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Love it! What's next?

My condolences, Doris. Your tribute to your husband is a very touching gesture, and your model is, as always, spectacular. Kind regards.

Brian, that is a very interesting story. Please feel free to post your pictures in this thread, as they are relevant to anyone building or thinking of building this model. Cheers!

Yep. 😉

Eh, squeezed some more work in. All louvered panels done and a dry fit of the two fuselage sections. The machine guns are 95% hidden.

I proposed to my wife at the original Panda Inn in Pasadena. That was right around the time the owners started up their first Express location. Have yet to see a "Gasthaus Express" or similar.

That strip should be sufficiently bendy that soaking it and clamping it to the fascia until dry should do the trick. An inexpensive upgrade would be to replace the square stock (which is a simplified kit element) with beaded strip. Some modelers make their own with a homemade scraper, but you can also buy double-beaded basswood strip from BlueJacket. I used this on HMS Fly to good effect.

Work continues. Next comes the forward fuselage. The fit of these parts has been exemplary. The only hiccup was the most forward section, and the difficulty was caused by my not getting the joiner strip properly positioned on the adjacent internal bulkhead. The fix was not difficult. The recesses for the gun channels are cut out after the skins are attached, and the channels are formed from separate parts; got these done decently, too -- they're not easy. Along the bottom of the forward fuselage are four louvered panels. One option for these is to simply glue the printed louvers onto the fuselage skins. The kit is designed, though, so that the louvers can be "opened" -- there are even two black cylinders incorporated into the internal fuselage structure to present a properly inky interior. As designed, there are panels to be cut out (one is visible in these shots) and replaced by the louvered parts. This seemed to me to be too ticklish a detail to pull off, so I settled on a third option. I painted the cut-out panels black and opened up the louvers before gluing their panel over the painted space. The glued panel required quite a bit of touch-up afterward, but I think the finished result is worth the effort. On the next panel, I'm going to try gluing the panel down first before opening up the louvers. Until next time! Which might be a while, because my vacation is officially ending, and it's back to work tomorrow. Bleah! 😜

You did a fine job!

Rear fuselage complete. As usual, close-up photos show all the warts more clearly than can be discerned by the unaided eye at normal viewing distances. I had to do a little "tummy tuck" along the bottom of the fuselage, and there were some gaps between the side panels and upper fuselage. I got these filled in and touched up as best I could. Overall, I'm happy at this point.

Welcome, Stuart. As far as I know, there is a kit for only one of the Renowns (your list does not include the battlecruiser of 1916 or the 1895 pre-Dreadnought). Euromodel makes a kit of the 1747 Renown, which was originally built and launched in France in 1744 (see kit listing here). The others would have to be scratch-built. All of these are ship-rigged vessels with a lot of guns -- each will be a considerable challenge to build, supposing that you can find the plan resources you would need. My advice would be to start with a simpler model representing a vessel from the same time period, perhaps a cutter, schooner, or brig. There's a pretty fair slate of kits available for such subjects, and one of them would serve as a good introduction to modeling in wood. Cheers!

Welcome aboard, Ruud! Planking is a scary first-time task for just about everyone, but it is doable, and there is plenty of guidance here. The flattie is an excellent and nearly fool-proof starter kit. Someone with your modeling background may enjoy adding some extra details to the basic kit. If you like working boats, you might be interested in some of the kits from MarisStella; they have a number of Mediterranean workboats in their line. Cheers!

Cutters are great first models. There are plenty of finished build logs for this and other cutter kits (e.g. Sherbourne, Alert); be sure to look to those to see how other modelers have accomplished the various tasks that constitute a build. Cheers!

There is no exact answer to this question, since it depends in part on what a modeler's preferred planking technique is. In any case, though, pins are not meant to be permanent, but only to hold the plank in place while the glue sets. Brass nails can do the job and are inexpensive (you can buy them from Model Expo, as one possible source, and some modelers like to use the nail push tool shown on the same page), but there are other ways to do the job. I use regular ol' bulletin board push pins (the kind with the plastic head), a tack hammer, and pre-drilled pilot holes. Some modelers prefer to use no pins at all and instead use planking clamps. Try one method and see if it suits you.

So, being out of town at the moment and pretty bored, I've been surfing around card modeling retail sites. Lo and behold, I found a second set of laser-cut formers for the PWS-10. Since I have already broken like four or five #11 blades cutting the chipboard parts for just the cockpit and rear fuselage alone, I decided to pull the trigger and order the second set. To justify the postage from Poland, I ordered a few other goodies as well -- a Christmas present to myself. The laser-cut set will be greatly appreciated during wing construction, since it consists of a large number of internal parts. Construction on White Tail will thus be delayed a bit while I await the new parts.

I'm currently building a 12' lapstrake canoe from a kit. I think I will be pleased if it simply floats. Your kayak looks spectacular!

Once you have your files uploaded, your attachments bar will look like this. To insert an image into your post, place your cursor at the desired location, then click the "+" on the thumbnail in the attachments bar. Afterwards, if you need to, you can resize the image by double-clicking on it and using the pop-up menu that results. Hope that helps!

Well, since turning down your white metal barrels to the correct size is probably not an option, your best bet is to source some replacement guns, such as these from Vanguard Models. They're fairly inexpensive, too.

In my admittedly limited experience, I have always bent sails to yards before installing them. I imagine the job would be a bit of a nightmare to do afterwards.

Hard to tell for sure from your photos, but it looks like you may need some additional bulkhead beveling at the bow and stern.

I had the pleasure of seeing one of these at an air show a number of years ago, where it was definitely the show-stopper among the piston-engined aircraft -- amazingly fast and nimble.

Superb work as usual, BE! Congratulations!

We strongly discourage the use of third party hosting sites for your MSW photos. Those sites can go down, in which case all of your photo links here will be dead. It's happened before. We have very good file uploading capability built into our forum software; the tool bar is located at the bottom of your reply window.

Depends on how you define "small." 1/96 scale is considered small for wooden ships, and there are plenty of kits in that scale. But if you're talking about a full-size ship built to the size of a 1/64 scale ship's boat, then you're talking about miniatures, and miniatures are nearly always scratch-built. There are exceptions, such as the Mini Mamoli kits, but those are simplified kits that lack a lot of detail.

Yes, this was the JAAF's primary fighter at the time of Pearl Harbor. Most of the JAAF's leading aces scored some or all of their kills in the Ki-43.