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Shipyard is a line of paper/card models from Poland, where paper models seem to be so prevalent. Shipyard includes kits of sailing ships, world lighthouses, dockyard structures, and more. But, this review is a look at one of their higher end products – one of their kits which, rather than featuring printed paper parts that must be cut out from their sheet, instead provides laser-cut parts that must be cut loose from their sheets and painted. The range includes the small schooner Berbice, the Santa Maria, the cutter HMS Alert, all the way up in size to the 28-gun frigate HMS Mercury. The HMS Wolf kit, released around 2015, is about as close as one can get in size and complexity to the HMS Mercury kit, though their kit of the Dutch pinnace Papegojan is probably just about as detailed and complex. All of Shipyard's laser-cut card kits are made in 1/72 scale. They all come in large, flat boxes that contain all the laser-cut components, plus color printed instructions, some plan sheets that are mostly for the rigging, laser-cut and etched sails, color printed flag sheets, wooden dowels for masts and yards, laser-cut blocks and deadeyes kits, white linen rigging cord, turned brass cannon and swivel gun barrels, cast resin decorative pieces, several jars of acrylic paint, a couple nice paint brushes, and more. Everything comes pretty neatly packed with various components stored in separate cardboard boxes, which helps protect all the parts during shipping. The instruction book is 32-pages in full color, including the cover, and is mostly photos at each stage, with the significant parts labeled by their part numbers. There is some text, but not much. What there is is in Polish, with German and English translations also given. The Instruction Booklet The one thing that is not included that I think would be really helpful, is a parts list that shows the numbers, where in the instructions the part is called for, and on what sheet to find the part. I'll come back to this later. The Plan Sheets Masting and rigging is detailed in the separate plans sheets. There is no one overall profile plan sheet, these are all just detail sheets. But, if you look closely, you'll notice that some assemblies, like the gun carriage are more fully detailed in the plans sheets. Also, the metal parts that you need to make, like hooks and eyebolts and such, are identified on one of these sheets, not in the instruction booklet. So, it's a very good idea to study these sheets to see what's described on them. The kit contains no eyebolts, split rings, hooks or things of that nature. Instead, a couple sizes of copper wire are provided, and the plan sheet below identifies the small metal parts you must make in various sizes. These are all identified in the plans with the letter 'Z' as a prefix. The instruction manual will call for these parts, and you will find no part with this number. Again, that's because you have to make all the Z parts yourself from wire. If you prefer to make your own sails out of, say, paper, some nicely detailed patterns are provided, showing locations of reinforcements, cringles, reef bands, etc. The Parts As you can see here, there are a lot of parts sheets, and on each of those there are a lot of parts. There's a LOT of detail here, and just seeing how much detail there is in the kit makes the kit really exciting to work on. By the way, my apologies – these photos are on the blue background of my cutting mat and the photos were taken with an iPhone, which does it's own automatic color balance, so all the sheets look kind of yellowish here, which they are not. The only color printed parts in this kit include the flags sheet, which is printed double-sided, and the decorative friezes. I don't know if this was intentional, but my kit included two copies of this sheet. Apologies too for the bad focus on this photo – I don't know what happened here. In a sharper world, you'd see all the bulkhead parts and hull stiffeners. Those who've built Shipyard's paper models probably know already about how well these laser-cut parts fit together, and form a very stable hull structure. This odd, brownish looking sheet is actually dead black. But, at least here you can see that the part numbers are there. When I looked at this sheet, I had to hold it at an angle, under a bright light in order to see the number or to even identify the part. There is one small sheet of clear acetate for the windows and the stern lantern. Note that the deck planking is engraved onto the card pieces, with nicely located butt joints, nibbed plank ends, proper scarf joints, and treenails. Lots of parts make for lots of details and lots of work. But there's no shaping, drilling, milling, filing, sanding, carving, required. it's all mostly cutting, gluing, and painting. Sorry, I didn't take pics of the cannon barrels, resin "carvings", brushes, rigging line, or the paint jars. But, I will mention that earlier kits of this line had jars of paint that could easily dry up. I'd mentioned this problem to Shipyard years ago. They have since gotten jars with rubber grommets in the lids to create a better seal, and this seems to have alleviated the problem. Speaking of paints, those included in the kit are apparently some decent quality artist's acrylics. They go on dead flat and have some transparency to them, so you should be able to see some of the laser-etched details through the paint. The paint is a Polish brand called Renesans. I like them, but they hard to find, except on some European online art supply stores. Summing it Up This is a pretty well detailed looking kit. It, and the entire line of Shipyard laser-cut kits, are very different from most paper model kits, given that nearly every paper model kit is mostly paper that has to be cut, rolled, folded, or curved, and may have a laser-cut skeleton for strength. This kit is entirely laser-cut, but includes parts using other materials for best appearance or easiest construction. The heavy use of laser cutting comes at a cost, and these laser cut kits are a lot more expensive than traditional paper models, and this kit is no exception. This kit has a cost that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $200, give or take, depending on where you purchase it. That's a lot more than a traditional paper kit, but not really much different from a comparable wooden kit, and there's a lot more to it than a box of wood with some laser-cut pieces. The kit is available from a number of online shops, including Ages of Sail, where I got mine, Cornwall, Shipyard's online shop, and maybe someone will chime in about a Canadian shop. Did I miss anything?
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Just thought I'd share some photos I took of the new kit from Shipyard. This is a nice looking kit that's more expensive than many of their other kits, but a lot less than their HMS Mercury kit. HMS Wolf is a 10-gun brig of war. She's actually "Snow Rigged" meaning that she carries a small mast immediate aft of the main mast, which carries the spanker sail, boom and gaff. The ship is small, and while the Laser Cardboard Kits are all of a larger scale than their Paper Model kits, it's still only 1:72-scale, so the model measure about 20.5" long complete. As with all the Laser Cardboard kits, this one contains all the paints, spars, blocks, rigging line, sails, turned brass cannons and swivel guns. It also includes resin castings for the figurehead and some of the carvings. Other flat carvings are laser-etched cardboard. The Laser Cardboard kits also include instruction books, far better than the instructions provided in their less expensive Paper Model kits. For other information, you'll just have to take a look for yourselves... Clare
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