ccoyle

Welcome! I love indigenous small craft of every stripe -- your model looks great!

Fixed.

Well, I'll wrap up this topic by letting you all in on a plan I have been mulling. Since I have two PWS-10 kits and essentially two sets of formers, one printed and one laser-cut, why not just build both of them? 😯 One of the biggest obstacles for me for starting a card model is getting the edge-coloring media correct. With these two kits, the primary colors are shades of gray, brown, and olive drab. I already have most of the paint on hand that I anticipate I'll need to mix the correct shades, so not too much difficulty there. These are also nice kits that I was blessed with gratis by their designer, so I have little in the way of capital investment tied up in them -- nothing to lose, so to speak. Might be important considering my current dreadful run of form on card models. 🙄 Here's a few photos. Three-view of the PWS-10. "White Tail" markings. Spanish Nationalist markings. Laser-cut formers. Of course, if I move forward with this, I will start up a new topic with more details about the plane and kit. Cheers!

Welcome! I always advise SoCal folks to check out the Ship Modelers Association. They meet in Fullerton, if that's near you. There's nothing quite like meeting your fellow modelers alive and in person to socialize, look at models, and swap tips and advice.

Sadly, I don't know the answer to that question. But if you google his name on the usual plastic forums, e.g. FineScale Modeler, he's probably got it described in more detail somewhere. Edit: Here is one such article.

I have a friend (Brian Criner) who has done some amazing finishes on Japanese aircraft. After he pre-shades his panel lines, he sprays the aluminum undercoat followed by a coat of Futura floor wax, and finally the topcoat. Then he uses crumpled cellophane tape to randomly chip the finish. It is very convincing. This is one of his models. Maybe a little depressing for us mortals, but certainly something you could try if you are handy with an airbrush.

Wow! Your remodel is amazing -- makes me want to come over and play. One comment about your gaff jaws: The jaws should not have hooked ends that wrap around the mast; they should just be open like a letter "Y". Hooked ends would make the part rather difficult to afix to the mast. Cheers!

Yep, agree. As I said in my introduction, I have finished a model from this designer, so I'm a little taken aback by the overall quality of this kit. Not his best work, and the diagrams -- or lack thereof -- certainly didn't help. I have one other kit from this same designer, and a study of its parts and diagrams suggests that it is more up to the gentleman's usual standards. It's a technique for stiffening the internal formers that I have read about but never tried. I'll discuss it more in my intro for the next build attempt (subject as yet undecided). Amen!

Well done!

The Golden Bear kits were really quite nice. They used to be sold as digital downloads from a site called Gremir Models that went out of business a couple of years ago. The place to inquire about Carl (aka Golden Bear) is at papermodelers.com, where he has been a longtime member. But he hasn't visited the site since June, so I don't know what the story there is. Michael Mash (also his username), who is also a member at Paper Modelers, has built several of the GB models, and expertly so, so he might have some insight into Carl's recent whereabouts. Cheers!

Well, I came home after work and looked at the diagrams again, hoping for a moment of clarity. None was forthcoming. So the decision has been made and the bench has been cleared. I didn't toss the model, but it is currently occupying a place of dishonor up on a high shelf. So, what is next? One of the things I would like to experiment with is using shellac to stiffen laser-cut formers. I have a number of kits that I think would suit the purpose. To be a candidate, the kit had to: have clear diagrams be a kit I had a vacuformed canopy for or else have only a windscreen -- no scratch-built canopies not be an especially high-value kit, like anything in my Halinski collection. Candidates include a Fokker E.V from Kartonowa Kolekcja (I have successfully completed two KK kits), a PWS-26 trainer in Hungarian livery (a Marek Pacyinski design, of which I have attempted two and completed one), and a PWS-10 from CardPlane (I'm three for four on CardPlane kits), for which I have two different liveries (Spanish Nationalist or Polish "White Tail"). I'll have to meditate on these options -- and of course I have been known to go off the rails and choose some previously unconsidered option. 🙄

Not a problem. A lot of people get into this hobby with no awareness of the knock-off kits problem, so you're far from being the first. One of our goals is to educate those in the hobby about the issue.

Здравствуйте! Мы надеемся, что вы продолжите делиться с нами, но, пожалуйста, пишите на английском языке. Я использовал Google Translate, чтобы писать по-русски. Hello! We hope you will continue to share with us, but please post in English. I used Google Translate for writing in Russian. Cheers!

Well, however durable the finished product may turn out to be, it's sweet of you to build something for the grandson.

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.