kljang

Hi James, I met up with Tom from CAFModels in Shanghai last month. It is great you are reviewing his Le Renommee kit. I learned from Tom that this kit is produced using cherry wood. He imports North American cherry and picks stock that Is a warm brown shade. He is sending me a kit cut in pear wood and report back to him how I get on with it. He said that he may possibly offer the kit in pear, but to laser cut a complete kit in pear means numerous adjustments to his laser cutters. Pear and cherry have different oil and moisture contents, and hardnesses that require finding the optimal cutting to reduce burning and scorching. It’s not just the part one is cutting, but one must be mindful of neighbouring parts that can be scorched or burned, and spacing of the parts on a sheet must also be considered to eliminate any collateral damage between parts, but also not to waste wood. I am looking forward to your review, and I will post a follow up to yours of the pear wood version in due course. During my visit I asked him why he does so many French subjects. He answered because he finds them the most beautiful and wonderfully engineered for their time. He is trained as an engineer and appreciates such things. For his kits he obtains plans from museums and lofts each frame using CAD. He uses publications like ANCRE’s to fill in the blanks on various timbers and spends a lot of effort reconciling differences and errors found across plans. He studied 3D modelling as an engineering student and uses those skills to create files of CAD to rout out carvings. His latest work uses lost wax castings for brass fittings, and other jewellery making techniques. I was blown away by his skill and ideas. His full kits can be expensive but worth it, even for our America friends who have to now pay import tax (tariff) which at the moment is much reduced. After we spent the day talking ships and models, he and his lovely family treated my wife and to dinner at a famous Shanghainese restaurant in the ancient Yu Yuan Gardens and Temple complex. Here is a photo of Tom (blue shirt), his son Jimmy, and myself with his build of Le Renommee to date, and a lugger in the background. Cheers, Dr. Kerry Jang Vancouver, BC Canada

TMJ, Not all items from China should be tarred with the same brush and labelled “bad”. Nor are all Chinese manufacturers “thieves”. There is certainly one excellent model company from China, CAF Models that is approved on this very site for creating excellent quality models from original research. There reviews of their kits, and build logs so you can see for yourself. The company is run by Cao Feng, or Tom Cao and is based in Shanghai, PR China. I had the pleasure of spending a day with him and his family last month and got a first hand view of his latest products, and I brought him research materials for his next. I will prepare a review of one his latest kits for this site once it arrives. The original poster RolandR did the right thing asking about a particular company. Caveat Emptor is always the watchword! Best regards, Dr. Kerry Jang Vancouver, Canada

Sorry Scrubbyj, just saw your question. The other manufacturers can steal his design by buying his kit and rescanning his drawings or even parts to create their own CAD files to cut wood themselves. All the work he has done to reconcile any discrepancies between sources is in effect “stolen” by those copying his designs. This practice is not new as in the early days of plastic model kits in the UK and USA, plastic model kit companies produced kits pantographed from another plastic model. You know it when all the errors of the original are faithfully reproduced! I will be in Shanghai next month and will visit Tom from CAF and check out all his new ideas. I’m currently helping him with research for a new kit, but mum’s the word! Cheers, Kerry

I carried home my kits in my suitcase! I highly recommend visiting the Shizuoka Hobby Show held in May. It is huge and Woody Joe has a booth. They are the only wooden kit maker in Japan. Cheers, Kerry

I visited Woody Joe in Shizuoka and met the owner, Mr Tsuneki, and the manager, his daughter, Ms Yukari Gojo. I did an article on my visit for Model Boats magazine in the UK. I have included the .pdf of the article. Woody Joe is a specialist manufacturer of wooden kits (the main business is wood milling) and everything is done in house and they use only the best materials. The wood is imported from SE Asia or domestic woods from Japan (e.g., hinkoi cypress) which is expensive in Japan. The kit selection is based on what the Japanese market prefers as opposed to making what is popular elsewhere. Each kit part is picked by hand and double checked. Kit design is excellent and multimedia. Wood, paper, metal, etch….. whatever works best. Their kits are very popular in Japan and Ms. Gojo says that they cannot keep up with local demand, and they do not market directly overseas. Instead there are resellers. You can buy directly from them, cutting out the middleman. English is not their first language so patience and respect are key if buying direct or contacting them by email. I have their Nippon Maru and I-400 kit, and my wife a temple. Beautifully produced and beautiful when finished. Some of their Edo era Japanese ships were designed by modellers from The Rope Tokyo model building club. The price is a function of specialist timber costs, quality assurance and the high cost of care to ensure quality control. Cheers, Kerry 044 LAND OF THE RISING SUN edited.PDF

I should add that Tom's products are pirated by other manufacturers! He told me this happens a lot... Cheers, Kerry

Your handling of the nibbing is perfect. Well done! kerry

Hi Allan, I didn’t finish building the launch because as you say, didn’t look quite right and left it off. The thing about Bounty kits in general as they include generic boat parts, or the wrong boats, or boats that were never carried. The book reproduces the NMM draughts of a standard launch such as that ordered for Bounty so the modeller can modify the kit parts to a more authentic representation. In general, the biggest issue I had with the DeAgostini model is that there are no plans so you must build it blind - we are a bunch of modellers that work from plans, so building it like a plastic kit is a bit disconcerting. However, after building it I must say it went together well with little problem and looks great. I followed the instructions until the end when I decided to plank it differently to show off more of the frames. If you follow the instructions for example, virtually the entire deck id planked covering up all the intricate beam work. Same with the hull. Planking covers up so much of the frames I left off a lot. I added paint work to bring in some colour. Overall, the kit is a very easy way of building a model in frame. I am not sure of the wood species, mine was a medium hard flecked wood. It had a nice warm colour too it. Warm regards, kerry

Thanks Allan, The BOUNTY book was a lot of interesting work because virtually all kits are based on the movie replicas, so a lot of work went into sorting what her colour scheme actually was. Also, John McKay worked out as best he could the actual mast and yard sizes. Bounty was converted from Bethia and her existing rig was altered by the Navy Yard and then by Bligh. It’s all in a large table in the book. Back to the DeAgostini kit, as I note in the book, the frame construction follows the usual practice of the day, but the kit includes only half of them so you can see the interior. John McKay’s Bounty book and plans were used as an inspiration but the kit differs from them in some important ways - actually most kits extant differ from his drawings. But, there are no contemporary illustrations of the ship given her short life so any kit and drawings must be reconstructed from her draughts (which exist) and written log entries. Writing this book was a challenge as the mutiny story is so well known and bringing the reader back to the actual ship herself was an interesting task. I really did not want to retell the story of the mutiny but you have to because it is central to this ship. ‘Fingers crossed’ I got the balance right! warm regards, Kerry

I have purchased and built the kit. The model is featured in my new book ShipCraft 30: Bounty to be released in the UK on March 30, a little later in the US. The model was fun and certainly is impressive, but there are some issues that are easily corrected. It is the only Bounty model in frame. I purchased all the instalments at once, and for me made building easier as I could say, make all the guns at once. Cheers, Kerry Jang

Excellent work! I love the true scale appearance you are achieving. Cheers, Kerry

Hello Jake, I am quite excited that the Victory book will be released in a few weeks. Victory is the first in this series on a sailing warship, and was an experiment to see if it works. I look forward to people’s thoughts on the book when it comes out. The colour profiles were drawn by John McKay (he’s done two books of drawings on the ship) and together we created a number of colour schemes illustrating her appearance at different times during her long career. It was quite a bit of fun compiling information and turning it into a drawings. I hope you find the book helpful, and you can always contact me with any questions from what you find in the book. I am now just finished a new volume for the series on HMAV Bounty, again with colour profiles by John McKay. I need a rest! Warm regards, Kerry

I’ve written a new book entitled “ship Models from the Age of Sail: Building. And Enhancing Commercial Kits” that might be helpful to you. It was just published by Seaforth Publishing in the UK and Naval Institute Press in the USA. it’s more about kit building so describe planking and rigging, and name kit parts. For the names of actual ship timbers in detail, then Peter Godwin’s books are best. cheers, Kerry Jang

Amazing work Tom!

Great review James! I just got an e-mail from Tom saying he has been up late at night doing the castings for the kit! The lessons learned on his Enterprize have really showed up in Le Coureur, but either kit will certainly allow many to build a framed model with a lot less stress and cost. I remember buying shop tools to mill down my own wood, and locating good stocks of hardwood was a task. Looking forward to a build log here soon! Cheers, Kerry

Lovely job Kevin. You got tucked in straight away and making great progress. cheers, Kerry

Hi USS Frolick, the kit has two types of square frames. Thick and thin. The thin ones are 1/4” thick when assembled, and station frames that are thicker at 3/8” assembled. The space between frames is 1/4”, but for the frames at the stern and bow (not cant frames) the space is reduced to 1/8”. Cheers, Kerry

Hello USS Frolick, When built, the frames are 1/4” thick, made up of two slices of 1/8”. The frames are slightly simplified. What I mean is that each is constructed futtock by futtock, but the joins between futtock pieces are straight, and not scarphed as in true English framing practice. There is no reason to show scarphed joints between futtock parts as they will not be seen as each frame face where they would be seen is hidden by the frame ahead and aft. The joints between futtock that would be visible on the side all fall where they should and follow a sheer. Hope this helps, Kerry

Hi Alex, Yes, the Polish company was Shipyard. I have their HMS Juno plans myself and are quite good. I would think they used the NMM draughts to develop their card kits but I can’t say for sure if they do. I know when Tom designs a kit he cross checks his work against other’s sources of information. He tells me he finds contradictions in all plans, lines that don’t match up, And a lot of fun areas that are unclear. When I met him last year he showed me on a Royal barge how lines, measurements and details from well known sources did not agree. His CAD renderings show up these inconsistencies quite well, then he goes and researches which version might be correct or tried to reconcile them. He says he finds errors all the time in published plan sets of a ship and spends a lot of time trying to sort out where the variances and correct them before he can create cutting files to guide a laser. It’s really a case of The GIGO Principle - Garbage In, Garbage Out so you just can’t copy a plan to make kit, the drawings must be checked, checked and corrected. I’m glad he’s good at it! Cheers, Kerry

Hi Alex, You can contact Tom via the CAF Models website or with this email: 450449987@qq.com The kit was based on plans from the National Maritime Museum which provided the lines. All of the framing and what not was created by Tom using practices of model shipwrights of the time. A Polish card model company also created a kit of Enterprize and published plans of the ship. This was used as a reference for decoration etc. as they had done a lot of research to determine the style of frieze etc. Cheers, Kerry

Hi ASAT, No, you didn’t miss it. I didn’t list any shipping costs as it depends on how it was shipped. Prior to the pandemic, my kit and other items I ordered from China came via China Post to Canada. Now, Chinese prodecers are using courier services such as DHL to avoid sitting in the post office (in my case Canada Post) until cleared by customs. The courier firms have their own brokerage which is faster but comes at a price. I suggest you email Tom and ask. The kits can be provided in parts so you can stretch out the costs. This is why each box is a self contained unit of parts, plans, etc. You can start with box 1, build away until you are ready for the next part. cheers, Kerry

Hello Carlosgf, The difference is in how well the wood is matched for colour and grain by hand. The kit in my review was "B". The wood in my kit was of good quality and pretty consistent colour and grain. Hope this helps. Cheers, Kerry

Hello Aydingocer, Thank you you got your kind words on my review. Enterprize is the same as Enterprise and the kit is the same as you posted. I just used the old spelling with a “z” instead of the “s”. Interestingly, some say that ”Enterprize” is an incorrect spelling which is untrue, as the ship’s name as listed in Admiralty records is spelt this way and thus correct. Cheers, Kerry Vancouver, Canada

Hello Stuglo, The price of the kit is on sale at $1166.00 USD. Cheers, Kerry

In regards to Captain Hook’s question on the figurehead. The Enterprize class was a large class of ships and I would suppose each had its own figurehead. The draught in “The Sailing Navy List” is not for Enterprize but another of the class that shows a human figurehead. The painting of Enterprize I put at the top of the review shows the same human figurehead... In the absence of any definitive drawing of the carvings I guess a “generic” lion will do, which adorns many Admiralty models of the time. A question for Tom. I will ask him. I am glad the review is helpful, and thank you for all the kind comments on it. Cheers, Kerry Kerry Jang Vancouver, Canada.