Chuck

Falkonet is not Master Korabel.... They are two very distinctly different companies. There is currently a dispute about Falkonet which has NOT been 100% verified. However no it is not current;y a banned MFG. AND I repeat.......Falkonet is a very different company than Master Korabel. Chuck

Well...so the bottom line is that this isnt true at all except for the old companies that havent tried to innovate. Newer smaller companies have the advantage in many cases....as can be seen with the demise of AL, Euromodel, Mamoli and probably some of the others.......Caldercraft???? Maybe too if they dont start doing anything new. Although we have dozens and dozens of their kits being built as build logs. They are still quite popular.

You also need to understand that those kits made 25-30 years ago would never be good sellers now. They are just a handful of laser cut parts made from sub par wood. .... Along with a bunch of wood strips and some bad castings. Model builders expect a lot more today for their money and they are notoriously frugal. To give a builder what they expect these days is quite expensive. It would be very easy and affordable for me to design a new kit like Model Shipways Armed Virginia Sloop. There are about five laser cut sheets in the entire kit and the instructions are 30 pages long. It would never sell!!!! They were basically starter kits with a bunch of raw wood. In contrast.....my new kit of the longboat has 26 laser cut pieces and almost no strip wood.....very expensive, with about 100 pages of instruction. The old kits can now be considered semi scratch in my opinion....especially if you ditch the castings. Very few parts were laser cut and designed with ease of construction in mind. And all this for a smallish kit of a longboat. Folks dont even want to learn to plank anymore. They want even larger kits to have all of the planking pre-spiled and laser cut......but they only want to spend $250. Very very different these days to design a kit that will be well-received....Builders have gotten very spoiled. This leaves very little profit per kit when most builders expect to pay about the same as they did for the AVS with cheap wood. Design and prototyping takes a whole lot longer now. At least for anything innovative. So when you consider that any new kit will cost an old established company around $30,000 to develop. This is significantly cheaper for newer small companies where the owners are usually also the designers and also work the assembly lines. I dont have to pay a good designer $50 an hour for about a year and half to design and prototype. I do it myself and it doesnt cost anything. So the old companies cant afford to spend that much to develop a new innovative kit project. They are kind of withering away because of that.

To post pics of finished model

Your cedar has arrived in Norway....Probably get it today or on Monday. Ten days https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction?tLabels=la095465259us Chuck

Thank You....You can always buy the starter package when it becomes available. That will contain plans minus the templates for the bulkheads. You wouldnt need them because you get them laser cut. Chuck

Thanks guys....Chisels are something I am very comfortable with. But when you are trying to mass produce a project for many, there is a whole other side of the fun you guys dont get to see. For examle, in order to try and make a part that is mass-produce-able, there is so much testing and re-testing. I must have laser cut over 100 hance pieces and molding samples. I sanded and finished tested about two dozen of those. When testing, they must be placed on the model temporarily which can be problematic if I am not careful. The first photos I posted yesterday of the molding and hance pieces was probably 50 versions ago. You should compare the photos because it is interesting to see how the design changed over the last few days. With each new try it gets a little batter.....baby steps. This was my final test just about one hour ago with the last iteration of hance pieces and molding. They were lightly tacked to the model with the tiniest drop of glue. But the molding can be hard to see against the same color background. So with each test, I used some blue painters tape where the painted frieze will eventually go. Although not exactly the right color it is close enough to give me a good sense of how the molding will look. Making laser cut moldings and hance pieces is new territory for me. Although I tried it with the Confederacy kit, I wasnt able to test it as much as I can now that the laser cutter is only 3 feet away from my workbench. Many wonder why these kits are so expensive...I cant tell you how expensive it is to test this much while trying to produce the very best product or design concept. This is why it is so upsetting when another company in a foreign land will just wait it out and copy the final product. That saves so much time and money and aggravation. But I digress.....Testing on the molding and hances have lasted three days.....I am so far behind with making blocks and rope!!! These will be the final iteration of hances although the molding between the ports is traditionally different. I just havent had time to develop those yet. Lots more to do. I hope you are interested in the trials and tribulations of a model designer. There are good days and there are bad days. Days where everything you try just turn out like crap....and its back to the drawing board!!! Hopefully that isnt the case here. 🤞

Dont really know yet. I will probably gang up several parts of the project and over them along with others that will be built in a given Chapter.

Carved scrolls on actual contemporary model.....I would encourage as many willing to try and carve them but I think my laser cut versions will do just fine. But nothing beats a hand carved version.

Thank you.....yes I could break out the chisels and blades but the fun challenge for me is to try and engineer a really good part so that I wont have to. While it was fresh in my brain and different ideas were swirling around in there, I decided to do a simplification test with fewer etched grooves. I think this is the winner at it achieves exactly what I am shooting for. The aft upper hance is new and made from boxwood. I will go with boxwood on the final versions too. I also reduced the scroll in size and it is now perfectly sized for the Winnie. I added a simulated cap rail which will be painted black so I could see the molding better. Now back to making rope and blocks which I have fallen very behind with since I spent a couple of days fiddling with the scroll-work and molding.

Thanks guys....If you look closely the molding and hance has four flutes or three etched grooves. This is what would normally be used on a molding but I may run a test with just two etched grooves to see how it looks. This really pushes the limits with the laser cutter because the grooves are so tiny and not etched very deeply. I think it looks a bit busy and maybe a simpler profile would look even better. But it could just be that i have been staring at these for eight hours and am losing my mind. luckily these wont be needed for while so I can do more testing. This is certainly a benefit as a designer to own your laser cutter. I couldnt imagine this kind of subtle testing and tweaking if I had to send these out for cutting each time.

Thanks...by the way, the molding in the last photo is just 3/32 wide and 1/32" thick. The etched grooves vary both in width and depth to simulate that profile. This was rather difficult and required about eight hours of testing, cutting and retesting. The etched grooves on the volutes had to match as they turned into the molding and they have the added difficulty of narrowing even more until they reached the "button". It was quite the challenge. Here is an earlier test run....I must have made about 60 of these tweaking it each time. Boxwood is on top....cedar is below it. I still have to reduce the volute by about 3%. It just a hair too big.

I finished the wales and black strake on both sides and painted them black. But I still had to add the anchor lining. Rather than use individual boards I just laser cut the shape from some 1/32" sheet. This will cover the wales but then an additional strip of thicker wood must placed on top of this to cover the black strake. They are all flush outboard but the strip on top of the black strake for the lining remains bright. The 1/32" sheet for the lining was gradually sanded thinner as it worked down towards the bottom of the wales. Now before I start planking below the wales, I have a few things to do first. One of them is to fair inboard. This is not a fun task and it will make a mess. But I want to get it out of the way now so all of the dust falls through the hull rather than just fall into one that is fully planked. One thing I notice when folks build my kits (or any kit for that matter) is how they fair inboard. They never quite know how thick to make the bulwarks. In most cases they are left way too wide which makes the entire model look clumsy and kit-like. To help with this on the Winnie, I designed a "fairing cap" that will be 3/16" wide. This needs to be placed on the top of the sheer. Then when I start fairing inboard I will be better able to maintain that 3/16" measurement consistently for the bulwarks. Some portions of this "fairing cap" were laser cut like the area above the hances and at the bow. For the remainder a 3/16" x 1/16" strip was used. See below. NOTE!!!! IMPORTANT NOTE!!!! DO NOT place the 3/16" x 1/16" fairing cap in the waste. It is only to be used on the hance pieces and along the quarter deck. AND in addition......along the forecastle at the bow. Using it along the waste which I show in the photo below will make the waist too high and screw up the placement of the molding. The top of the external planking will be the sheer along the waste and the 1/16" strip would make it too high. I made this mistake and later removed this strip along the waist. This may look odd at this point but dont worry....this "cap" will be completely covered by the fancy molding and volutes. These wont be added to much later in the project but here is a look at some prototype "scrolls" I worked on. One of the things that was troubling me was how I was going to handle these scrolls. Sure, many people can carve them and they look great. But these are difficult for most. I could have provided castings but then the profile molding would be impossible to match so it looks good. So I have been experimenting. This is what I have at this point and I think it looks pretty good. This of course means that I know have to provide all of the molding for this project along with the carved scrolls. They may not be as good as those that are hand carved or scraped, but I think they look better than most and will do the job nicely. I still have to tweak a few things. What do you guys think? By the way...the top aft scroll and molding behind it is made from boxwood. The forward scroll and molding below it were made with the same process but out of Yellow cedar. I think the results are pretty similar although the boxwood version is slightly darker. The Cedar version of the scroll was much more fragile to sand than the box version. I will have to decide which to include. There was no carving what-so-ever or scraping. The scrolls and molding were laser cut. I just sanded the sides to remove the char and rounded the sides off a bit using 420 grit sandpaper. The notches or grooves were laser etched at various depths and I just left the char in those untouched. I applied wipe on poly over them and it looks pretty good. These are just test fit against the hull to see how they look.

You should really start your own build log where folks can see photos of your progress and comment on any questions you might have. Be sure to read the topic on how to start one of your own. That is the best and easiest way . Welcome to the forum. See here... Chuck

Looks great. I am so glad you enjoyed the project. Chuck

Not yet.....I will put one together once I start production. But remember that the thread I am using is not the same. I am using a blended thread now which is made in the USA. The sizes are different. I never made a chart when I was making the stuff for the museum using the Guttemann stuff. I will check my notes though. Chuck

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I will very shortly start making some Poly/cotton blend rope. I am going to call this Syren's "Ultra Scale Rope" . It will cost the same as my other Cotton/Linen rope which I will continue to sell as well. But if one is preferred a great deal over the other I will discontinue the least favorite. Only if sales really drop off on one of them. Otherwise I will try and offer both.

Kurt...I have a bunch. You can always use mine and come pick them up when you need them. Good ones are expensive. I have a lot of them and hardly use them because I prefer to do most work by hand. Next time you come to the shop you can check them out. Chuck

Nice photo set-up. I will have to rig something up like that.

Dont forget that your large planking fan for these wide planks are uploaded here......plus everything else. I just added the flags too in case you need to make more. The downloads section for this group is now complete with everything.

That really looks good. Its coming together. Just make sure when you start gluing those planks on that the planks are very secure to each and every frame. This prevents the frames from breaking once you go to remove the centers.

Looking good.!!! Wonderful photos.

Getting there!!!! it looks really good.

Bob, One of these days you have to make the trek up to a meeting in Roseland. I know its a haul for you, but I would love to see you and the model in person. Chuck