grsjax

It sounds like you have virtually no experience with wooden ships.   If that is the case, many folks here will attest to starting small and learning before tackling a more complex model.  It seems a major winner in that category is the three vessel series by David Antscherl available from Model Shipways.  https://modelexpo-online.com/Model-Shipways-Shipwright-3-Kit-Combo-Series_p_5465.html is one source, there may be others.  
 
You mention wanting a British ship but list Grecian which is American. 😀
 
Allan
   

From what you've shared about your ship modeling goals, I would very strongly urge you to read this entire thread which is a generic answer to your question.
This thread contains decades of wisdom gained from experience. Everybody in this forum wants to see newcomers succeed. Many who are not experienced ship modelers will say that they think the most important thing one needs to build a ship model is patience. Actually, I think humility is the more essential quality. The good people who sell ship model kits, God bless them, do have an interest in selling their product and giving their customers the impression that the customer can build a complex wooden ship model kit by simply following the instructions. Instilling the confidence to build any given kit is a prerequisite to selling their kits, so there is a tendency for the manufacturers to gloss over the steepness of the learning curve required to build a fully rigged model ship kit. Many are sold, but few are finished.  
 
I will also offer my personal opinion, which is shared by some, at least, that double-planked ship model kits are not easier to build and that double planked kits are outdated at this point in the development of kit technology. Again, in my opinion, for what it is worth, the double-planked kits still sold today are generally of lesser quality than the single-planked kits and I would not advise an inexperienced modeler to choose one for their first effort. It was once true that starting with a double-planked kit was advisable, but with today's laser cut planking in many kits and much better framing design, there's really no particular reason to double-plank anymore.
 
As I think most experienced modelers would advise, anyone who is not familiar with model ship kit building would do well to start by building the three Model Shipways Shipwright Three Kit Combo Series. See: Model Shipways Shipwright 3 Kit Combo Series-MS1474 (modelexpo-online.com) Building these three relatively inexpensive boat models, which are progressively more difficult, will provide through excellent instruction manuals, a solid foundation in the skills and techniques required to move on to more challenging kits. I don't want to scare you off, but building plastic model kits is nothing like building wooden ship model kits. They each require quite distinct skill sets.

New Gun port hinge mini kits will be available tomorrow.  They are laser cut from a special high density plastic.  These were made specifically for the Winchelsea but I am sure they will fit other models.   They are .040" wide and 21/32" long.  I have ordered some material that will also produce 1/16" wide hinges (slightly wider).  But that hasnt arrived yet.   Some prefer a wider strap.   Those can easily be shaped differently too being extra wide. I will show that after I get them.   But these are the narrower ones and perfect for the Winnie or even Cheerful.   There are 36 hinges per package.   They can be made shorter if needed as well.   
 

1.  What a hinge looks like straight off the sheet.
 
2. Round off the bottom with fine sandpaper.  Drill a small hole for the split ring if needed.  Use a #76 drill bit for a 28 gauge wire ring.
 
3.  What the gport hinge pin looks like straight off the sheet.
 
4.  Sand the actual pin slightly thinner and to a point.  This will be inserted and glued into the hull above the port.  Also  insert and glue a length of 28 gauge black wire into the laser cut hole and cut off the excess as shown.  Use CA glue as it is plastic.
 
5.  Join the hinge strap and hinge pin by slipping the wire pin into the hole of the strap.  This makes a working hinge.
 

Once glued onto the port lid, you can sand the straps even thinner.  Just gently sand the face of the port with fine sandpaper and taper the hinge straps even thinner if you like.
 
Apply weathering powder if you like that look.   Make some split rings (not shown) and add them on the hinges as is typical.  
 
The store will reopen tomorrow as I am mending from a really bad flu....cant do much so I am just hanging around the shop till I get over this.  I had to shut down the store because I am out of stock with other things and just cant make any more rope until I feel better.  But there are about a dozen packages of these in stock.
 

 
Chuck
 
 

Thanks Bob for the heads up about Midwest.  Contacted them and they sent me a PDF of the manual today.

Nick, I'm not a fan of acrylic paints but have had to adjust to using them. I have used Model Expo paints and thinned them using both Tamiya Acrylic thinner and my homemade thinner. My homemade brew is just as good as Tamiya and less expensive in the long run. I learned how to make my own surfing YouTube and various modeling sites. I settled on a mixture found in Cybermodeler Online, Tech Tip: Make Your Own Acrylic Thinner (cybermodeler.com). There are four ingredients, Distilled water, Isopropyl Alcohol, Acrylic Flow Improver and Acrylic Fluid Retarder. Windex works great as a cleaner. You can find the Fluid Retarder, Flow Improver at Arts and Crafts Stores or Walmart. Actually, I found everything at my local Walmart.
 
I make about 12oz in a plastic squeeze bottle when needed, it's great for thinning and cleaning the airbrush. I found when airbrushing acrylics add a couple of extra drops of Retarder to the paint cup.
Model Expo paint out of the jar is thick and requires a lot of thinner. Every time I use acrylics there is a trial-and-error process to get the correct flow. Just takes practice.
 
 

Most will. Many will even replace parts you've botched up yourself! It would be good to do a search on this forum to see the policy of any particular kit manufacturer regarding parts availability. The second consideration after you confirm that they do have a part replacement policy is to confirm that they are able to provide parts for the model kit you have. Sometimes, a run of kits are manufactured and stocked by the manufacturer but spare parts are no longer available. Sometimes parts are generic and used for several different models in the manufacturer's line. (Which is why you will find out-of-scale or out of period fittings on the models sold by some manufacturers. E.g., an 19th Century anchor in a 18th Century model kit!) or some parts for a specific model kit are left over after the kit production run. Other times, Spare parts have been sold or are otherwise no longer in stock and you will probably be out of luck even it the company would have been happy to send you a replacement part if they still had any in stock.
 
Regarding purchasing kits in current production, I think that most experienced modelers would strongly advise you to start your wooden model building learning curve with the Model Shipways Shipwright Series of kits. See: Model Shipways Shipwright Series (modelexpo-online.com) Few kit manufacturers are as forthright as Model Shipways is in telling beginning wooden ship modelers the realities of the hobby's learning curve and the fact that there is no point in wasting a large amount of money and effort trying to build a square-rigged ship-of-the line bristling with cannon as your first attempted kit build!
 
 
 
 
 

I'll second all of the above, however I've picked up a couple pre-owned 'older' kits - some of them either partially built or 'missing some items' - to use for some of the materials and fittings.  If you can find something like that at a flea market or garage sale (being able to have a look at it) inexpensively, there may be deadeyes, 'good enough' blocks, various sizes of wood stock and doweling (sometime these are pre-tapered for yards - a great convenience), and various fittings that may include pins, ladders, ship's boats, gratings, etc.  And sometimes the rigging rope is OK.
 
  There is another twist in the 'old kit' and 'plastic v/s wood' scenario, and there is at least one example I found and have acted upon.  Having reviewed a couple Robert E. Lee builds on MSW (and it is a fine subject not having canon/gunports or complex masting and rigging to do - but there are other 'fiddly bits'), I bought an old, unbuilt Scientific kit on Ebay that had a buy-now price (not uncommon).  These come up regularly, and there were several on Ebay when I was looking.  I was happy with the kit up-on arrival, and it is in my stash for a future time - unless it ends up in my estate, but I don't mind just looking at it (or even thinking about it) from time to time - as I like to occasionally open and examine everything stashed.  'Funny thing about the Scientific kit, is that there is no 'stated scale' on the box ('can't forget if I did a kit review or not, but elsewhere have noted this feature).  So I measured the wooden hull pre-form and calculated that it was about 1:163 compared to the stats for the original hull length.
 
  THEN, a Lindbergh kit of the same steamboat (also sold under the Pyro brand) turned up at a rock shop adjacent to an Allentown, PA area cavern that had a tempting price on it ... it looked like a number of plastic models from someone's stash had ended up there. The box scale was 1:163 !  So I bought the kit on speculation that it was close enough to the Scientific kit to used some detailed plastic parts instead of having to effectively 'scratch-build' them on the wooden model.  As luck would have it, the plastic hull was the same length as the wood.  Having much of the kit built from wood is much better than just building it in plastic - although some have bought laser-cut wood decking from HIS models for the Pyro/Lindbergh kit, but this only covers the main deck and not those above.
 
  Using the plastic molded boiler and piping when the Scientific kit gets built will certainly be more convenient than near-scratch making from cunks of wood and dowel.  The Scientific kit does not have rotating paddle wheels - just partial segments that project below the wooden covers.  But the Lindbergh kit has fully rotating paddle wheels that can be incorporated into the Scientific model, that will have the wooden housing built over them.  The turned wooden stacks in the Scientific kit are preferable, yet the fancy molded stack tops from the Lindbergh kit will be better than cutting them from the stiff paper in the Scientific kit (or trying to make then from brass stock) - and the tricky pair of braces that go in between the stacks may be easier to do with plastic parts ... it all gets painted.  I could go on, but its safe to say that  "melding"  both these kits will give me a result better than with either one alone ... a happy marriage of wood AND plastic.

Finish!
 
I have been a bad build logger.  No interim photos.  Just got caught up in the masting/rigging/finish and got lazy about taking progress pics. 
 
You might notice no oars.  I made one.  It turned out fine, but I didn't have a lot of pleasure in the process and really didn't want to clutter up the nice interior with a pile of them anyway.  So my lazy nature won out!  
 
Anyway, it's done.  Lot's of places I know are not as good as I'd like, but since this is my first wood kit I'm still quite happy with the result.  I had fun, learned some stuff, and am ready for the next project and to get better. 
 
Thanks to all who've read along and hit the like button!
 

 

 

 
 

What happened to the "Ships of Pavel Nikitin" banner ad?  I was looking for it and it seems to have disappeared.

I recently went to a local book sale and picked up these 10 books for 2 dollars each. Just to add to my collection, admiral approved of course.

A couta boat is a gaff-rigged fishing boat used for catching barracuda in the State of Victoria, Australia, up till about the 1920's, being superseded by motor vessels, but many of them have been preserved and are now raced competitively.
 
I wasn't going to do a formal build log for the couta boat, but I've changed my mind as i feel it's a worthwhile subject for a log. I didn't take photos at the beginning of the build, it's necessarily somewhat incomplete.
 
Here are the first photos I took of the model. It was built up in layers and then sanded to shape with a belt sander. A lot of mistakes (it was the first time I'd used one of those things) but fortunately builders bog filled in where I'd sanded off too much, so she ended up looking pretty good.



 
Steven

@Chuck  make sure you take a side trip to Buffalo's Canalside and Naval Park for a tour of USS The Sullivans and USS Little Rock. Enjoy the trip.  

I will not be continuing work on the CAF Granado. I have parts 2 and 3 that have not been started. I built the jigs from part 2 to mark out the clamps inside the hull. There are pictures of part 1 and the jigs for the clamps in my build thread. I am asking $375 for each shipped CONUSA. If you wish to purchase both, I will accept $700 shipped CONUSA. If anyone is interested in the progress I have made so far on part 1, please let me know. Packing and shipping will be costly. I have no idea at the moment the cost of shipping, but it will definitely be in the CONUSA.
 
I have reached the point where building a model of this type is just too much work for me and so I would like to see, at least, parts 2 and 3 get into hands of those that are building the Granado and will be acquiring these in the future.
 
Thanks for looking.

I have a few tools in my shop made in India and am impressed by the quality.  These are just a few small hand tools like a push drill, tweezers and such.  I have seen other full size tools like bench vices that were just as good.  I was wondering if anyone has more experience with Indian made tools and can comment on the overall quality.  If they are generally as good as what I have seen then I would like to know where I can buy more of them.

A lot of the Indian tools and tool parts are, or were, produced as piecework in home shops. You can find them in some number on eBay. That said, he Chinese can't hold a candle to the Indians when it comes to knock-offs. As with anything else, you get what you pay for. The Indians do seem to honestly state whether a piece is for decoration, not use, and that a copy of the real deal is just that and not what it's supposed to look like. 
 
While you are in the neighborhood, don't overlook Pakistan's large surgical instrument industry. The Pakistani tweezers, foreceps, hemostats and so on aren't the highest quality for medical purposes, most of it apparently destined for Third World clinics, but most all of it is of a quality more than suitable for modeler's purposes. Like the Indian stuff, a lot of it is on eBay.

I have a few tools in my shop made in India and am impressed by the quality.  These are just a few small hand tools like a push drill, tweezers and such.  I have seen other full size tools like bench vices that were just as good.  I was wondering if anyone has more experience with Indian made tools and can comment on the overall quality.  If they are generally as good as what I have seen then I would like to know where I can buy more of them.

Actually I have had a few solid hull kits that looked like the hull had been hacked out of a billet of wood with a hatchet.  Some of the old Model Shipways yellow box kits were that way and some of the older kit from other manufactures required a lot of work to shape.

Absolutely, but this speaks more to the quality of the manufacturer/kit than to the style of the kit. You'll get a more accurate hull from a manufacturer who produces a well designed/produced POB or solid-hull kit, and you'll get a less accurate hull from a manufacturer who produces a sloppy version of either. And in either case the modeler can always improve a sloppy kit with enough work.
 
Everyone's personal experience is certainly valid. Mine has been that I find POB easier, more intuitive, more enjoyable, and more educational than solid-hull.

Actually I have had a few solid hull kits that looked like the hull had been hacked out of a billet of wood with a hatchet.  Some of the old Model Shipways yellow box kits were that way and some of the older kit from other manufactures required a lot of work to shape.

I never had that experience. It musta been my clean livin' that done it for me.  

Actually I have had a few solid hull kits that looked like the hull had been hacked out of a billet of wood with a hatchet.  Some of the old Model Shipways yellow box kits were that way and some of the older kit from other manufactures required a lot of work to shape.

Actually I have had a few solid hull kits that looked like the hull had been hacked out of a billet of wood with a hatchet.  Some of the old Model Shipways yellow box kits were that way and some of the older kit from other manufactures required a lot of work to shape.

Everybody's mileage differs, I suppose. Having built hulls using both methods, I've found shaping a "bread and butter" built hull, let alone a pre-shaped solid hull, is far easier than POF or POB. You are correct that "the natural curve of the planking" is helpful in "getting every inch of the hull shape right. So also does a suitably sized batten with sandpaper glued to it spring into a fair curve in exactly the same way planking strip wood does. Moreover, after one has done anything but a perfect planking job on frames or bulkheads, the hull must be slathered with some sort of plaster or filler putty and then sanded fair in exactly the same manner as a solid wood hull anyhow. As for scratchbuilding, one can take station or waterlines off a plan, cut them to shape, and stack them up to form the stepped shape of the hull which then requires only "knocking the steps off" to achieve a perfectly shaped hull identical to the drawn lines. Just sayin'.
 
In point of fact, the old "pre-carved" solid hull models weren't all that "rough-cut." I can't remember ever seeing one that wasn't shaped to the point where all it really required was finish sanding to smooth without any serious shaping other than sometimes carving rails or stems, etc. thinner because they were left thick so as not to be damaged in shipping. Bottom line, finish sanding the old "pre-carved" hulls really wasn't any more work that sanding a planked hull covered with filler to hide a multitude of sins.
 
Even where one is interested in "showing the planking," whether it be finished "bright" or painted, it is far easier to glue very thin "planks" made of wood shavings from a plane or pieces of paper or card stock to a solid hull than to attempt to shape the much thicker scale plank stock to form a hull "the way the real ship was built." 
 
Additionally, with the exception of fully-framed "Admiralty Board style" models and those intended to depict the subject vessel's interior, as with open boats, most all museums and major collections limit their acquisitions to solid hull ship models.
 
I do believe Mr. BlueJacket's explanation that POB and POF kits have come to predominate on the kit market is simply because they are a lot cheaper to produce, particularly with modern laser-cutting technology. The tradeoff is that they are a lot more work to construct and that's passed on the to the consumer.

Speaking just for myself, and for the sake of argument, I'd generally rather plank a bulkhead hull than deal with a rough-cut solid hull. To me, if the bulkheads are reasonably accurate, the natural run of the planks creates a reasonable hull shape. If the planking isn't meant to be seen, then it doesn't have to be perfect and is easy to finish using filler. In comparison, getting a solid hull right means manually getting every inch of the hull shape right, which the natural curve of planking does for you on a bulkhead model. It also strikes me as easer for scratchbuilding, since you can take station lines off a plan and, again, let the planks do the rest, rather than trying to manage every square inch of a solid wood surface.
 
And while rough planking isn't the same as "how the real thing was built", it's a lot closer than sanding down a block of wood! Even my earliest attempts at planking taught me quite a bit about the geometry and physics of bending wood, inspiring an interest to know more. Whereas shaping a solid hull feels more like making a Dutch shoe.
 
I can easily see how things might be different for more modern vessels with, as Roger says, complex hull shapes that don't have the simple lines of a traditional wooden sailing vessel.
 
Interesting economic perspective from Mr. BlueJacket, thank you.

While trying to find some information on an old kit I had the thought that someone might want to make a list of all the old manufactures and kits.  Old catalogs and advertisements would seem to be the best sources of information.  I don't have the time for it but I would be happy to contribute a couple of older catalogs to anyone who wanted to under take something like that.