ccoyle

I will always fondly remember the Ar 196. The 1/72 scale Airfix kit is one of the earliest models I can remember building with my Dad back in the 60s. I built another one when I was old enough to do the job by myself.

Those would be early chain stoppers. They do in fact clamp down on the chain (or possibly rope back in Connie's day) to take some of the load off the windlass.

SMS Scharfschütze 1/250 available from GPM Hi, Gang! This will be a sort of quick-and-dirty review, since the kit is not a new release. Whenever I order stuff from Poland, I like to order the most stuff I can get for a particular shipping cost -- if I'm going to get a few items, I might as well get the most for my shipping buck. My most recent order from the Polish firm of GPM arrived today, consisting mostly of after-market canopies and wheels, but I was able to squeeze in a new card model as well. This one is SMS Scharfschütze (Sharpshooter), one of twelve Huszar-class destroyers built for the pre-WW1 Austro-Hungarian navy. The kit has been out for roughly a decade (there is no release date on the cover sheet), so I'm a little lucky that one was still available all these years later. It is available in either 1/200 or 1/250 scale. I chose 1/250, since pretty much all of my other card ship kits are in that scale. At that scale, the finished model will be 26 cm long -- a little more than ten inches. The kit has a number of interesting features. One is that it doesn't come in the usual booklet form, but instead is printed on individual sheets. A second unusual feature is that the designer's name is not given anywhere. However, the kit and its diagrams look remarkably similar in style to the V108 kit which served as the basis for the tutorial I posted in the card models section. That makes me suspect that Digital Navy's Roman Deytna may have designed the kit. Perhaps one of our august members can confirm that for me. One bit of good news with this kit is that it doesn't just come with Polish instructions. The bad news is that the only other language is German. I read German, so that's great for me, but perhaps not so great for the rest of you. Fear not, though, since the kit does include a sufficient number of diagrams to guide the builder to a finished model. Also, the model is not overly complex -- I think that anyone who has built V108 or any similarly simple kit, such as the ones available from Paper Shipwright, will be able to build this kit without too much difficulty. There are only two pages of printed parts, so the total parts count is low. Optional parts allow for the model to be built in either a full-hull or waterline configuration. The print quality is good. Here's where it gets a little more interesting. The kit is a "limited edition" offering -- a kind of deluxe kit that includes both laser-cut details and a laser-cut frames set. It costs only US$13.64, so it's a pretty darn good deal. One of the two pages of parts is laser-cut, which will save a lot of fiddly cutting, even if the laser-cut parts give a sense of being very delicate. Whether they will prove to be delicate during construction remains to be seen. A separate key for the laser-cut parts is provided. There is a separate laser-cut fret containing railings. The frames are cut from the standard "beer mat" used in Poland. At one time, metal gun barrels were also available, but they have been out of stock for quite a while. So, that's it in a nutshell. I think this is an intriguing kit, design-wise, and it depicts a very interesting and infrequently seen subject. The price is definitely a plus. Given my fondness for small warship projects, I may have to make room in the queue for this one sooner rather than later.

Fabulous, Glen! I'm now dreaming of a tropical getaway on some idyllic beach.

Whenever someone asks about how Model Shipways kits compare to those of other manufacturers, a link to your last post should be provided. That's the sort of structure that would be built from laser-cut parts in most kits these days; MS provides the plans and some raw materials and says, "Here ya go -- build something like this!" You did a great job on your skylight -- getting all of those bars parallel is no easy task!

C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer C A Thayer I call for a recount. 😜 Seriously, though, I think you should follow this thread up with a short list of the suggestions that most piqued your interest (after all, it's you who will have to endure the developmental slog) and then maybe create a poll to help narrow the field further.

Yes, she is!

Nice work, Simon -- congratulations!

A useful tool, though I'm not familiar with that brand of paint. Perhaps it's only available in South Korea?

Malcolm The usual tags to add would be the name of the ship (i.e. Victory, but without the HMS part) and the kit manufacturer (Heller). If you would like to credit particular build logs and direct members to them, you can do that by adding links to them in your posts. I'll show you an example: "You can see examples of the Heller kit being built here and here." For more tips on how to use MSW, read here. 😉 Cheers!

Beautiful result!

Beautiful! Calling her done?

Very nice planking work!

A rare bird and nicely done!

Thank you for the nice compliment, Ab. I would like to try some scratch projects at some point in the future, but the ones I have in mind would be card models of smallcraft, not like most of what we see being built by our membership. I'm particularly interested in the boats designed by Philip Bolger; in fact, I have already built a simple model of a Bolger sailing pirogue. As for wood, though, I am one of those builders who enjoys the straightforward process of putting things together, like a puzzle, and not so much interested in all of the various tasks that a scratch builder in wood must engage in. This is why I particularly like the MK kits -- they appeal to my kind of builder. This might be my last wooden kit -- I no longer have any shop space in my garage, and the amount of sawdust and shavings even this sort of kit produces reminds me of why I stick mainly to card these days. Cheers! P.S. Here's a shot of my pirogue.

Inner bulwarks sanded to shape. On to lining gun ports.

Gun ports cut out.

Welcome aboard! Good luck on your adventure doing tallships in 1/700 -- not impossible, but definitely a challenge at that scale.

It's not a kit in the most fundamental sense of the word, so the scratch category is appropriate.

Welcome aboard!

Well, turns out that adding the strip wood didn't take much time at all, especially after it dawned on me that many of the spaces between bulkhead extensions were the same width, which allowed for some mass production of filler pieces. Anyways, that part's all done now. Next it gets a little trickier. There are laser-cut plywood pieces to fill the remaining gaps, but of course the inboard sides of those pieces must match the curvature of the bulkhead extensions. The instructions suggest removing some wood before adding the pieces, but that struck me as a dicey proposition. I decided to try a couple of test pieces by gluing them in and then carving them down with a chisel. That seemed to work well enough. When those are done, I'll do the final shaping with some sandpaper.

The next step was to fit the glazing for the stern and quarter gallery windows. A slight bit of sanding was needed to get the pieces to fit, but not much. The clear plastic is covered on both sides with a protective film, which of course has to be removed from the back side before the pieces are glued in. You can see that on one stern window I accidentally removed the film from the wrong side -- that piece is now temporarily protected by a piece of cellophane tape. The quarter gallery panes are also painted black on their inboard sides, since otherwise one can see right into the model's internal hull structure. The next step is somewhat lengthy and not very exciting -- the inner bulwarks must be built up from multiple pieces of strip wood and pre-cut filler pieces. Again, I'll post pics of that after I'm done. Cheers!

That would be fine, since you would be making the enlargements for your own, not-for-profit use. Paper modelers often make copies of their kits in order to have a backup copy in case something gets boogered. It's also not unheard of for modelers to do exactly what you're suggesting, i.e., using the kit parts as templates. It's kind of off-topic here, but always bear in mind that the guiding principle in intellectual property law is that the IP owner (HMV in this scenario) is not defrauded. Once you buy the kit, you can pretty much do with it what you will -- except make copies and sell them. 😉

Congratulations, Mike!

That is the ultimate measure of success. Congrats!