catopower

So far, I've really enjoyed doing the easy part. Started making the structures for the subassemblies using the laser-cut frames set. Since most of the part labels were next to the parts themselves, I made sure to write the numbers on the faces of the parts, so I wouldn't screw things up... or at least reduce the chances of me screwing things up. I'm sure I can still do it... And, here are the substructure of many of the subassemblies. Meanwhile, I added some wooden blocks to help stiffen the hull framing. The larger filer blocks are balsa, but I started running out, so I just reinforced sections with some basswood pieces. This should also help to support mounting rods at a later stage. That's what I've done with other paper models, though they mostly been a lot smaller than this one. I'm going to experiment with using some filler to fill and smooth out the hull shape. I've seen some models where the builder used styrofoam instead of the wood blocks or filler. Just never been keen working with that stuff. Worst case with my model hull, I'll ruin it and I'll need another laser-cut frame set. Anyway, I'm considering getting a second kit, because I know I'm going to lose or mess up parts. I've scanned and printed the parts sheets, but the color is off from the original, and the color and part numbers printed on the deck pieces are pretty muddy in the original and hard to read, and even worse in the printed scan.

Thanks Chris, I think that's basically what the Avangard instructions are showing. What's a little confusing is that it's hard to tell the placement of the assemblies. There's no master diagram that shows all the structures in place (with numbers), and It's difficult to see any numbers on the printed decks, but I can tell they're there. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but it's a bit confusing at first. I guess that's one reason they call this an "advanced" kit...

These steel navy ships in paper are interesting. I'm used to building sailing ships, but with these steel vessels, there seem to be a lot more sub-assemblies. Construction seems to be, at least looking at is all at this stage, less linear. For the most part, it seems I could work on the various superstructures off the model. Then, when they're all done, just glue them to the deck. I have a lot to learn about these builds, and experienced builders clearly have developed techniques to make their models superior. I suppose that's true about any type of modeling. I'm clearly a newbie here, so I'll just learn what I can and do my best.

Having just finished my first steel navy paper model, the German WWI torpedo boat V108, it seems appropriate to start a blog on this new paper model project, USS Bagley on Pearl Harbor Day. I say appropriate, because the destroyer Bagley operated in the Pacific and was moored at Pearl Harbor on the day of the Japanese attack. Bagley's crew manned her .50cal machine guns and claimed to down a number of Japanese aircraft, though this couldn't be substantiated with all the anti-aircraft gunfire taking place. By mid-morning, she headed up the channel and out to the open sea under the command of a junior officer, as her captain, XO, and gunnery officer were still ashore at the time. The ship was the lead ship of her class, built in 1937, as a "Treaty Era" destroyer, which limited her displacement to 1500 tons. She had an active wartime career and earned 12 battle stars. The ship survived the war and was decommissioned in 1946. The Kit This kit is published by the Ukrainian company Avangard, and depicts the ship in her 1944 configuration, with camouflage. She was armed at this time with 4x 5"/38cal guns in single-gun turrets, 6x 20mm anti-aircraft mounts, a twin 40mm mount, 16x 21" torpedo tubes in four quad mounts, and 2x depth charge racks. Some of the printing, particularly of the decks, seems to be a bit too dark, and it’s hard to distinguish some of the printed details. I suspect I might end up having a hard time placing some of the parts because of how dark things look. I contacted the publisher about this, as I didn’t know if this was normal. As it turns out, due to the war in Ukraine, the company has been limited on available paper supplies, and the paper they have been able to get doesn’t absorb the ink the way that they would like. This may be too much of an issue for some. But, I think I will be able to manage. It will help that there is a jpeg image of this sheet posted on the company’s Facebook page, with the printed part numbers appearing more clearly. One thing that threw me, which had to be explained to me by someone at Avangard, is that there is one page that is clearly out of place. It’s a second page for the lower hull of a ship, but it’s different than the Bagley’s hull, and even has a label that says IJN Asashio. Apparently, this is not a mistake. There was a measurement error in the earlier Asashio kit, and there was extra space in the Bagley kit, so the publisher just stuck in the revised sheet. I’m just glad it wasn’t a error in my kit. The kit has almost no text, except the ship history. But, what text there is, is in English. The drawings seem clear enough. Of course, only an actual build will determine if there are any construction issues with the kit. Along with the basic kit, I ordered the laser-cut frames set as well as the details set, which is basically all of the railings, ladders, and other fine parts. All told, I think I spent less than $60 for the kit and accessories sets. I had a very hard time purchasing this kit, but no fault of the publisher. Living in the US, I discovered that it’s almost impossible to get any paper model products from Europe. I tried to buy this kit from Fentens (Germany), GPM, and Orlik, but none would ship to the USA due to tariff and customs issues. I only got lucky when I contacted Avangard directly about my situation, and they were able to help me out on a one-time basis and get this kit and accessories sets to me directly. Many thanks to Avangard for their help! Instructions and Parts I don't really have much experience with most paper models, except Shipyard kits, which are kind of their own animal I think the Avangard kits are pretty typical in terms of instructions and parts. There is no written instruction at all, only diagrams are provided. Interestingly enough, the only text is on the inside front cover and back cover, which are only written in English. Building Begins... The beginning stages of construction of paper models, seem pretty straight forward. These parts are from the laser-cut frames set. At 1/200 scale, this is a pretty good side hull, just about 20-1/2" long. I'm not sure if I did this the way I should have, gluing the upper and lower hulls together at this stage. But, it's all a learning process. Don't know how much time I'll spend on this model, so it may be a slow build, but construction has begun...

Thanks, GrandpaPhil! I had a lot of fun with the build – Certainly learned a thing or two!

I'm happy to say that I finally put the finishing touches on my V108 model today. My first steel navy paper model is complete. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with how well it turned out. I ended up not detailing the radio aerials as much as I had originally planned. But, between the existing aerials and the photo-etched railings, I think I had enough of a challenge to satisfy me. Today, I finally got around to adding the anchors and cutting out and building a new anchor crane and mounting it into place. I'm much happier with the new one that with my original one. Also, since my last post, I added the new ladder that leads up to the bridge. Again, it's not perfect, but it actually turned out much better than I thought it would. The other item I added was the rangefinder that's mounted up in the little tower, just aft of the aft torpedo launcher. That particular item turned out to be a real challenge to make. I couldn't built it the way the instructions showed, but it's very small, so it's hard to see the details anyway. So now I can move onto the next steel navy paper model project. But, I have so many other things I need to finish. I'll probably go ahead and start that project, so I can see if I can improve my paper ship modeling techniques, but I will probably only work on it in between other projects. Anyway, it's nice to have this one moved into my list of FINISHED models. Next year, I'll probably take it to a couple local IPMS events.

Sorry to hear about the contact troubles – You should have absolutely gotten an email reply. I just checked the number and the calls are getting through. As GrandpaPhil pointed out, unfortunately, yes the accounts couldn't be transferred over. If you can PM me your email address, I can check with the staff to ask them why you aren't getting replied to. That's not good!

Or, perhaps, it's beginning of the middle? 😁 No pics this time, but the ladder is done, I think... the steps aren't as even as I would like. It's hard to line them up as marked on the paper. The anchors look better, and I just need to add the stocks, which will be wire. Also, I'm almost done with the rangefinder – that's a tough assembly(!), not to be viewed too closely. 😕 With luck, my next post will be my last on this... soon!

Tiny bits of progress. That's what this paper model project is down to. I did manage to finish the remaining pieces of photo-etch railings. These were the harder pieces I decided to save for last. There were two pieces remaining. The first was to finish the curved rail at the stern. It took a little doing to create the correct curve, and to cut the railing to the correct size. The ends of this piece had to be cut, so that I ended up with three "free floating" rails that just slightly overlap the existing, mounted rails. This worked pretty well, though it took me a while to glue the piece into place, as I couldn't fully achieve the right curvature, and had to get the glue to hold it in place and to hold the right curve. I think this turned out pretty well, as it's difficult to see where the rails are "spliced" together. The hardest piece to add was the one on the forecastle, just abaft the gun mount. This required a double-curve which took me quite a bit of work to get close to the proper shape. To help out, I cut an extra forecastle deck piece so I could work out the curvature off the model. Again, I got the rail curvature close, but not quite. It was close enough to allow me to cut the ends, again with the three free-floating rails sticking out. Once the curve was close enough, I glued it down on the model, holding it into place with tiny scraps of wood, coaxing the piece into position with the right curve. The ends were glued to the vertical "stanchions" of the existing railing, being careful to get the rails to line up as closely as possible. After the glue dried, I carefully snipped off the excess. Again, it seemed to turn out pretty well. It's not perfect, but at this scale, except until zoomed photos, it's hard to see any issues. Lastly, as you can see in the above photo, I finished assembling the searchlight, and mounted it on top of the bridge. Just a few things left to do on the model now. I have to assemble and add the anchors and a new anchor crane. I still haven't added a ladder that leads up to the bridge, and then I have a couple more radio aerials to add. Oh, and then I have to add the rangefinder on top of the little platform just fowards of the aft mast. THAT piece, is going to be a challenge... Still, completion shouldn't be long now!

Hi GrandpaPhil, Taking on another build, and a big one too! Your Speeljacht turned out really nicely. Will be interesting to see how this works out as an enlarged scale model, very daring of you! I've been thinking about doing this myself with one of the Shipyard frigate kits, but only to take it from 1/96 scale to 1/72 scale. Looking forward to watching your progress!

I got a bit bogged down on the PE parts for the V108, but I'm oh-so-close to finishing the model. I just needed to step away for a bit, so I figured "what the heck" and started the hull of the USS Bagley. I may be in over my head with this kit, as there is so much that I don't know about. Like with the brass photo etching, progress may be periodically stuck, So, in terms of paper ship models, I expect I'll turn my attention back to Shipyard kits and modeling wooden-hulled sailing vessels. But, this is fun to play around with. I haven't started a build log here yet, though I did on the papermodelers.com site here. I have a feeling though that I'm in over my head on this one!

A few weeks ago, I paused on this model, and started working on rigging a friend's ship model, as a shoulder problem and shaky hands have prevented him from working on his model for the last few years. I'd done quite a bit, but there's a lot more work required on the his model. So, I decided to see if I could make some progress on the V108 again this week and work towards completion. I've gotten just about as far as I plan to with the the bulk of V108's rigging. This week, I secured the guy wires or stays of the aft mast, then started the process of adding photo-etched railings to the model. This is something I've never done before, and it's proved to be a bit of a challenge, but I'm making progress. The hardest area, so far, is the first that I took on, the top of the bridge. This took a lot of shaping, cutting, and gluing together of the railing pieces, but I think I managed okay. Once that was in place, I decided to pause to finish adding the propeller guard supports. These, I cut from steel wire, I don't recall what gauge. After that, I added the railing to the forward part of the main deck. This is partly hidden by the raised bulwarks, but that seemed to make it pretty easy to add the railings and to secure them pretty well. The railing aft of the bridge support structure was simple enough in that I used a full length piece of railing. I mean to start the railing closer to the bridge support structure, but ended up with a larger gap than I'd planned on. I suppose I could rip up the railing and redo it, but I'm afraid I'll do more harm than good. So, I'm just leaving it alone for now. Putting the long railing pieces into place turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I found it a challenge to keep the railings sitting vertical, they tend to lean a little bit inward or outward. Also, I'm using Aleene's Tacky Glue. It seems to work pretty well, but as I keep playing with the part to get it to sit correctly, I'm kind of whipping up the glue, so it's not as transparent or as smooth as it should be. I'll need to look at this again and see what I can do to clean it up a bit. After that, I'll add a final piece that fits the curve of the stern and connects up with these other pieces. Then, I can look at mounting railings on the forecastle, which has a curved slope to the sides, so I'm expecting that are to be a little tricky. Below, you can see how wavy the railing is, still. I'll be seeing if I can do anything to minimize that waviness. I need to consult with my plastic ship modeler friends about this. Note that the insides of the funnels show the pieces of the guy wires and some ladder rungs poking through. I decided to use a little bit of dyed cotton stuff down inside, like smoke from the boilers. Anyway, the light at the end of the tunnel is looking quite strong now...

I've never met him, but I've been connected with the SMA off and on over the years, and his name came up often enough for me to recognize it. I'm sure I've seen his work in their newsletter. I'm very sorry to hear of his passing.

Nice review, brunnels! I've considered this kit many times. I actually like that it's 1/72 scale, as I have many other projects in that scale as well. I think the main thing holding me back has always been that I have the Ancre monograph and I always thought I'd scratch build the ship, so I never followed up on buying the kit. But, I still like this one a lot, as it has an American history connection.

Hi Julie, I've never heard the term header board. I know these as trailboards. As far as I know, they are just wood, and usually have a slight upward curve to them, so I don't think they were interchangeable. I'm guessing that in some shipyards, there's one person who regularly carves these things. So, among the lumber schooners, many of them may very well look the same, or at least very similar.