thibaultron

This may have been mentioned before but have any of you tried cutting with cricut or similar device?
 
 I’ve used my wife’s once and it did a really good job (surprisingly).  I was cutting out a building out of 1/16” thick basswood clapboard.  You have to put your work face down for the windows and doors to be a tight fit but the cut was good and clean.

i will tag along, and learn from you

I have just ordered a Sherbourne and I’m pretty excited about it. I have the Caldercraft version in my shame pile.
I’ve been wanted to build a Vanguard kit since they started but postage costs to NZ are crazy. (Because the kits are heavy and we are literally on the other side of the planet!)
But I am a beginner, Chris is doing us beginners a solid and subsiding this kit for us beginners so I asked the Admiral and got permission to go straight at them.
Im excited to finally join the Vanguard and ask respectfully that when I start my build log that I get a couple of you fine boat builders to follow along and help a new guy out.
So excited!
 

I'm looking for a quality US civil war iron side wooden ship kit...any suggestions as I was surprised there is nothing around that jumps out at me?

Ian, there's not much out there. The first link is a bit interesting but nothing like the USS New Ironsides in the 2nd and 3rd links. The 2nd link is for reference only as it's a commercially completed model. The only model I could find is a paper model, see 3rd link. Paper models are way out of my league but you might be able to use it as a guide to scratch build? 
 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185379792994?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=185379792994&targetid=&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=1019476&poi=&campaignid=20389314120&mkgroupid=&rlsatarget=&abcId=9317278&merchantid=7873604&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_QDh82kovZ-0aeV3vEPRWJZ2h0L&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-e79pL2whQMVDU5HAR2PTgBzEAQYCiABEgKFsfD_BwE
 
 
https://www.modelshipmaster.com/products/civil_war/New-Ironsides.htm
 
https://ecardmodels.com/product/1-200-union-uss-new-ironsides-paper-model
 

Thanks Keith 😁 I was so surprised about such an obvious gap in the market, the American market for such a kit must be large excluding the rest of the world..they are so distinctive that it would stand out in my world of sail..

There's a huge gap of wood model ship kits available from the 1860's to 1900. That period of transition from sail to steam, cannon to gun, and wood to iron clad is largely ignored. I guess it's driven by market demand but I still say provide the option, I think manufactures would be surprised.

There are plenty of transition era ships that are available in card from Orel and other card kit makers, including American ships.
 
Wargames Vault makes a 1/200 New Ironsides out of card.

Card kits make great templates for wood scratch builds.
 
They aren’t kits, but AAMM has a few French transition era ship plans.
 
Also, the French Ministry of Defense has plans for a lot of their ships from the latter half of the 19th Century online.
 
Those all include quite a few of the ironclads and early steel ships.
 
 

Cottage Industry Models makes several in 1/8" scale:
 
http://cottageindustrymodels.com/?page_id=141
 
 

Sorry
Inches.  That’s the taper. 

Thanks so much for the responses and for sharing your connections to the Paddle to the Sea story!!
 
Tonight I continued some carving.
 
I laid out and then carved the recess for the ballast.

I have alot of lead left from past projects wherein I would melt lead and use it in projects.  Considering the known health/brain damage risks we now know from lead exposure, I will make a variation from the originally described Paddle to the Sea.  I will use low temp model casting metal from Micromark, type 208.  I will melt this metal and fill this cavity.

These Flexcut carving chisels are awesome!!!
I am also using my Helle knife:

Hull after rough carving:

Another amazing tool for wordworking, is the SHINTO RASP" pictured below.  Amazing, efficient, tool with two different aggressiveness faces.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Great choice of subject! I loved this book as a kid, too.

The movie:
 
 

What a great project!
 I too grew up reading Paddle to the Sea.  I loved the book.  35 years ago I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to move from the Ohio Valley to accept a new job in the Great Lakes region and I accepted it in a heartbeat.  I can just barely see a tiny sliver of Lake Superior from a window on the second story of my house.  I also made sure that my children grew up with the book too.
Did you know that there is a Paddle to the Sea movie too?  Here in Duluth the Army Corps of Engineers runs a nice museum dealing with Lake Superior.  During the summer tourist season they show movies about the lakes in a conference room.  Visiting with my two kids and my granddaughters the announcement came over the speaker that there had been a special request from a family visiting to show Paddle to the Sea.  My daughter had made the request.  The movie while beautifully filmed cannot reproduce the 1940's picture of the industrial lakes that Holling does with his book.
 
Roger 

Cool project!

Very interesting project and prototype! Looking forward to following along!

The pictures of the model clearly show a shallow recess in the interior of the canoe.  Here I am carving that recess.
 

And here is the current rough carved status:

 

Hi!
 
Starting on the paddler himself.  Also of pine.


With the blank cut out on the bandsaw, I started rough carving the figure.

Hi Everyone,
 
The book states the model was made from a piece of pine, so here is my raw material, scrap 2x4 from the shop:

The 2x4 is not quite thick enough, so I sawed and planed two blocks which I will glue together to make the hull blank.

 
Here is the hull blank glued together , and cut and planed to finished length, width , height.  I made some paper templates of the plan view and profile shapes of the hull.  Tracing the profile here.

Profile cut using the bandsaw:

Tracing on the plan view shape:

Here is the blank cut out on the bandsaw.....all carving from here on out:

 
 

Greetings!
 
And now I return to the dreams of adventure of my youth!  "Paddle to the Sea" is a childrens' book, written and illustrated by Holling Clancy Holling, and published in 1941.  It tells the tale of the voyage of a small carved wooden canoe and it's paddler as they follow the currents of the Great Lakes, from Nipigon country out to the Atlantic Ocean.  A Native American boy carves the canoe and it's stoic captain, paints it, and places it in the snow, high in the hills over Lake Nipigon.  When the snow melts, it takes "Paddle to the Sea" with it, and the book tells the story of all the people, machines, technology, animals and natural wonders that the little canoe model sees on it's epic journey through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic.  I loved the book as a boy, and I still have the book.  I live in Wisconsin, not far from Lake Michigan, and the book has always been special to me.  As a boy I thought how cool it would be to make this canoe and paddler model......now I have decided to do it!  Below is documented my best attempt at building as close to accurate a model as possible of the actual "Paddle to the Sea" canoe model from the book.
 
Making the drawings:  There are illustrations throughout the book of Paddle to the Sea, and there are also good clues as to materials, dimensions, and finish.  The book tells of the young Native American boy in Nipigon Country (North shore of Lake Superior, around Lake Nipigon), who take "many days" whittling a "piece of pine" into a "canoe one foot long".  It also advises of a rudder made of tin and lead ballast.  The book also advises "oil paints" were used to paint it, along the with words carved into the bottom of the hull , "Please put me back in water, I am Paddle to the Sea".   Starting with the known length of 12", I scaled other dimensions from the many pictures in the book and calculated the various dimensions.  Then I took those dimensions and created a life-size, to-scale, color drawing of the model, which I will use to take dimensions from as I build the model.
 

I have an Amati gondola in progress, it is an ongoing adventure. I also purchased a Gilberto Penzo gondola that I’m looking forward to. I think the Penzo gondola will be a lot easier to assemble.

Everything you need to know about gondole and other Venetian boats: https://www.veniceboats.com. Gilberto Penzo also has a little shop in Venice, where he sells his books, the plans and the kits he has designed.
 

Great review, James! I agree with you that the gondolas have a rather mysterious and beautiful quality about them and I've always been intrigued by them as well.
 
A few years ago, I found a copy of the original Amati Gondola on eBay for a fair price. The seller said that the box had been opened and some of the parts had been removed from the sheets but he had checked carefully and everything was still there. I put the model aside after receiving it since I was currently working on the Medway Longboat by Syren but, a few months later, I discovered that there were several parts missing including a sheet of decorative, photo etch parts. I figured it was too late to try and contact the seller and chalked it up as being my own fault for not carefully inventorying the kit when I received it.
 
A few months later, I found another kit on eBay that said it was not complete but the pictures showed that the parts I was missing were included. I contacted the seller and he confirmed that the parts I needed were indeed included in the incomplete kit. So I ended up buying two of those old kits in order to get one complete kit and I learned my lesson about being sure to inventory any model that you buy on eBay to make sure you are getting what was advertised!
 
The new Amati gondola looks great and the instructions and parts look like they are improved over the older model. I like the look of both the newer model with the open passenger section  and the older model with the enclosed passenger section. I think the black, enclosed passenger section adds a bit of mysteriousness to the model...might the passengers be of high standing or royalty seeking privacy or perhaps the people inside are rogues on a clandestine mission...? Who knows? I just might have to build both models now! 

1:22 Venetian Gondola
Amati
Catalogue # 571
Available from Amati for around €105
 

 
The gondola is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian lagoon. It is typically propelled by a gondolier, who uses a rowing oar, which is not fastened to the hull, in a sculling manner, and also acts as the rudder. Today's gondolas are up to 11 m long and 1.6 m wide, with a mass of around 350 kg. They are made of 280 hand-made pieces using eight types of wood (lime, oak, mahogany, walnut, cherry, fir, larch and elm). The process takes about two months; in 2013, the cost of a gondola was about 38,000 euros. The oar or rèmo, is held in an oarlock known as a fórcola. The fórcola is of a complicated shape, allowing several positions of the oar for slow forward rowing, powerful forward rowing, turning, slowing down, rowing backwards, and stopping. The ornament on the front of the boat is called the fèrro (meaning iron) and can be made from brass, stainless steel, or aluminium. It serves as decoration and as counterweight for the gondolier standing near the stern.

 
The gondola has existed in Venice since the 11th century, being first mentioned by name in 1094. It is estimated that there were eight to ten thousand gondolas during the 17th and 18th century, but there are only around four hundred in active service today, with virtually all of them used for hire by tourists. The uniqueness of the gondola includes its being asymmetrical along the length, making the single-oar propulsion more efficient. For centuries, the gondola was a major means of transportation and the most common watercraft within Venice. In modern times, the boats still do have a role in public transport in the city, serving as traghetti (small ferries) over the Grand Canal operated by two oarsmen.
 
The kit

 

This is quite a new kit from Amati, and who better to realise a scale model of a Gondola, than an Italian company. This particular subject appears to represent a modern Gondola, which is still no bad thing as I’ve seen a lot of these myself and they are beautiful vessels. This isn’t the first Gondola released by Amati; they did a model of an 1882 vessel (#1600), with a covered passenger section, which was 1:20 scale and is now unavailable.

Original Amati Gondola kit
 
The new kit is a very different model. As is always the case, this kit is packaged into an attractive and high quality, glossy box, with a single photo of the finished Gondola on the lid, and a couple of other finished views on the sides. The vessel is finished in its famous satin black, and the artwork design reflects this.

 
Despite the box’s depth, the actual components don’t occupy too much space, with a few packets of flat sheet parts included, plus a single, large plan, manual etc. We’ll look at these parts now.


 
You could say that this model is very much a plank-on-frame (POF) build, with a series of ‘C’ frames which sit upon a flat, ply floor, sheathed initially with single-piece timber sides. It’s quite a simple approach to building but allows the model to be fitted out and furnished easily, whilst also displaying elements of the hollow hull. The model also needs to have its interior painted black during different phases of the build, due to those areas still being within eyesight when finished. Several thin ply sheets are provided which hold the parts for the frames, footboards, strakes etc. Here you see the frames sheet, with side elements. A little later, you can see a number of selected manual pages, so you’ll get a better idea of construction. Incidentally, the single plan sheet isn’t what you use for main construction guide. The model is mostly don’t via the manual photos, with the plan only really giving an idea of the finished model.



 
This ply sheet contains parts for the oar, display stand, and some visible interior bulkheads. Also visible are the seats. These will be finished with a material which looks like crushed red velvet.

 
On these two ply sheets, you can clearly see the asymmetrical floor of the gondola with engraved positions for the frames, and also side tabs which will key into the single-piece sides, ensuring that alignment is perfect. More turtle deck parts can be seen here, as long as the tabbed floor sections which slot into the frames.

 
Here you can see the Gondola’s side panels with the tabs that correspond with the flat, ply vessel bottom.

 
That was the last of the flat timber sheets, but included is a large sheet of steel photo-etch. This carries the prow and stern shapes, plus two ornamental strakes which lie down each side of the hull. 

 
A reasonably sized sheet of material is included which represents the crushed red velvet of the Gondola interior, as well as for the seat furnishings. 


 
Lastly, a single length of dowel is included which is for the oar construction, a cast metal lamp, and the oarlock in grey resin.
 
Instructions
As I’ve already stated, the model is mostly built using just the stages from the manual, and not the plan sheet. All photos and instructional text are nice and clear and describe in good detail, exactly what the modeller must do at each stage. Photography is excellent and every picture is perfect reference for your build.








 
 
Conclusion
When I came into the hobby around 22yrs ago, the original Amati Gondola was a kit I always coveted, having a copy of their catalogue. For whatever reason, I missed out on that kit and eventually forgot about. Being sent this new kit to review has more than made up for that as this look a beautiful and beautifully simple model to build, but one that’s very attractive. I love watching the Gondolas when I visit Venice, and this model very much captures the evocative appeal of this type of vessel. Something a little mysterious. Maybe I’ve been watching too many old films too! Amati’s Gondola is also a very affordable kit that offers plenty for the builder. As a modeller of primarily warships, this is the sort of side project that I very much enjoy, and as soon as the opportunity presents, I will open a build log for this.
 
My sincere thanks to Amati for sending this kit for review here on Model Ship World. To buy directly, click the link at the top of this article, or visit your local Amati dealer.