bolin

First steps; building the frames. Here I had an option, to stain the wood before staring to glue it together. Thanks to the good quality of the wood a stained and varnished finish (especially on the inside) would look good. However I decided to stay with my original plan to paint the inside. This will also give me more options with hiding mistakes with filler and paint.

I notice that the laser cut parts does not match the full size drawing exactly. Half a mm error here and half a degree error there. I tried to assemble the frames to get the best alignment of angles. Unfortunately it may not have been the right option, as when i glued the frames to the bottom plank the two foremost frames does not go all the way out to the sides.

I built two vertical walls to help with the alignment of the frames when gluing them to the bottom. (We can also see my warm-up project in the background, an eighties rubber band balsa airplane from Czechoslovakia that I had since my boyhood but only started on now).

After all frames has been glued on together with the stem and the transom it is time to bend the bottom. I put a wet rag in the micro wave oven for a minute and placed it on top, after that it bent nicely. One observation is that the first and last frame bends inward. It is not clear in the instruction or in the drawing if this is intended or should have been adjusted for.

All i all I'm a bit concerned at this stage if the frames are aligned well enough for the planking.

/Tobias

Just starting out as a model ship builder. Originally I ordered another kit to build during the Holidays, but due to some mix up at the seller it has not yet arrived. Instead I went to the Eskader hobby store in Stockholm (Sweden) and bought this kit. I selected it as it looks nice, has at least some rigging and seemed about equal to my skill level.

When looking through the site i don't find many build logs of this kit (only one by westphalia). It is a beginners kit, and for many here it is probably trivial, but I thought that some other newbie in the future might be helped by my first stumbling steps in this hobby.

I also bought a set of paints recommended by the store. That is the colors painted on the built up model in the store. Maybe I will alter this when the time for painting comes.

Looking inside the box i find laser cut parts, dowels and strip wood together with metal fittings, lines and sail cloth. As this is my first ship model kit I have nothing to compare with. But I have experience with working with wood and my impression is that this is really nice quality. The instruction manual is well written and I think there should be no problem for me to follow it. One possible improvement is that most of the pictures are black and white photos. The contrast is not optimal, so some details are a bit hard to see.

The kit is said to be built in the same manner as a real boat of this type (upside down). I found this image that proves this.

Cheers

/Tobias

I bought my kit for Swampscott Dory at Eskader in Stockholm (close to Karlaplan). As MrBlueJacket mention, they are very nice people and have really quaint shop of the old kind with a counter. There are boxes and models stacked everywhere. I could really recommend a visit.

/Tobias

Hello all,

I just became a member after a few weeks of reading and browsing this great site. I'm a novice model ship builder from Sweden who recently decide to try this fascinating hobby. In a way I have been drawn to ships and ship models since I was a kid. I think that it was a trip to the Viking ship museum in Roskilde Denmark and the paper model I bought and built after that that sparked the interest. But I never continued then. I did some plastic models and some model air planes in my early teens, but that is more or less the extent of my modelling experience.

I plan to take it slow, not overreaching my still non-existing skills. I started by ordering a kit (Billing Boats Will Everard). But due to shipping problems just before Christmas it has not arrived yet. I also read some build logs here on the site and learned that it is not necessarily a "beginner model" after all, despite Billings labeling. So I went and bought a BlueJacket Swampscott Dory from a local hobby store. That kit seem to be more in line with my skills and should not take to long (hopefully) to finish.

Cheers

/Tobias

PS. My "pen name" is Swedish for bow line and the picture is of a sail from a medieval long ship with the bow line set.