HISTORY

HOW I MET

ZDENĚK SEKYRKA

I met Zdeněk Sekyrka through the advertisement. It happened

on March 11, 1986. I realised that my kit collection has overgrown and I will never build so many models-as if it were the

point in scale modeling, right? I judged that I need to reduce it

and somehow focus on a certain theme. I decided to concentrate on the WWII aircraft and right at the beginning of 1986

published and ad in Letectví a kosmonautika magazine that

I trade kits of the post war era for the models of the WWII aircraft. On that day, when the advertisement was published, on

afore mentioned March 11, my life was changed significantly and forever, even though I was not aware of it yet at that

moment. Since the morning my home phone kept ringing, but

it was manageable. In the evening, after seven, the doorbell

rang. A shorter guy with moustache was standing in front of

the door, he was smiling, a rolled copy of Letectví in one hand,

a bag with models in the other and announced that he is responding to the ad. I invited him inside and no sooner did I make

coffee for him the doorbell rang the second time. There was

a guy in front of the door who resembled Alice Cooper without

make-up, looked angry, a rolled copy of Letectví in one hand,

a bag with models in another a said he was responding to an

ad. Before got him a bat (infamous event at A. Cooper’s concert)

and made coffee for him both gentlemen were already engaged

in a friendly chat which did not finish late until after midnight.

Well, gentlemen left for home but in fact we never parted and

our fates have been connected for the next 35 years, and still

are nowadays. The first visitor was Zdeněk Sekyrka and the

second one’s name was Zdeněk Flégl.

It all started pretty innocently. We used to meet in my kitchen

or in Flégl’s kitchen, discussed the kits, how to obtain them,

when can be sourced what because at that time more then buying the kits we had to „obtain“ them. In Flégl’s kitchen I saw the

photoetched parts for the first time. Both Zdeněks talked about

them with great deal of knowledge, as if they had used them for

years. Truth is that one of them bought the Airwaves photoched

set at Hannant’s. It can be said that this was the initial impulse,

technological beginning of the future Eduard. The next impulse

came couple of months later. It turned out, that Zdeněk, besides

the classical scale modeling and collecting the kits and literature, also makes resin models. So called „epoxids“. He had had

INFO Eduard - July 2021

a disagreement with his businnes partner and came up with

the offer one cannot refuse. Neither did I and started to make

„epoxids“ with Zdeněk. Soon I realized that he had worked out

the technological details of the molds making long time ago.

Unlike other groups who made similar models, and there were

quite a number of those in Czechoslovakia, Zdeněk poured models into the hard epoxide molds. So, not like nowadays, when

the resin kits and detailed sets are cast from polyurethane,

cure within tens of seconds and the productivity in comparison with the „old times“ is exponential. Everything was much

slower then, one set of castings, which was basically one complete kit, would take 24 hours to make. That was the time during which the mixture of the epoxide resin ChS Epoxy 1200

hardened and could be removed from the molds. Zdeněk was

an expert in this. I had no clue, I was a beginner that had a lot

to learn. I started with making a master. Nigel Hannant, who

in 80s was engaged in lively barter business with Czech and

other Eastern European modelers, asked for resin kits of the

WWI aircraft in 1/72 scale and paid 6 pounds per piece. That

was a large sum of money for a small model! So I duly made

a masters for Fokker D.VIII in 1/72 scale. I was so excited by this

achievement that before leaving to meet Zdeněk I put the box

with the masters on the roof of my Škoda 105L and just took off.

Only when I parked the car in front of Zdeněk’s house I found

out that the box is missing.

I rushed back home and my suspicion was unfortunately confirmed. The box was lying in the middle of the street, the parts

scattered all around it because the garbage truck had just run

over it. To my big surprise the damage was not serious and in a

couple of days I was able to repair the masters. Zdeněk made

the molds, brought it over to my place and trained me in casting.

How to mix the resin, how to get rid of the bubbles, how to treat

the molds so as the castings would not get stuck to them, how

to apply resin with brush into the molds, how to close them,

apply clamps... and wait. Next day he came to show me how

to open the molds, pull our the castings, clean them and apply

resin again. Then I performed this daily. Pour, close, open next

day, pull out, clean, treat the surfaces, pour the resin, close...

again and again, like a robot. In the meantime I made another

masters, Fokker D.VI. Zdeněk was micro-managing me so as

my masters were better, taught me the right procedures and I,

to pay something back, came up with the proposal that the real

model had to have the assembly instructions and a box.

To my surprise Zdeněk agreed. So as you can understand better, the Czech „epoxids“ have never featured anything like that.

They were packaged in poly bags without a box or instructions.

A skilled modeler can help himself, right? Zdeněk came up with

eduard

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