ccoyle

No problem! 😉 Just remember that all of the framing in a card kit is essentially made out of beer coasters. The parts are regrettably intolerant of any sort of rough handling.

Did you pre-soak the bulwarks? Best thing to do is to soak the plywood until it can easily be bent, then temporarily pin the piece to the hull (no glue) and allow it to dry. The shaped piece is then much easier to glue in place.

I think I got motion sickness just from looking at the pictures. 🤢

And there, my friend, is where you'd run into all kinds of trouble. Internal cockpit framing invariably needs some sanding to get the skins to fit properly, otherwise one runs into the problems alluded to in Ab's earlier post. The whole reason for leaving the X-marked portion in is to give that part some rigidity for shaping; remove it too early, and you'll have two very weak pieces of cockpit framing essentially dangling helplessly in space, just begging to be damaged. But no worries -- I'll get it all sorted.

A few small steps forward . . . In this first image, you can see what I meant earlier about the confusing diagrams. Compare the actual fuselage assembly with what is depicted in the diagram. That second-from-left-bulkhead is much closer to the aft-most bulkhead in real life than it is in the drawing. And you can also see a pair of locator slots on the finished structure that are not shown in the diagram -- those slots turned out to be necessary for the part that glues in from the other side. These two discrepancies were very confusing for awhile. And next up we have something I have never seen in a kit before, not even a Halisnski kit. The part marked A8 (a deck behind the pilot's seat) has a section, marked with an X in the image, that is supposed to be cut out and then temporarily reattached before gluing the deck in. But even before that, the cockpit floor piece is supposed to be glued in first -- except that if one does that, one can't add the A8 part afterwards. 🫤 I'm gonna have to think about this one a bit. Sometimes, assembling a card model is a lot like rigging a wooden ship model -- you have to have an assembly sequence worked out in advance in your mind before you start gluing bits in. Cheers!

Looking more impressive with each update!

That lesson was painfully seared into my memory by my second Halinski build, the Brewster B-239, which now sits on the Shelf of Shame.

Wow, looks great! Congratulations!

If you know your Old Testament, it's kinda one of those "Aaron and the golden calf" things -- I threw in some wood and metal and out came those shelves. 🫢

Welcome aboard! Your Titanic looks very nice from here.

Here's the new shelves that mysteriously appeared while my wife was away in California.

Hey, that's cheating! But I would totally do it, too, if it were me. 😉

Well, somewhat surprisingly for a Halinski kit, I ran into an issue with the diagrams. What's shown in them does not seem to match up well with the parts that are provided. The discrepancy was so jarring that I thought perhaps I had been sent the wrong laser-cut frame set, but I checked them against the printed structural parts, and they match, so that's not the problem. I have seen finished examples of this kit, so I know it can be built -- I'm just going to have to stare and ponder at the diagrams to figure out how everything goes together. Stay tuned!

Hello, Malcolm. Although she is most famous for her actions in 1805, Victory was launched in 1765, so I have moved your build into the proper section. Cheers!

That certainly looks very realistic!

Will do! I hope her rehab goes well.

Our forum has a built in resizing function. Double-click on any image in your post -- a dialog box will open that allows you to resize your images. I tend to resize mine to either 480 or 640 pixels in width; there is a checkbox to mark to have the software maintain the original proportions. Also, resizing only affects the display size -- members can see the original image by clicking the mage in your finished post.

I don't like to speak ill of any legitimate kit manufacturer, because I truly do appreciate the service they provide for modelers who can't scratch build or who otherwise just decide not to. But in this case I'm left wondering: Why? Why bring a kit to market that is neither a novel subject nor an improvement on an existing kit from a competitor? It makes little sense to me. Following on the heels of their equally unmoving Victory kit, this feels like two swings and two misses from the OcCre design department. But I'll leave it to the market to decide the fate of this new offering.

Welcome aboard! The Heller 1/100th scale Victory has been a popular kit over the years and is still held in high regard despite its age. Best of luck on your project!

Cladding the hull with its laser-cut veneer is the next step in Phoenix's build sequence, so it seemed like a natural point to take a short break. Better to take a break now, I figure, than to wait until modeling malaise has set in. Thanks for tagging along!

That's a very attractive display!

Oh, but there is, my friend! Just not in the scale or medium that you usually work in. 😜 https://www.h-m-v.de/en/models/special-purpose-ships/light-vessel-elbe-3/

I'm not aware of any. If Wyapa would be happy with one of the three models he shared, I'd vote for the first one. I think that one looks the nicest of the three. I can't tell if it's in his price range, though, because one has to be a member of the Model Shipyard site in order to see prices.

Hello and welcome! I have decided that I will occasionally break up the slog of building a wooden ship by taking a break here and there to do a side project. So, having finished the basic hull structure of Phoenix, I will now take a few weeks to knock out a card model. This time around it will be kit #1/2002 from Halinski -- a Hawker Hurricane Mk. I wearing the colors of Witold Urbanowicz's mount during his stint in the RAF's 303 Squadron, circa September of 1940 (click here for more about Urbanowicz). Urbanowicz shot down nine enemy aircraft while flying this particular Hurricane. I chose this kit for several reasons: I haven't built a Hurricane yet. I have built a Bf-109E-4 that fought in the Battle of Britain, but not one of the British fighters it would have faced off with. The Spitfire Mk. Vb I built earlier began entering service in 1941. I wanted to have one of Walter Oesau's potential adversaries sharing a shelf with his Emil. I now have more Halinski kits in my stash than from any other publisher, so it seems appropriate to thin out the Halinski herd a bit. This will be my fifth crack at a Halinski build. This kit comes from Halinski's "transitional" period -- a time when the company's kits didn't quite come up to the standards of kits produced even just a few months later in terms of complexity, artwork, and quality of diagrams. It's still a great kit, only it's just a half-step down maybe from the usual Halinski standard of excellence. This is not necessarily a bad thing, cuz it means the kit should be slightly easier to build than some of the massively detailed kits the company has published more recently. In addition to the basic kit, I have the laser-cut frames, molded canopy, and a set of resin wheels from GPM. First task, as usual, will be to match some colors for edge coloring. Look for first cuts soon! Witold Urbanowicz (image courtesy of Wikimedia)