale Models and Working Models"; and the Garden City "Easy to Build Models of War Planes of the World" (16 models including 10 that would fly at $1.39), and "Easy to Build Models of Naval Craft" (24 models at $1).

After the war, Nabisco issued in Shredded Wheat packages a set of 36 card models of famous airplanes, the total number of cards running into the millions. At present, "Rigby's Flying Models of Jet and Rocket Planes" (Garden City), "The 7-Foot Model Train Book" (Grosset) and "The Book of Model Fire Engines" (Grosset) are selling excellently. There are to be new books soon.

Last year, as an experiment, the rocket book was put on television on a local New York 15-minute Sunday morning program in April over WNBT. Up to that point, this book had been selling reasonably well. What happened? Well, for the first time in the history of these books a vast audience could see what the models would actually "do." Someone had mislaid a film which was to constitute a five-minute portion of the show. Fortunately I had been playing with the set of ten flying rockets with a small boy connected with another act, and I dragged this boy into the show. We ad-libbed, all the planes flew, the boy's spontaneity was excellent, and Garden City got a sale of 5,000 copies at $1 each. But that was a rainy Sunday. The next Sunday was the first fine day of the spring, all our customers were out of doors, and sales dropped, week after week. Later a coast-to-coast Howdy-Doody spot produced sales of 7,343 copies, with the aid of commercial announcements and excellent flying of the models by Claribel the Clown.

I have never modelled for a set age group, and this fact presents distributors with some sales headaches, though mostly not large ones. It is true that there is an immense area of kindergarten value in these models, for even a small child of either sex will be attracted to them. But the in-between ages will add to that simple interest the pleasure of assembly; and in most instances, the model boats, trains, and planes earn the attention of grownup hobbyists. Well-known artists, too, have used them as reference in illustration work.

I have never used paper or card as a substitute for other materials. For my type of modeling, I have stuck to the use of tough card or paper (paper being always best for power driven model planes) because there is no other material so suitable for the ratio of ruggedness to simplicity in assembling which this class of detailed modeling demands. I have rigorously kept the models in materials and sizes with which the kids can build and, if the models have performance value, with which they can play. Some of the cereal pack models have been excellent, some have been frustrating to young people,. and most have had to be cut from thick, brittle board: this leads to disappointment, a tendency to shy away from this valuable form of fingercraft, and a parental reaction against the medium which has disappointed the child.

And now to talk about the reproduction stages of these hooks.

First of all, each model has to be allotted its space in the book before designing and my art has developed into a lot of very fancy juggling to get all the parts into available space. A fine example of this is "The 7-Foot Model Train Book" in which we have a model seven feet long. Included is a heavily detailed Niagara locomotive and tender with eight cars. The book contains ten pages plus covers and has overall dimensions of about 11 by 13 inches. It is printed in four colors.

The first thing to be sent to me by the Publishers' production department is a sample of the stock to be used, usually a reasonably rugged coated board or lined board, which will fold well and bend well into the narrowest practicable hoops or curves. All the parts of the model, large and small, must be strictly arranged so that their rolling or folding areas follow the grain of the card. This must be done so that the boiler of the locomotive, for example, will roll easily, the side edges of the running-boards will fold down sharply, and the smaller rolling and folding parts will be easy to build. The larger areas must be designed at right angles to the stiff grain of the card so that they will be substantial and stand upright.

In choosing each part's position on the sheet I have to consider how much protection it may need before the book gets to the customer. For example, in a book of model planes I would put the wings and tails as far away from the edges of the pages as possible, since these areas would be responsible for the model's flying performance and might get bent or creased in transit. All parts have to be kept at a. reasonable distance within the page margins, and each part has to be placed so that when the dies are made, the cutting edges do not come too near each other: if they did, they might cause fouling spots, where the page might tend to split and crack before binding.

Thus, if I can design a book of seven-foot train models, all in ten pages, adhering to the foregoing rules, you will see that the finished book may look simple if a little crowded; but I defy any up-and-coming cardboard genius, on a closer inspection, to tell me just where I might have crowded in the engineer's lunch-box. "The Book of Model Fire Engines" (Grosset & Dunlap) was another example of fitting parts into a limited space, since, in the same ten-page format, there are four contemporary fire engines and a firehouse.

Before a final model is produced, a long succession of sketches and "mockups"--trial cut-outs--has to be made, usually from plans and photographs. In the case of the train book, the plans and photos were kindly supplied by the New York Central Railroad. For the engine and tender alone, there were nearly 300 sketches and seven model mockups before these two units got to the art work stage.

With the art work in hand (each page being a key outline for subsequent coloring), there is a constant checking and re-checking at all art stages, from photostats. When all the art work has been inked in, and an instructional copy of the simplest nature added, there is an OK from the publisher to the printer, who--in due course-sends a proof back to me (and often a final buildup of the models). All my books have been printed by lithography. From the proofs I make color separations, a job I alone can do in cases where the accuracy of the colors provides more than half the authenticity of detail. So, for the moment, my part of the before-printing job ends with the color separation, until the great day when the color proofs make their bow.

It is here that I really start work. Now comes a final final building of the models from the finished color proofs, and I am satisfied that with this or that tiny corner slightly eased on the diagrams, I can give the die-makers my finished guides for the page cutting. My own art work must be almost as meticulous as that of the fellows who make up these knives! Made of ribbon steel, set into heavy wood or plastic foundations, with rubber inlays around the blades, the endless knives follow absolutely accurately, along with the slitting, creasing and perforating rules, all the printed outlines of the pages. Therefore, at any future stage of die-cutting, register alone determines whether a set of pages will be well or indifferently cut.

All the pages are cut, at the same time, on a single sheet. The Tauber Bindery--which die-cut the two Grosset books and at which I am on hand in all the early stages of make-ready--tells me it often takes the best part of two weeks working time, to prepare make-ready for this complicated run. To describe the action of the cutting machines is to make it sound much too simple. Flatbed dies and the sheet on the rotary cylinder are run smoothly to cut all pages to an accuracy affected only by some sudden increase in the humidity of the weather, when the card is likely to stretch a little.

Thus--to use the train book as the example--the artist's care in positioning, Grosset's meticulousness in editorial supervision, Duenewald's page positioning and experienced handling, have all combined with the art of the die-maker and the die-cutters to produce a book which purveys to the toy or book counter a set of trains seven feet long, from which television studios can have an extreme degree of railway realism, and junior gets his models--all still for one dollar!

A word on accessories, fasteners and sources of power: These, so far. have not been included in my model books (though they have been provided in model kits). Instructions in the books simply tell the assembler to use some easily obtained item such as a round or a flat toothpick for a gun turret, an axle, a mast; paper clips for fasteners, and buffers in the jet plane book; a little glue to strengthen the joints and lengthen the life of the model. Most fastenings are simply a matter of inserting a tab into a slot; and often the tab becomes part of the design. In the fire engine book there is an extension ladder than can be raised and pivoted on a. universal joint. Yes, the universal joint is part of the cardboard cut-out, and no other parts are needed at all.

In some models, a long elastic thread or band can serve as a source of power. Airplane models in my books can be launched by hand, or by an elastic catapult, or can be swung overhead in very convincing loops and turns by using a thread fastened to the wings.

In the course of my experiments I have developed my art to a point where, today, I am building and running--almost entirely from good cards--boats and planes which actually run on jet-fuel engines! The furor these card-built jet planes cause when I am running them at a park or some lake has to be seen to be believed. The cry, "It's only cardboard!" is followed by an urgent demand for information as to where to buy them. These models are not in books, but some have been made up in kits, for example the Jetex Javelin Kit, sold by me and the American branch of Telasco, a British firm, which makes the little jet engine. The jet mechanism is entirely safe, by the way.

As for my future books, I am working on newer formats, an example of which will be a book I have just finished, "Commander Rigby's Tugboat," which contains a simple story and a folio containing a model tugboat, called Huffanpuff. The use of a story and one model only will make for a lower-cost book; the ten-model giant book will continue to represent a high peak in consumer value. Other projected titles will include "Septimus Seal, the Swimmy Sea Lion," with flippers that will move the seal along the floor; similar books about a penguin, a frog, and so on. Model books about ships and trains of today and yesterday and about planetary rockets. And finally, a model Rube Goldberg machine for computing royalties--which should be one of the simplest models I have ever designed!

Above: One of Wallace Rigby's jet boat models is shown here kicking up waves in the pond in Central Park. It is the same model as the one in the picture of Mr. Rigby in his studio. Models in Rigby books use simpler sources of power--elastics or hand-launching--than some of the models including this one, which he makes up separately in boxed kits. This model contains a real little jet engine.