Wowed by Shipyard’s Laser-Cut Card Models

Ship modeler and HSPMS member Clare Hess reports on his experiences building a “boxed edition” kit from the Polish paper model kit manufacturer Shipyard. These particular kits feature all parts pre-laser cut from card stock.

Ship Modeler

At this point in my build of Shipyard’s 1/72-scale laser-cut card model of the 10-gun snow-rigged sloop of war HMS Wolf, I’m behind on keeping my build log up to date. But, I can’t let that get in the way here. Here’s the thing, I am so in awe of how incredible this kit is, that I have to state, categorically, that I’m absolutely building not only the Papegojan kit I have, but the HMS Alert kit, and the Le Coureur kit, and that I’m absolutely going to find the money to buy and build the HMS Mercury kit.

Shipyard’s 1/72-scale HMS Mercury, laser-cut kit.

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A Kolderstok Statenjacht Build

Ages of Sail just published a post about a build log of an interesting kit on the NRG forum. The kit is Kolderstok’s Statenjacht. It’ll be interesting to follow the build. But, would be really nice to see someone in our club or the South Bay Model Shipwrights club take up a build of this kit.

Ages of Sail

Many kits produced by classic ship model kit manufacturers are well known, so it’s relatively easy to find examples of them under construction on the Internet, or to know of someone else who has built or is building the kit. But, for kits produced by relatively new manufacturers with a limited distribution network, it’s pretty hard to know what construction is like. So, it was nice to find a build of the Statenjacht kit, produced by the Dutch wooden ship model kit manufacturer Kolderstok.

Image from Kolderstok’s website.

The Statenyacht was a Dutch transport that was used in the 17th through 19th centuries, designed to carry and entertain VIPs. This from the manufacturer:

“Evolved from the war yachts as used in the 80-year war, it had developed into a convenient, fast and above all comfortable means of transport. The Statenjacht was the ideal way to travel at a time when…

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The Return of Seawatch Books

Some very good news for ship modeling book collectors and scratch modelers alike.

Ship Modeler

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…

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HSPMS In-Person Meetings Restart

There’s good news for the Hyde Street Pier Model Shipwrights. With things opening up again in San Francisco, we’re going to start our in-person meetings again!

The bad news is that the gangway on the Eureka has been pulled due to tidal conditions, plus it will be relocated for repair later this year, so we won’t be meeting aboard the Eureka any time soon. Instead we will be meeting at the Bathhouse building, otherwise known as the Maritime Museum building, with our first meeting scheduled for Saturday, March 26th.

Meeting from 2018

The building doesn’t officially open until 10am, but there will be someone to let us in early. Our Commodore, Paul Reck, says we’ll meet up in front of the building between 9am and 9:30am, and we’ll call someone to let us in.

This will be the first in-person meeting we’ve had in over a year. Hopefully, people will bring projects to share and discuss. We’re also hoping that some new people will come to inject some new ship modeling interest into our group.

Please post a comment if you are interested in finding out more about the group or about attending our meeting!

 

Bomb Vessel Granado Cross-Section Plans

This ought to make a nice first plank-on-frame scratch building project. Plans are for a large 1:24 version or a small 1:48 version. How about something in between? Like 1:32? You’ll have to scale them yourself, but that should be easy since these are simply Internet downloads.

Ship Modeler

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.

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Wye River Models

Have you heard of this American boat model company? I don’t know how long they’ve been around, but their models look really nice and reasonably priced. Might be worth checking out!

Ship Modeler

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…

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Building Woody Joe’s Atakebune Kit – Part 8

HSPMS member Clare Hess posted an update on his Atakebune model. This model is being built from a kit by the Japanese wooden kit manufacturer Woody Joe. It represents the largest class of warship used by the seafaring clans of Japan in the 1500s. This 1/100 scale build is going well and should be completed possibly by the end of February.

Wasen Mokei 和船模型

Updates on the progress of the Atakebune model are long overdue. The project has been continuing, and I’ve done quite a bit. But, I’ve been quite slow on writing posts. So, I’ll try to get partially caught up here, but I’ll probably need to write another post soon to finish catching up.

Stern structure added to the model. Note that all the doors have been added to the model. I simply taped them into place from the inside at this stage.

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