ccoyle

Sorry to say, but if the instructions are in Chinese, then the first thing you need to do is read our statement on banned manufacturers. The vast majority of kits coming out of China are infringements of Western intellectual property (i.e. knock-offs), though there are a couple of Chinese manufacturers who don't engage in the practice. Kits from manufacturers on the banned list are not allowed for build logs or discussion here at MSW.

Well, this kit continues to be exasperating, and I'm emotionally about ready to bin it. After finishing the engine, which as I pointed out earlier is very oversimplified, and getting its cowling done with little difficulty, it was on to the landing gear. Now, the P-36 had a very complex set of landing gear doors, and the kit has, I'm sorry to say, made their construction virtually impossible to figure out. To begin with, the kit includes separate parts for inner and outer surfaces of the door bits (i.e. exterior color, interior color); higher quality kits often accomplish this with two-sided printing. Laminating two parts together results in a part that is too thick, so I have been ditching the interior parts and painting the reverse side of the exterior parts instead. This isn't an insurmountable problem, obviously. The real issue is the large number of door parts and their indecipherable diagrams (below). At first glance these might seem very detailed, but the problem is that the gears and doors themselves consist of so many parts that the diagrams fail to clearly show how some of them fit together. For example, there is no clear view of the forward end of part 61, nor is there any hint at how parts 60 and 60' are articulated, nor how part 60' is supposed to fit to the wing. And this is by no means an exhaustive list. This is all very exasperating. I don't like models that are half model kit and half mind-bender puzzle. And as I have ranted about previously, this isn't the first aggravating construction stage I've encountered with this kit. But I also don't like feeling 'defeated' by a kit. The problem is that an annoying and unfulfilling kit tends to get less and less construction time devoted to it and simply ends up delaying the start of a kit I might enjoy much more. Frustrating ... And for a cherry on top, I managed to get a large dollop of interior green right on top of the recently completed engine cowling, with no idea how I accomplished that. 😡

Привет! We look forward to seeing your work.

Good question, and one I'm not entirely certain about how to answer. It was commonplace for small warships like these to be sold out of service, but I'm no expert on how their private owners would have fitted out such a ship.

That would've been quite the coincidence. I was working on my family tree (19,500+ persons) at lunch and just happened to be working on the entry for a 1st cousin 3x removed for whom Clarence Golden was a second husband.

Welcome! You're not by any chance related to Clarence Merle Golden (d. 1946 in Lane County) are you?

Yep, that was my first thought too when I saw those. That's some serious fine control skills with an airbrush on display right there!

Looks great -- congratulations!

Smugglers tended to use any craft that was fast. In the latter half of the 18th century, cutters were a common choice, and Vanguard Models has a very good kit of one in 1/64 scale. Their banner is on our home page.

I can't say with any authority whether Euromodel has ever updated any of their kit range. If they have, I have no knowledge of it, and I have had my ear to the ship modeling ground for 20 years now. What I do know is that their kits are generally highly esteemed, and Royal William is definitely one of their flagship models. Their current MSRP for that kit is 1373 Euros, so you can use that as a starting point to judge how great of a deal you got (bearing in mind that a retailer may charge only 80-85% of that price -- plus tax and shipping).

Welcome, Sean. Both of your questions would best go in our generic wood kit discussions area.

Interesting link, but even more interesting is the description: "Up for sale is a Mid 20th Century Model of 1541 German Hanseatic League Warship! When on top of the wood stand, it measures 32 1/2" tall, 40 3/4" wide, and 10 1/8" deep. The piece is in excellent overall condition with minor signs of wear consistent with its age and use. " Um ... no. This just goes to show that antiques dealers are not reliable sources of information on ship models. It most certainly is not a ship of 1541, and I'm not going to pay $950 for it unless I have a whole lot more information on its provenance besides just "Mid 20th Century Model." Like, a lot more. Also, notice the difference in the mizzen mast rigs on the two models.

This model is an example of a decor model, and it was probably manufactured in Germany, as indicated by both your story and the Hamburg coat of arms (which should have the heads of both lions facing away from the shield). As such, it does not represent any particular ship, nor is it a good scale likeness of a type of ship. I'm not sure what is supposed to be indicated by the year 1541 on the foresail, as that is not the year the city was founded (it is far older), nor is that year indicated on the city's coat of arms. It also certainly does not indicate the year in which the depicted ship was built, as the model is obviously meant to portray a ship that is at least two centuries newer than the types that would have been seen in the Middle Ages. So, it is a fanciful ship, but with a good backstory. A lot of people pick this sort of model up at a yard sale or antique store and have no idea where or when it was built -- you are fortunate to know at least that much.

Rant Mode: ON This kit continues to thumb its nose at me and challenge me to "just try and finish me, nyaah!!" I have this sneaking suspicion that the single sheet of diagrams printed one-sided on text-weight paper was supposed to be double-sided, as there is an inexcusable paucity of diagrams. There are, for example, no diagrams at all that show the construction of the wings, ailerons, elevators, or engine. The lack of engine diagram in particular is baffling. I have built a number of radial engines in the past, so I have a general idea of how they are usually built in a card kit, but with only the numbered parts to go by and no diagram, this engine appears to be significantly different. It's a Wright Cyclone, which was a common enough power plant, but these kit parts will not go together in any fashion that resembles a Cyclone. I have a spare kit of a Bloch MB.152, which has a Gnome-Rhone 14-cylider engine. I'm going to see if I can use that kit's cylinder heads for the H-75. Will report back later ... Rant Mode: OFF EDIT: Rant Mode: Retraction I found some of the "missing" diagrams, including one for the engine cylinders. 🙄 The Gnome-Rhone engine was a no-go, being likewise over-simplified, so I'm going to have to make do with the kit engine.

I fixed it up for you. Now you can use this one as a pattern.

I'll add my voice to the growing cascade of accolades -- all of them well-deserved! A great log, and I look forward to your next project.

Very nicely done! I hope you will add a few photos to our gallery.

I've been building card models for roughly 20 years now, but I'm still far from being an advanced practitioner. If you want to see some fantastic card models, check out the builds listed here. Danny was a master of the medium. Sadly, he passed away earlier this year, but he left behind a lot of content to continue inspiring us.

The colors are a close match for this season's home and away kits for Everton FC.

Additional work on the empennage, plus wing mated to fuselage. Main story here is the wing -- there are pretty much zero instructions on how to afix this to the fuselage. The wing fits between two fuselage bulkheads, but the space produced by them was about 2 mm too short. So I took my best guess at how to fix the problem and simply whacked 2 mm off the aft end of the wing structure. But the wing still wouldn't fit, because the cutouts in the fuselage skins were in the way. So, reckoning that any damage would be covered by the wing fillets, I hacked away at the offending fuselage skins; this was either going to work or be an irretrievable disaster and wind up in the Great Bin in the Sky. Since there were no internal formers to help mate the wing to the fuselage, I first looked at many online images of P-36s and then, once again, made a best guess at how the wing and fuselage should be positioned relative to each other. Final judgement of the outcome would hinge on whether all my guesswork ultimately allowed the wing fillets to be positioned more or less correctly and hide all of the radical surgery. Happily, the fillets went on without much fuss, and everything looks good to go for continued construction.

Congratulations! She looks great.

I'm one of those "no treenails" advocates, so take this advice accordingly. 😉 For models that do have treenails, the biggest turn-offs for me are a.) treenails not aligned properly, and b.) treenails too dark (producing a model that looks like it has the pox). So on the basis of color alone, I would choose #1 -- but I'd choose a filler (or stain) that is even lighter.

You got it in the right place, since you are doing a scratch build using the kit parts as templates. I've seen this attempted before, but I can't remember in whose build log it was or if they ever finished. The card company, for those who may not know, is Dom Bumagi ("Paper House"). I believe they are out of the Ukraine, and they offer some very nice kits.

Progress continues, but it's not terribly exciting. The next step of the build is to prepare for fiberglassing the inside of the hull. The major component of this prep is to sand smooth the fillets around the bulkheads and to clean up the messy spots. This is one end of the hull finished up. I did about five hours of sanding last weekend, but I didn't keep track of how much total time the job required. The other end of the hull is about half done. Here's one side, on which sanding has barely started. You can see it looks pretty rough and there's a lot of slop to clean up. And here's the other half, which was today's task and is about 95% done. Lots of fine dust all around. I had to stop for the day because the sandpaper was wearing my fingertips raw. That's all for now!

I have the card version in my stash.