RAPID CITY - Model makers spend thousands of hours at home creating miniature gasoline engines, pistols, steam engines and tractors.

They start with raw materials, cutting and shaping them into intricately detailed versions of the real thing. The metal workers machine and sometime even cast the metal pieces to create machines that actually work.

But this weekend, model makers will be venturing out of their basements and shops to show off the products of their thousands of hours of labor at the seventh annual Black Hills Model Engineering Show in the Fine Arts Building at the Central States Fairgrounds. The show runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday.

The show, sponsored by the Black Hills Model Engineers group, will include displays of projects made from metal, wood and other materials.

Some of the items will include operating scale models of gas and steam engines, scale-model steam and gas tractors, as well as model boats, model planes, model cars, model locomotives, animated dioramas and a number of projects in the works. Model makers are coming from as far away as Colorado, Arizona and Wisconsin to display their work.

Jerry Kieffer of Wisconsin will display his one-eighth-scale model of a 1936 John Deer tractor. "It's definitely worth seeing," club member Roger Ronnie said. "It's a jewel. … You can give the hand crank a twirl with your finger."

Jerry Howell from Colorado Springs, Colo., will have a small V-4 gasoline engine that he designed himself.

Ronnie will display watch-making tools, a V-12 engine and two half-scale firearms built from scratch.

For more information, call 348-6406.