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…

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.

It’s always a pleasure when customers send us photos of their completed models, so we were particularly happy to start off the new year when customer tomsimon of Chino Hills, CA, shared with us the final photos of the wooden ship model he just completed, the Lady Eleanor from Vanguard Models. He gave us permission to share these photos on our social media sites, so we’re happy to post them here for you.

Tomsimon tells us that this Lady Eleanor is his first ever wooden ship model, and we think he’s done a wonderful job!

Lady Eleanor is a 1/64 scale wooden model kit of a Scottish fishing boat type called a Fifie. It’s described as a type that was commonly seen off the east coast of Scotland from the 1850s through the 1950s, and was known as a workhorse in the fishing community.

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…