Category Archives: News

Building a Beginning Billing Boats Kit, Dana Fishing Boat – Part 12: Railing and Block Choice

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A twelfth installment on building the Billing Boats fishing boat Dana, by HSPMS member Clare Hess. At this point, the rigging has begun.

Ship Modeler

Topmast Backstays

If you look carefully at the plans you will see a line that runs from the top of the mainmast, down to the rail, aft of the three shrouds. This is the topmast backstay.

I’m using the next smaller size rigging line for this – as a general rule, the higher up you go on the model, the smaller the rigging line gets, at least for the standing rigging. Below is a scan of the rigging diagram. I marked the line with a red arrow.

The green arrow shows the attachment point of the stay to the rail. I believe the kit would just have you simply drill a hole here and run the line through it and glue it into place. That’s perfectly fine, but I have been adding eyebolts to the model, so that’s what I’m doing here.

The rail was drilled through, the eyebolt inserted and…

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Kolderstok 17th Century Dutch Ship Kits, Now Available

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This is a pretty interesting looking line of kits now available across the bay at Ages of Sail. Would love to see one of these at our monthly ship model meetings!

Ages of Sail

For fans of the Dutch sailing vessels of the 1600s, we’ve got some great news for you. Ages of Sail is now carrying the line of wooden ship model kits from Kolderstock. There are currently 5 kits available, all designed for the experienced ship modeler.

(All artwork provided by Kolderstok)

The aim of Kolderstok is to offer a high quality range of wooden model boat kits for ships not available elsewhere. Models of famous ships of the Dutch Golden Age, such as those belonging to the VOC (Dutch East India Company), but also ships famous for the great battles in which they served. Ships under the command of well-known names: Michiel de Ruyter, Marten Harpenszoon Tromp, Jan and Cornelis Evertsen and Adriaen Banckert. Kolderstok models are created using old images and existing models as guidelines, thus ensuring the best possible accuracy.

 

 

 

 

 

All kits feature laser-cut…

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2020 NRG Conference at Channel Islands Maritime Museum

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It’s nice that the Nautical Research Guild Conference is going to be in California again this year. Hopefully, some of the Bay Area ship modelers will be attending.

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Good news for Nautical Research Guild members in California. Today the NRG just announce that next conference will take place from October 15-17 at the Channel Islands Maritime Museum in Oxnard, CA.

It’s a bit of a small venue for the event, I think. But, the collection of models and marine art is wonderful.

For myself, my earliest years of ship modeling were associated with this museum. As I lived less than an hour away, I made many trips to look over the collection of models, my favorite being those made by the late Ed Marple.

I was even president of the model guild for a short time, but my service was cut short when I went back to school and had a shift in family life. I probably still know 3 or 4 people there, who I will hopefully see again, as I fully intend to go the conference…

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H.M. Yacht Chatham by Shaun Au

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Ages of Sail posted some customer submitted photos of Caldercraft’s yacht Chatham. Pretty neat model, and at 1/64-scale, it’s only about 21″ long. This modeler clearly put some extra work into it.

Ages of Sail

I don’t know how this slipped past us. But, while cleaning up old emails, we discovered these photos sent to us by customer Shaun Au. The model is an incredibly well done model of H.M. Yacht Chatham built from the Caldercraft kit.

Caldercraft Yacht Chatham by Shaun Au

Clearly, the model was built by a ship modeler of great talent. But, it shows how beautifully one can build a relatively inexpensive wooden ship model kit.

The Yacht Chatham kit is part of Caldercraft’s Nelson’s Navy series, and all but one of the series (HMS Victory) is at a scale of 1:64. That makes this model just under 21″ long and about 18.5″ high.

Caldercraft Yacht Chatham by Shaun Au

The kit does not include sail material, nor does it provide any patterns or rigging materials. This ship modeler had worked out that part himself. Clearly, he’s done a marvelous job…

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Member Progress Photos – January 2020

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Wanderbird

HSPMS member and commodore Paul Reck recently shared some photos of his current project, the Wanderbird. The boat was originally built in Germany as a pilot schooner for the city of Hamburg.  The former owner of the boat sailed it around Cape Horn in 1936, then continued around the world.  His son commissioned the model.

The hull of the model was constructed from lifts made of Monterey cypress.

 

Honryousen

Clare Hess is currently building a model of a simple 25-foot long riverboat from Niigata prefecture, Japan. The boat’s hull is built from 5 pieces of wood. The 1/10-scale model is made from Japanese cedar and is based on a boat that was built by Douglas Brooks and Japanese boat builder Mr. Nakaichi Nakagawa in the Fall of 2019.

The latter model build is being documented on the builder’s website here: https://wasenmodeler.wordpress.com/category/wasen-projects/honryou/

Building a Beginning Billing Boats Kit, Dana Fishing Boat – Part 10: Rigging Preparations

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HSPMS member Clare Hess is back to the build of his Dana Fishing Boat kit from Billing Boats, finishing up some details in preparation for rigging the model.

As a reminder, this is an entry level Billing Boats kit that sells for under $80. It features a vaccu-formed plastic hull, wooden deck planking, masts and spars, and fittings in wood, brass, and plastic.

Clare has been making some fairly simple modifications to it, but has mostly built the kit “out of the box”, using the provided materials and fittings.

Ship Modeler

Before I continue on with the rigging of the model, there is one more construction assembly to address. The railings on the Dana are made of brass wire, threaded through a hole in each of the brass stanchions. As I mentioned earlier, I painted the stanchions white, but I’m thinking to leave the rail itself bright brass. I haven’t made up my mind on this one. It’s probably easiest to paint them all white, and might be more accurate. Certainly, that’s what the kit instructions seem to show, and it looks good on the box art.

Now, it might be too early to install the rails just yet, as they may get in the way a bit while adding the shrouds and all. I could actually assemble the rails, getting everything bent to shape and all, and leave the final installation until later. However, I’m anxious to make some progress on…

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NRG’s Half Hull Planking Project

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Learn the basic techniques of proper hull planking through this kit and instructional blog on the MSW online forum.

From the NRG’s website

This, from the NRG: Whether at a club meeting, at the Nautical Research Guild (NRG) Conference or on Model Ship World (MSW), one of the most frequently asked questions is “how do I plank a hull”. In response, the NRG has developed its first kit: a half-hull of an 18th century merchant ship. The purpose of the kit is to teach the novice model builder how to plank a hull the way it was actually done in the shipyard.This process is known as spiling.

Image from a blog post by Toni Levine, NRG Director, and creator of the project.

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/21980-half-hull-planking-project/

The kit created for this project is available direct from the NRG’s website. It includes the necessary materials and a link to a downloadable set of step-by-step instructions.

The kit is available for $65. Members can receive a 20% discount using the discount code NRG20OFF. The price does not include shipping, which is $10 in the US.

More information and a link to the store page can be found here:

https://thenrg.org/half-hull-planking-kit.php

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