I was quite surprised yesterday when I saw that there was a new book available on the Arctic (and Antarctic) exploration ship HMS Terror of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. What’s more this is a book by Matthew Betts whose research, posted in his blog, buildingterror.blogspot.com, has been used in the development of OcCre Model’s wooden ship model kit, in the development of the AMC miniseries The Terror, and more.

Good news for scratch modelers! Seawatch Books, which brought us amazing titles by David Antscherl, Rob Napier, Gilbert McArdle, and others is back up and running under new ownership.

The previous owner, Bob Friedman, has been talking about his retirement for some time now, and earlier this year, the store went off-line pending sale to a new owner. Apparently, the early attempts at selling the company didn’t work out. But, then ship modeler Mike Ellison came along and saved the day, and the site just officially went live.

Perhaps one of the best known titles from Seawatch Books is the 4-volume series, The Fully Framed Model, HMN Swan Class Sloops 1767-1780.

To celebrate and to offer my support, I’ll probably pick up a title. Right now, I’m leaning toward either the book on building HMS Sussex, by Gilbert McArdle, or the two-volume series The Ketch Rigged Sloop Speedwell of 1752…

Recently, I was looking at some offerings from the Chinese kit manufacturer CAF Model. They are one of the few Chinese kit manufacturers that have worked their way off the piracy/do not buy list that’s maintained by the Nautical Research Guild and followed by many ship model clubs. What caught my attention, specifically, was a heavily engineered kit of a 1/48-scale cross-section of the bomb vessel HMS Granado.

This weekend, I just ran across a model boat kit manufacturer on the Internet. Their website shows that they have quite a large number of kits of American workboats in large scales of 1/4″=1′ and larger.

Looks like they have 15 different kits, including: Box Stern, Chesapeake Bay Bugeye, Chesapeake Bay Buy Boat, the charter fishing boat Breein Thru, a Hooper Island Drake Tail, a Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe, and many others. The prices are very nice too. Of the 15 kits they offer, only five of them list at over $100.

Wye River Models’ Chesapeake Bay Bugeye, 1/4″=1′ scale (1:48)

Wye River Models’ Smith Island Crabbing Boat, 3/4″=1′ scale (1:16)

Wye Rivers Models’ “Virginia” Round Stern Workboat, 1/2″=1′ scale (1:24)

Never having built, or even seen one of these kits, I can’t vouch for them, but from here, they look really nice. Until I’ve actually seen one of their kits…

Today, I drove into San Francsico to make use of the recently re-opened Maritime Library of the San Francisco Maritime Research Center. It was really nice to see the place again after more than a year away. And, truthfully, I haven’t made use of the library for a while, even before the Covid shutdown, so it’s been longer than that for me.

Sunday, October 17th, was my first display at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and it went pretty well. It was a bit stressful getting everything together in time, but once I had all the models displayed and was talking to people about them, it was pretty relaxing. The event was just a one day showing, and there were many other things taking place as part of the event.

I had 10 of my completed models on display, and I decided to bring several models that I had in early stages of construction, so I could show how I build them. Information cards provided visitors with the basic information about the model and what it represented. There was a lot of information I had to leave out in order to fit the text onto those large index cards.

Behind the models, I displayed what artwork I could find that showed the…