SAN PEDRO : His Fleet of Ships Is the Very Model of Perfection

John Pignatelli has built scores of ships in his lifetime, but no one has ever sailed on any of them.

And yet, looking at Pignatelli’s ships, at their detail and realism, you get the feeling that you could easily sail one across an ocean--if only you could shrink to 1/96th scale.

Pignatelli is the artist in residence and master modeler at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro, building and repairing the vast armada of miniature ships that fill the exhibit halls.

One of a handful of full-time professional ship modelers in the nation, he has managed to turn a common boyhood fascination into art that is historically accurate and sometimes astonishingly beautiful.

“I love doing it,” says Pignatelli, 45. “When one is finished, and it’s looking good, everything is right, it’s a great feeling.”

Take a stroll through the Maritime Museum and you can see his art in action. There’s the World War II cruiser Houston, which appeared in the made-for-TV movie “Mission of the Sharks,” aired Sunday night. There’s the cruiser Los Angeles, 14 feet long and perfect to the smallest detail, which took Pignatelli two years to build. There’s the little harbor tug that was used in a scene in “The Hunt for Red October” and a couple dozen commercials.

Although Pignatelli built only a few of the 700 models on display at the museum, even the ones he did not make have benefited from his expertise. About a dozen of the museum’s sailing ship models were badly damaged in the Jan. 17 earthquake, and Pignatelli and his volunteer helpers spent months getting them back in shape.

“His models are exceptional,” said Maritime Museum Director William B. Lee. “We feel very fortunate to have him affiliated with the museum.”

Pignatelli’s art isn’t limited to the Maritime Museum, however, but can be found at museums and private collections around the world. His model of the ill-fated luxury liner Titanic is in a Taiwan museum; a 60-inch model of the British ocean liner Britannia will soon be there, too.

His models, some of which take at least 1,000 hours to build, also have been featured in numerous movies and television shows. Some sell for $25,000 or more.

“I’m not getting rich at it,” says Pignatelli, a Rancho Palos Verdes resident. “But there are worse ways to make a living.”

Pignatelli came to ship modeling naturally. Born three blocks from the Philadelphia Navy Yard, the son of a civilian naval engineer, he started building plastic ship models from kits.

His first was a Revell kit of the battleship Missouri; his first sailing ship was the frigate Constitution, nicknamed “Old Ironsides.”

Later, after he married (Pignatelli and his wife, Robin, have two children) he took a job as the head of an air shipping company. But he kept building models. Eight years ago he retired from the air shipping business and took up the model making full time.

He got some jobs through contacts in the film industry. Pignatelli recalls building a model of a speedboat for Universal Studios, which insisted on as much detail as possible. So Pignatelli spent weeks adding details such as a tiny beer can sitting on a table inside one of the cabins, along with tiny lamps and chairs.

Pignatelli proudly delivered the ship model to the studio, where technicians promptly blew it up for a battle scene, tiny beer can and all.

Pignatelli uses actual shipyard plans when possible. (He has a security clearance from the Navy to obtain at least partial blueprints of ships.) Parts are made of special rubber, fiberglass, wood, photo-etched copper or stainless steel.

He and his primary volunteers--Paul Knierm, Al Smith, Jim Cummings and Garrick Gilham--are working on a plan to raise money for the museum by creating limited editions of famous ships. The first two efforts will be 500 models of a Liberty ship at $1,000 a copy, and another 250 models of the famous Bluenose fishing schooner at $2,000 per copy.

Pignatelli teaches a modeling class at the museum Saturdays but points out: “There’s no school for this. “It really takes a lifetime to learn. And I’m still learning.”