Tiny ships in dizzying detail

Luke Boulware was 11 when a Boy Scout troop leader told him he was no good at whittling. He’d been struggling to carve a block of wood into a bear, and he just wasn’t grasping it. The scoutmaster finally got frustrated and urged him to put his knife away and concentrate on something he was good at.

He tells this story as he sits in his San Clemente apartment a few feet from a scale model of an 18th century topsail schooner that he built with such attention to detail that its pieces were carved under a magnifying glass. It illustrates a point he often makes with kids -- that model building or, for that matter, anything you really want to learn is as much about desire as it is about innate ability.

“If you really like something, then you’re going to try again until you get good at it,” he says. “It’s not like I’m Bach. I didn’t just start writing symphonies. My first wooden models were for the bathtub. There wasn’t anything to it. But you learn how to use the tools, and then you get a little bit better and you want to do a little more detail. I think most of what we call talent is just determination.”

Boulware, 44, will show his work and give woodcarving demonstrations Saturday and Sunday at the Toshiba Tall Ships Festival, a three-day annual event at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. The display will include two of his favorites: a half model Whitehall boat that’s mirror mounted for a three-dimensional look, and a 3/4-inch statue of a man and a woman called “Maggie and the Captain.”

Before you walk into Boulware’s home, you picture a place overflowing with tiny ships, but it’s nothing like that. A few pieces are showcased in the living room, and there’s a work in progress on the roll-top desk in his study. Otherwise, there’s barely a trace of the hobby that occupies so many hours of his time, and that’s telltale. In more than 20 years, he has completed only eight models. Miniature shipbuilding at the highest level is about inch-by-inch progress over days and weeks, not mass production.

Take “Maggie and the Captain.” Boulware, a full-time carpenter, made it as a Christmas gift for his wife, Jacque. He sat down at his desk one evening and, when he looked at the clock, three hours had passed and his coffee hadn’t been touched. In that time, he’d shaped a 1/16-inch-by-1/16-inch section of Maggie’s shoulder.

So intricate are the pieces in Boulware’s models that Jacque is extra careful when cleaning. “I never toss anything out, even if it’s something that looks like a toothpick,” she says. “How do I know that it’s not the rail of a ship?”

Keep in mind that not all builders approach their work so deliberately. “I’m a perfectionist,” Boulware says. “You don’t have to be this good. Just knocking something together, you’d be surprised at how good it looks.”

For those interested in jumping in at the novice level, Boulware suggests solid-hull ships labeled “beginner,” which can be found at most hobby stores. He says kids as young as 10 are equal to the challenge if they get help from an adult and have previous plastic model experience.

Boulware was a teenager when he got hooked. His inspiration came from fictional adventure books about a naval hero named Horatio Hornblower. At the time, he says, he could barely read, but by the end of his sophomore year he’d become proficient, and by graduation, he’d taken all of the school’s college prep literature classes.

Once he began building models in his early 20s, he developed a hunger for history, and he now spends half an hour doing research for every hour of building.

“I hated history in school,” Boulware says. “I think history for most people is boring. It’s something that they’re required to take, and as soon as they’re done [with school], they’re done with it. But let’s say you take somebody who has an interest in baseball. You can teach them a lot of history just based on that. And once you get a foundation for history just around baseball, you can start branching out in other areas and teach them all kinds of stuff.”

Ultimately, though, one question begs for an answer. In this video game age, is there really room for a hobby that moves at such a leisurely clip?

“I knew you’d ask that,” Boulware says. Walking across his study, he produces a handful of pictures. They are of kids at past Tall Ships Festivals, each looking earnestly at his models, one girl examining a schooner through a magnifying glass.

“They gravitate toward this stuff,” he says. “Video games are great, but you can learn a video game in half an hour. You can get good at it in an evening, and you can be done with it in 12 hours. Then you need another 50 bucks for another game. But kids are fascinated by things like this because it does seem so Old World. And when you tell them ‘You can do this,’ the light just goes on.”

Don Patterson can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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Toshiba Tall Ships Festival

What: A weekend celebrating the historical ships of the 19th and 20th centuries with a sunset ship parade, vessel tours, mock battles, art shows and Polynesian dancers. Luke Boulware, a model ship builder from San Clemente, will display his work and offer instruction on woodcarving. Yarns of life on the high seas will be told by a fully costumed 18th century pirate, flanked by a crew of parrots. There will also be presentations about the Titanic (2 p.m. Saturday) and the Queen Mary (2 p.m. Sunday).

Where: Ocean Institute, 24200 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point

When: 5-6:30 p.m. Friday (Tall Ships Sunset Parade); 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Price: $7; $5 children

Parking: Space in the harbor will be limited, but shuttles are available from Salt Creek Beach Park (Pacific Coast Highway and Selva Road) and Dana Hills High School (Golden Lantern and Acapulco).

Info: (949) 496-2274 or www.tallshipsfestival.com