catopower

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.

While I'm working on building the searchlight, rangefinder, and a new anchor crane, I added the remaining bridge detail, which included the navigation lights and the wooden grating platforms. I also decided to go ahead and rig the ariels on the masts and mount the masts into place. This work might get a little bit in the way when dealing with the railings, but I just felt that I needed to move the project forward a little more. Also, those radio ariels that run down to the bridge wings in the above photo is not glued into place, it's just an extra long, weighted line that runs through a pinhole I drilled into the bridge deck. So, I can move those out of the way to add the top most railing. The aft mast stays needed a place to secure on deck, so I just drilled pinholes for those. For now, I weighted the stays with binder clips in about the location where they'll need to go. As for the ariels I ran between the masts, that's just "un-educated" guesswork, as this part of the instructions didn't seem detailed enough. I'm happy enough with for this model Next, I'll need to secure the aft mast stays before I start adding the main deck railings. Oh, forgot that I still need to add the supports that run up from the propeller guards to the hull. That shouldn't be too difficult, and I'll probably do them next.

It's two steps forward, then another one step forward, then one step back, and another stop forward. Let's see... that's a total of three steps forward. So, we're doing well here. I started rigging the aft mast. At this scale, there's really no place to tie off lines to. Also, it's not really clear from the instructions what lines are needed. There are a few small diagrams that include the run of lines, more or less So, I did what I could to pre-rig the aft mast. When I'm ready to permanently install the mast, there will be more rigging line. I decided not to use the EZline stuff here, and just went with fly tying thread, since I felt the EZline would pull the booms out of position. But, in order to keep the regular thread taut, I just ended continuing the run of the line, so it wouldn't put a strain on the part. There's a lot more rigging to go, and for other things I may need to go back to the EZline for those. I also tried out the railing and covering on the platform where the rangefinder will eventually be located. I think it looks okay, and I'm happy with it. So, I decided to move forward with using the kit parts to make the coverings of the bridge wings as well, which I added after I finished adding the new ship's wheel. You'll see the mast that runs up the back of the bridge is in place here, but I'd originally made a hole for it in the superstructure that was a little too far aft. To cover it, I cut out a spare rectangular hatch and glued it into place. It's not supposed to be there, but nobody will notice. That mast isn't permanently in place, but I think I can fix it permanently now. I don't know if now is a good time to do this, but I also went ahead and mounted the flagstaffs at the bow and step. I also managed to mess up the anchor crane at the bow, so I removed it and will have to make a new one. Note the forward 88mm gun in place. Below, is another view aft showing the gun now in place, along with the aft flagstaff. Propeller guards are now glued in place as well, but I still have to add the wire supports. Rigging and a few detailed assemblies remain, plus some stuff to put on the bridge wings, the anchor crain, and then the railings.

So, I started working on a new deck for the 1/72 scale Le Coureur model. This is basically just the same 1/96-scale model deck that I've enlarged. Laser cutting and engraving the deck from card, now that I've got settings for my laser that work better. Below are the plain, laser engraved decks. As per kit instructions for painting, I gave the decks a coat of a very light, cream-colored paint that's provided in the kit. I used a very thinned down mix and applied it to the card stock. It's a very light coating. The water curles the paper a bit, but it will flatten out when dry. After allowed a good 24 hours, I taped off a random selection of planks, and repainted these areas. Again, a thorough drying before applying a paint mixture as given in the kit, but I think my application was thinned down maybe a little too much, but I think it will work as is. I may tape off some more random planks and repaint them before continuing. This should help offset some of the blotchiness that occurs when brush painting on absorbent material. Still, the deck is a very light tan color and should work as is, though they look a bit pale in the photos. And, if I do too much more to it, I risk ruining it. I'll think on it a bit.

Little bitty progress on the V108. At this point, I guess it's all "little bitty" progress... Made some of the bridge instruments. I guess this is the compass and the engine room telegraph. You can kind of make that one out. I'd actually just mounted the ship's wheel on its pedestal, but had to step out of the room while the glue dried. I got distracted by other stuff, then thought about it again, went to look for it. It complete vaporized... not a trace... not even a smooshed part! Have to make a new one. At least I have the spare parts sheets to work from. 🤨 With that, I decided to finish assembling the aft mast. Turned out okay. Most of it is all thin wooden dowel, except for the yard, which is 0.020" brass. The masts aren't permanently fixed yet. I think I'm going to pre-rig the aft mast before I permanently mount it. Thinking now about how I'm going to deal with railings. The one's around the direction finder platform, aft, lean out from the round platform, so they're conical. Chris made his railing from stiffened thread. I was just going to use PE brass for all mine, but I can't do that around that platform. Whatever I make there isn't going to match the PE railings elsewhere. I'm considering just using the printed paper part, which mimics the look of canvas backed railing. If I do that, I would probably want to do the same for the bridge railing. I'm not sure how that will look, but that IS the way the kit was designed, so maybe it'll be okay. The aft platform and railing are simple enough to make, so I think I'll make the aft platform and see how it looks with the kit part. If It doesn't look good, I'll consider alternatives. But, I think I'm ready to finish the deck guns next.

How about a photo of one of your card models? Would love to see what you're working on.

Hi Nick, If you take the download from that link, you should be able to print it at whatever size you want. You should be able to choose the option "Scale to Fit" and choose to "Print Entire Image". I just tried that and it worked for me.

While I still consider myself a wood ship modeler, over the past several years, I've built a few card models. Almost exclusively, these have been kits from the Polish paper ship model kit publisher Shipyard, and really I've really enjoyed the process. Lately, I've looked at a few of their offerings and thought about how I might actually make some modifications to them. For instance, their kits of the French lugger Le Coureur are beautiful kits and I've seen some excellent builds of them, but I'd like to do a deck arrangement that more closely resembles the plans published by Ancre. To that end, I started experimenting with some possibilities. I have Shipyard's 1/96-scale paper model kit, as well as their 1/72-scale laser-cut card model kit. I've been using the 1/96-scale paper model kit as a testbed for the larger laser-cut kit. About a year ago, I went kind of overboard and bought an xTool S1 40watt diode laser cutter. Yes, it was somewhere around $1600, but there was a deal going on at the time, and I figure it was okay to splurge now and buy the monster, because there's a good chance I won't be able to do something like this in the future. Seemed like sound reasoning, and it got me the machine. Long story short, I drew up Le Coureur's decks using Adobe Illustrator and basically want to replace the kit deck, since the kit deck has alignment markings all over it for the placement of the deck furniture as well as cut outs under their hatch locations, and I'm going to be making changes to all that. I figured cutting and scoring heavy card stock would be ideal, since that would match the way Shipyard's bigger kit is designed, with that being my final project goal. Things were going okay, and I did a lot of experimenting with painting the resulting laser-cut and laser-scored deck, but i wasn't that satisfied with how the paint went on the card stock I was using. Then, I ran into an issue with the output from the laser cutting, and it took me weeks of troubleshooting until I finally fixed the problem – that was today, by the way. But, in the meantime, I'd temporarily given up on the laser-cutting idea, and just realized I could try to simply print the deck onto card stock. More long story short, I ended up with some printed decks that look pretty good. These were simply output on my inkjet printer, and the small Le Coureur currently sports the new printed deck, shown below with a couple deck color variations. This wood grain pattern was something I only just discovered how to do with Illustrator. I'm not sure if this looks TOO clean, but on a card model, it's probably fine. You can see the treenail detail is nice and subtle. I printed one of the deck patterns at 1/72 scale for the larger model. You can see it and the laser-etched deck provided in the kit. At this larger scale, the issue of the deck looking too perfect is amplified somewhat. So, I kept on working to troubleshoot the laser-cutting issue I was having. Today, I FINALLY figured out what was going on, and I was able to create some usable output again. But, in the meantime, I also picked up some wood veneer and trying working with that on the laser-cutter. And now, I have three options for the deck now. Here they are, all for the smaller 1/96-scale testbed model. Top is printed paper, middle is laser-cut maple veneer, and the bottom is laser-cut card, which of course has to be painted. Not sure which way to go, but now, I have options that I really didn't have just a few days ago. Next step is to see if I can now paint this type of card stock to look like wood. I've done it before with a couple Shipyard kits, and they looked okay, but I never was totally happy with the results. Below, you can see the deck, early in my HMS Wolf build. It came out a little splotchier than I would have liked. The one good thing about laser-cutting my own card stock deck. I can make new ones until I figure out how to get it just right. And, if I can't get it right, well there's always the wood veneer deck. Still might want to try that on a model...

Hi Nirvana, still a ways to go yet!

After our local ship modelers meeting down in San Jose today, I've been inspired to make some more progress on the V108. First, I decided to try working on the funnel support guy wires using fine EZ Line. This is the first time I've ever used the stuff. Turned out to be a lot easier than I'd thought. I wasn't positive where these guy wires would attach to the deck. But, I've looked at various destroyers and noted that the wires mostly ran down to the raised deck of the superstructure. Given that, I just had to figure out how to keep the wires clear of the ventilators and reels. Very happy with how that part turned out. Next, I added the rudder and also added the crane at the bow. It's raised up too high I think, but it'll do. Finally, I decided it was time to finish up with the bridge wing supports. I cut and glued the "folded" edges into place, then I glued pieces of wire onto the backside to stiffen the girders. I trimmed the wire and painted the backsides gray, then glued them into place. Following Chris' example, I set the support structure inboard a bit, so that it will clear the area where the deck railing will go. There's still a lot of doo-dads to go on the ship, but I feel like I got a lot done, and really want to get the bridge finished.

Chris, I'm counting on your excellent V108 tutorial to lift me up to the challenge of the USS Bagley kit! 😁 Jan, thanks for pointing that out. As you can see, I haven't even dealt with that girder edge. I will probably do as you suggested and simply cut and glue.

Chris, thanks for the info. As my first steel navy paper ship model kit nears completion, I'm thinking about the next one. I'm using paint to color the white paper edges now. While that works fine for paper models I'm painting, for the steel navy ships, I expect that markers will be a cleaner way to go. Thinking about this because my USS Bagley from Avangard in the Ukraine made it through the "customs blockade". I was surprised that I actually received the kit, especially after my order with Seahorse got cancelled last week. But, this looks to be a one-off solution. I'll post about the Avangard kit separately, later. But, it will be a major step up in challenge, by the looks of it.

Progress is very slow this last week. Only small windows of time available. However, I made use of a window of opportunity last night and overcame what I've found to be the hardest task yet... Thinking I may just reinforce these with some wire on the back sides, particularly some of those thin trusses. Still have to clean up the white edges. Chris, what markers did you say you use? I should try them out. Oh, and one more photo. Decided to finish up that stern reel. The handles are a bit large, but I had a hard time bending them at all without destroying the whole assembly. So, this is how it will be... I think.

The kit looks like something that many people will love to see. I look forward to seeing some builds of this and the other recent kit releases. Also, I feel it necessary to apologize for some of the comments on our forum that are rude and disrespectful to one of the valued sponsors of this forum. It aggravates me that some members here make such careless comments. Why would they feel the need to do this? I saw comments last night that I was considering responding to today, but I see they are now gone. Just as well. Anyway, thanks for being a sponsor of MSW and please keep up the great work. I think your work makes ship modeling more accessible to more people. I personally prefer to use printed plans and hate watching construction videos, as I find them boring. But, these days, more and more people are accustomed to learning from instruction videos. Also, these video presentations show how beautiful a ship model can be, and create some nice anticipation for potential modelers. Love the availability of figures for the kits!

If you're looking for a particular Shipyard kit that's out of stock at Ages of Sail, be sure to ask about it. Sometimes knowing there is demand is a motivator to gets things done, like reordering stock!

Hi grsjax, On the surface, the instructions look really nice, photos are clear, and are nicely labeled and all. I have their Navio Rayo "battle station" kit and their Frigate l'Hermione kit. I've heard from people who started the Navio Rayo kit and gave up on it. I haven't looked closely enough at those instructions yet. However, the Hermione instructions for constructing the transom are extremely vague, and the parts they provide don't fit as shown. There are no plans sheets and no instruction videos. I also found that a template they provide for marking the gun ports is far too large for the hull and would result in the construction of a hull that hangs way too far beyond the rudder. The template also results in an incorrect gun port arrangement. The kit instructions show both a model being build with the correct gun port arrangement as well as photos of a model with incorrect gun port layout. Now, overall, I'm happy with the model kit because I think I can build it into a really nice, relatively large scale model, and the bulkheads seem to be okay. But, it took me weeks to try to figure out how to make the stern look correct. I added parts and removed them twice. On the third attempt, I chose to ignore the instructions and got past the hold up. Don't know about the Marieville. Instructions may be fine, but just be very careful as you step forward through the build. Check and recheck that everything makes sense!

Chapman, I'm doing something similar and noticed the same thing you did. My own plan is to adapt the kit as best I can, short of redesigning the kit hull.

Michael, that Carrack looks beautiful! Do you have a build log for it? I'm going to have to go check now...

Thought I'd do a card model update here. While I shelved the Schwarzer Rabe build years ago, I finished an "admiralty style" HMS Wolf from Shipyard's 1/72-scale laser-cut kit early this Summer. Late in the Summer, I got the itch to restart my V108 build and I'm working to try to get it completed. It's my first ever "steel navy" paper model. Build log is here. Being happy with this build led me to take my Armed Virginia Sloop off the shelf and I've been tinkering with it again. It doesn't look very different from the last photos I posted... how many years ago? It's 1/100 scale, and while I've built other models of similar scale, I guess never one that carried guns as small as these. Maybe they're 3pdrs? Because, I'm having trouble rigging breech ropes around the cascabels. The smallest diameter rope is too fat! Trying to figure out something now. In the meantime, I still have the card model bug it seems. The V108, and watching the film Greyhound a few times, got me interested in building a WWII destroyer. I spotted some kits from an interesting looking Ukrainian brand called Avangard, but it took me a while to find a shop that would sell it to me. Finally have their USS Bagley kit and accessories on its way here. Hope I actually receive it! Also, since I was shopping anyway(!), I spotted the newest kit from Seahorse, having recently seen its photo posted on papermodelers.com. Yes, I know I've gone card model crazy, but this was too awesome looking to pass up. I'll post more about that when the kit arrives.

Hello elguzanoq, Good luck with your build! When you get done, if you're still considering another paddlewheel boat, you might also consider Amati's recently revised kit of the Robert E. Lee. It was just revised and. upgraded by Amati last year, and is a well known subject. Just a thought. Ages of Sail carries it (MSW supporter), as does WoodenModelShipKit, and others.

Only Shipyard can answer this, but the Paris drawings were pretty commonly available since the late 1800s. If you examine other older kits of Le Coureur, like Mamoli's and others, they all tend to be based on Paris, even down to the point of being seemingly based on the related AAMM model plans. Shipyard seems to have simply followed suit. But, I'm glad you mentioned those drawings. My own interest is to take the Shpyard kit and make the modifications to make it closer to these, using the Boudriot/Berti monograph. It should make for an interesting project.

No admiral here to worry about, but I will probably try one more time, cutting the bridge wing supports, and if that doesn't work, I'll try the grilled ziplock bag sandwich method. But, for now, I decided that I'd deal with the issue of the bridge wing supports by NOT dealing with them for now. Taking a break from it, while I get a few other things done that need to be done anyway. Finished making the remaining ventilators, and adding the launch. Seems odd that the kit didn't include a cradle for the boat. I fashioned something simple out of card scraps. I attached them to the boat and cut small notches in each of their corners. Then, I could use the smallest rigging line I have to tie the boat down. My only concern with the ropes on the launch is that it's going to look really heavy compared to the rest of the 'rigging' on the model. But, this is the only rope on the ship, the others are going to represent wire guys and radio antenna wires, so maybe the thick rope on the launch is okay. Next, I didn't cut those bridge wing supports, but I did manage to cut these parts that required a lot of careful little tiny chops, like what Chris was describing as the Woodpecker technique. I had to use thin CA on the parts first, though. Also, I didn't laminate any of these parts. These all went pretty much without a hitch. I was amazed at how well the crane structure turned out.

Jeff, I'd say these laser-cut kits are easier than the regular paper models, since the scale is a bit larger and all the parts are cut out for you. Also, you're not expected to roll your own cannon barrels, and figureheads are cast resin, and some of the scroll work is usually laser-etched card stock, so you don't just have 2D images of scroll work. Same with gratings. But, you can do a lot with the paper models, and they don't take much room to work on or to display.

GradpaPhil, thanks for the explanation on the primer coating. Haven't tried that yet. With CA, I've been using thin CA to plasticize my paper parts since my first paper model 10 years ago. I've just never cut anything this thin before. I tried using the CA before I cut the part, and that seemed to work for a while, until it didn't... Next, I tried laminating the part, thinking the extra layer would make the part stronger. The problem there is that the parts are so thin, when there is delaminaion, there's some tearing and some slipping of the paper that happens, leaving not much to glue back together. I'm going to try going back to a single layer card stock for this. Beautiful French sailing warship, by the way! Hi Chris, I'd never heard the name for the technique, but it makes sense, thanks. That's what I'm basically doing with the chopped single-edge razor blades. Did the same thing really when I was using a scalpel blade, but the thickness of the blade pushes parts sideways as I push the blade down on the part. I'm hoping the razor blades, being so much thinner, will reduce the sideways pressure as I chop into the part. I gave up on it last night, but printed out yet another parts sheet so I can try again. Maybe a combination of the up and down strokes, using single layer card stock, and luck will lead to success this time?