catopower

Wefalk, thanks for posting the link. That is a very nicely done series that looks at traditional Japanese boats through the art of Japanese block prints. The author of that series, Jean Pierre Mélis, a Japanese ship modeler, Masami Sekiguchi, and I, actually had several email discussions about the boats in the prints for his article. I have to admit it was mostly Mr. Sekiguchi providing the information to questions for Mr. Mélis and myself. But, a small photo of my Tosa Wasen model is included in one of the articles. You make a very good point about understanding the function of features. That's been a big issue and a stumbling point in my projects. Without that understanding, it's very easy to misinterpret something you're seeing in a drawing, painting, etc. And, often, a feature is only known from a written description.

Thanks, Druxey. It's nice to see some discussion on the subject. But, since it's not a build log without photos of the build. Here are another couple pics of the model that were actually taken before the bindings were added to the rails. I don't know yet if I'll have the mast up with the sail raised or not. At this point in history, the Japanese did not use cloth sails. Instead, they used straw mat. They were bulky and heavy, particularly if they got wet. I'm not sure what the best way is to simulate them. Probably, I'll just end up sewing a sail of coarse cloth. Would be nice to see the rigging, though I like illustrating the way the mast was stowed in the lowered position. Maybe I'll have to make TWO models... Things left to do: Finishing the deck house details Making a sail and yards Making oars Making anchors Mounting the rudder Rigging (if the mast is raised) Also, it be really nice to have a figure in period costume to give a sense of scale and historical context. I've been experimenting with figure making, but not very successfully yet. And then, specifically, 13th century costume. We'll see...

Great comments. I agree that it helps to have some sense of the Japanese mentality. And, Japanese carpentry is pretty amazing. But, I think that boatbuilding takes a slightly different path than carpentry. There's a different sense of practicality for the builders of the workboats of the day-to-day fishermen and cargo boatmen. There is some amazing craftsmanship, but I think this is mixed with the need to be able build and to make repairs quickly and simply. There's actually very little information available about Japanese boatbuilding. Douglas Brooks's book Japanese Wooden Boatbuilding, is one of the few works, in English or Japanese, that gives great insight into the techniques of small boatbuilding. I have found two books in Japanese, published by museums, that discuss boatbuilding techniques in some detail. Both are out of print. I also have about a half-dozen books written in Japanese about Japanese wooden boats. But, most books are overviews of the coastal transports of the 17-19th century. The information on anything else is pretty sparse. In english, I've only found what's in the Osprey books, which is, at times, misleading and laughable. The way I've found to best understand their construction is to build them or model them... or to attempt to. Building Japanese kits really does teach you something of how the boats were constructed. Particularly the Tosa Wasen kit from Thermal Studio and the Higaki Kaisen kit from Woody Joe. And then scratch building one is great in that you discover how much you DON'T know.

Some more pics to share... You might have notice all the rails along the sides of the boat. You may have also wondered how they were fastened down to the beams. I don't know if this was true of all boats of this type, or if this changed over time, but I went with rope bindings that some models show. Clearly such bindings weren't enough to keep the rails from slipping off the beams, but similar binding were used in the early days with the sculling oars where the handle section attaches to the shaft. Some kind of peg/key would likely have prevented the sliding, while the rope simply held the parts together. Now, if the rope binding is used to hold the rails to the beams, why aren't they used to hold the rowing platforms to the rails? I don't know. Perhaps because those platforms are larger, and need to be very stable, they are fixed to the rails using a more sophisticated fastening. In any case, on my model, I wanted to add these bidings. Here are some photos I took while experimenting with a GoPro camera I got last year... I wonder how many of you do the same thing with glue? When I'm working with many knots, I put a dab of white glue on the back of my thumb, so I have a constant ready supply without having to reach for a glue bottle. As for the bindings, I had to tie them carefully, so they all looked exactly the same as they wrapped around the beams and rails. In the photo below, you can see how they wrapped in kind of a figure-8 pattern, with the loops of the 8 wrapping underneath the beams. That hole in the bottom of the boat is where I glued in a piece of brass tubing to receive a mounting rod. There are a pair of these. The voids around the hole got filled in later. Below, you can see the progress on the bindings, with most of them tied here. You might also note the additional progress on the deck houses. Here, they have a central external beam attached. Also, note that the raised beams ("goal posts") have been changed. One of the round ones I had mounted earlier broke. So, I took the opportunity to change them to the rectangular style shown here. Pretty soon, I'm going to have to figure out how to finish the sides of that aft deck house...

Thank you, Druxey! Sorry I'm not more of a regular poster. Fortunately, this is a project that does keep moving forward, so there will be more posts. But, I only work on this one from time to time – it takes me a while to figure out what to do next and how to do it!

Somehow, I managed to forget to post an update here, even though I have made some progress on the model. Unfortunately, I didn’t take many photos of certain intermediate steps. But, it's been over 6 months, so I'd better write something here! Building the Yakata Roof Not really knowing how the yakata or deck houses were constructed, I began working on the roof, hoping something would come to me at some point. The roof itself was a bit confusing, as the drawings I’ve been using and the models I’ve been following as guides differ in the matter of the roof boards, the shape of the roof , and details. I've probably mentioned this before, but the scroll painting I’ve been referencing shows a curved rooftop with the roof boards running down from the top, and so does the drawing I'm using. However, some other models and drawings show boards that run lengthwise along the rooftop. Now, lengthwise boards make it easier to curve the rooftop, so that would seem to make sense. Even the museum model I've posted photos of has the boards running down from the rooftop, but with no curvature. Still, the scroll painting and drawing I'm using both show the curved roof board running down from the top. Well, I like the look of the roof in the scroll painting, and it is the only real historical record, correct or not. I had already cut and glued up the roof tops before I was convinced to curve them, so I had to try to add the curvature after the fact. You can see the roof assemblies in the photo below, taken at a meeting of the Hyde Street Pier Model Shipwrights. I realized after gluing up the boards that I should have used used a waterproof glue, like Titebond III, or maybe II would have been okay. As it was I used Original Titebond, so soaking the planks for bending caused many of the glue joints to fail, though I didn’t really have to use that much soak time with this wood. To bend a roof assembly, I simply clamped it between two heavy strips, dampened the wood, and applied pressure against the whole assembly. The amount of bend needed was pretty small, so this seemed to work well, bending each board in the assembly by about the same aount. Again, it wasn’t an ideal procedure, as I didn’t use waterproof glue, and the boards separated pretty easily when wet. But, they glued up easily after it was all done. Now, if you look at the following close-up of one of the museum models, you can see the ends of closely space rafters sticking out. I was a bit puzzled as to how you can have rafters like this and have roof boards that run in the same direction unless the edges of the boards ride on the rafters, but this doesn't seem very stable. But this is all I had to work with at the time, so I just added rafters to the roof assembly at the seam of each of the boards. Only recently did I find a couple nice photos showing the underside of a roof that made more sense of this kind of structure. Now, it's too late for this model, but it's something I can maybe use in the future. In any case, the roof were glued on, which made the model look a lot more complete, though there is still much to do...

Yeah, I don't think quality has changed that much. Overall, I think development costs for kits are pretty high. I don't know how much Matthew Betts got for the use of his drawings and research on HMS Terror, but I doubt that it was anything close to the cost of developing the kit design from scratch. NDC is doing their own development work and then paying Turk Model for the production work, so I wonder if they're making much money. The primary draw of these kits are the subject matter, as I think all the Nordic Class Boats kits are of currently existing vessels. Those interested might be a little more forgiving about dealing with various design issues, as they can add or fix-up details based on the real boats. At least, that's my theory. Clare

Hi Popeye, great to see your M&M Fun Ship build log back online! It's quite an extravaganza of candy-coated-chocolatey creativity... I love the separate (restroom?) doors for plain and peanut.

Hi Mark, Well, I did write a Ships in Scale article on building the Woody Joe Higaki Kaisen kit... Clare

Great job Mark! I'm really happy to see other people building Woody Joe kits. I still have a large stack of them waiting for me including another one of these Hacchoro kits that I'm hoping to do some extra detailing on. Some day... Are you considering any other Woody Joe kits? Clare

I agree that Tom Cunliffe's book covers the topic very well. I always felt that the shape of Ronnberg's pilot yawl didn't seem right to me. There are several photos of them in Cunliffe's book. If I recall correctly, there are also some small plans for them in the book. They are interesting boats. When I built my model of the Mary Taylor based roughly on BlueJacket's plans, I scratch built the pilot yawls. It wasn't difficult. If I recall correctly, I just use the plans in Cunliffe's book. Here are some pics... Clare

Unrelated, but did Model Shipways really call the Bluenose a New York Pilot Boat of 1868 on the box like that?

A.Jorden, I've bought several sizes of copper foil tape from glasscrafters here: http://www.glasscrafters.biz/CTGY/foil Get the exact size you need for your scale, uncoated. Clare

Hi Ed, Lloyd retired from the line and block business... I want to say it was early last year (?). I really liked his blocks and still have a small supply of them, which should finish up some models projects I have. Sad to see his products go. But, as Tom points out, you will not be disappointed with Chuck's stuff. Beautiful quality stuff at reasonable pricing. Easy to purchase. Clare

And speaking of the GPM detail sets, here are some photos of the cannon carriages built from the GPM detail set. Construction is mostly complete on the first half of the gun deck carriages. I still have the ironwork to do, a little cleanup, and I have to figure out if I can add the quoin and quoin bed. But, I'll make the barrels before I to that, so I can determine if I ca fit them in and have the barrel elevations look good. The quoins in the detail set are extremely tiny and narrow, so they're hard to see and work with. I didn't use them on the Alert, and I don't think it mattered at this scale. On the Alert, I also only rigged the breech ropes and not the tackle blocks as they would have looked way out of scale, so I preferred to omit them. One issue I ran into, which I didn't deal with on the Alert, is that the detail set has a hole in the gun trucks for an axle, but don't provide any detail for the axle itself. I just used the carriages "as is" on the Alert, which looked fine. For HMS Mercury, I thought I'd deal with that detail by shaving down a basswood dowel to 3/64" diameter for the forward gun trucks. The rear trucks have a smaller diameter hole, so I took the leftover dowel and shaved it down to fit. I just glued everything up using Elmers wood glue. After it all dried, I then took the completed carriages, and applied thin CA to stiffen it all up. Without the CA, it's flexible and still a little delicate. The CA wicks into the card stock very well. I finished painting the carriages with the Renesans Colours acrylic paint. Color number 08 is a perfect match for the printed parts. I think I mentioned before that I really like these paints and I finally found a source in Poland for them, thanks to the folks at Papermodelers.com. I've since heard from a fellow ship modeler, who read my post about them and also managed to buy successfully from the same shop at https://www.swiatmodeli.eu/pl/c/Renesans/58. Below, you can see the visual test I did, just to see how all the carriages will look in place on the model. Still have another dozen carriages to do for the gun deck. Then, I need to do the ironwork. After that, I will have to tackle the making of the barrels – something I avoided on the Alert by using 3rd party brass barrels.

I will say that I kind of wish that I had started Shipyard's HMS Wolf first. I think it's fully open gun deck would make construction simpler at this point. Only issue would be that GPM doesn't make a detail set for that kit. But, as I did with the Alert, I think it would be simple enough to adapt parts from the HMS Mercury detail set, such as cannon carriages, blocks, gratings, etc. Still, enjoying the HMS Mercury build.

Hi jct, The laser-cut parts do help a lot. I don't have to cut or laminate the parts. The only issue is that the card stock sheet isn't as sturdy as laminated thin paper. So, I'm finding that I have to be more careful with them. Tim, It's been fun and challenging, but it's hard to say if it's really quicker or slower than an equivalent wooden kit. If I were working in wood, I'd spend more time thinking about how I want to approach each step. Also, since I've been a wooden ship modeler for over 20 years, I'm more concerned with how to get the details right. The paper model kit pretty much does what it wants and I probably don't spend the same kind of time getting a detail just right when I'm working with paper – I'm just happy if things fit together well. Technically, I think building a paper ship model kit is easier than building a wooden ship model kit, at least this type of build. It's a simpler skill set: laminate, cut, fold, glue, etc. But, there is a LOT of it to do, and you have to be okay with that. Masting and rigging should be about the same. If you're scratch building or modifying, then that's an entirely different story, which I can't really comment on. At least not yet. I'm looking forward to seeing you start a build log. Then, maybe you can show me how to build this thing correctly! But, this is fun. I'm really enjoying it (the laser-cut GPM detail set helps). It's mentally much easier than working with wood, takes up much less room, uses few tools, and is less messy than working with wood.

HMS Mercury's Cannons Before I can put too much of the interior detail into place, I really need to add the cannon carriages and probably the gun tackle too. The main reason is that if I am going to add any amount of gun tackle, I need some room to add ringbolts and blocks and such in the tight confines of the model's interior. This will be more difficult if I try to do this after adding other interior furnishings. Now, if I built this as a real dockyard scene with launch flags flying, as I've been considering, the cannons wouldn't be on the model at all, as this was something done after launching. Of course, I could take some artistic license and create the launch scene, even if I do add cannons. I'm still a little torn about the whole idea of the dockyard scene, because it feels a little like cheating since I'd be avoiding all the masting and rigging. But, I've seen some beautiful models built in this style. And who's to say that I won't build a fully rigged paper model next time? Yes, of course I'm rationalizing. In any case, I think I've decided that I'll add the cannons regardless of the final model type. I can go ahead and get started on the carriages first. I will then give some thought to the barrels and the gun tackle. I think it's common to build a ship model where the cannons have no tackle or just the breech ropes rigged. But, a serious ship modeler would most certainly fully rig the cannons, and I expect I will do just that. And the barrels? I used brass cannon barrels on my HMS Alert model, which look absolutely great, but I may just put some effort into making them out of paper this time. Anyway, I don't know of good sources of small enough pre-made carronade barrels, of which I'll need several for the quarter deck. But, first things first. Time to make carriages. Building the Carriages The task of cutting all the parts to make good looking gun carriages can be quite intimidating, particularly the trucks or wheels. Luckily, this step is simplified by the fact that the GPM HMS Mercury Details set I bought includes all the gun carriage parts all neatly laser cut. I've generally been pre-painting the laser-cut parts before removing them from the sheets. The Shipyard printed parts are a natural wood brown color, but if you look at a lot of dockyard models the gun carriages are most commonly painted red, and this is the way I've decided to go with this model. It's easy enough to choose the desired color since the laser-cut parts need to be painted anyway. I painted the carriages using Renesans brand acrylics from Poland, specifically the Renesans Colour 08, Cynober (Cinnabar). I've written about my hunt for this line of paints in another post. As an alternative, I had initially tried to use Blick Matt Acrylics, Deep Red, but it was just a tad darker than I wanted. My desire was to match the color of the printed bulwarks as closely as possible, and the Renesans paint is a better match. Since I painted the parts before assembly, once the carriages are completed, I'll have to go over them one more time to color the edges. Also, I'm going to try a little gloss medium in the final paint coat to make them less dead flat.

It's been a while since I've update my build log. After a long stretch of overly quiet time with my regular job, things got really busy for a couple weeks. That was on top of a series of projects and tasks I needed to get done this week. Today was pretty much my first full day of rest after spending yesterday playing catch-up on all the things around the house that I've had to put off. Getting back to the Umibune here, but, unfortunately, I kind of jumped ahead without taking many intermediate step photos. As I mentioned before, this has build a project where I've been really trying to figure out the details of the subject as I'm building it. This has led to one issue of building the deck houses, or yakata, on the model as I go. With these fragile structures, it would have been a lot easier if I could have built them off the model. But, it is what it is. As you can see, I started the framework for the aft structure and added a peak roof beam. I also added one to the main structure. You'll note that the roof of the aft structure runs perpendicular to the centerline of the vessel. Also, the frame construction is a little odd, because the aft section of the vessel narrow toward the stern. It's not all that clear how this affects the roof, as the reference drawing doesn't show a top-down view of the roofs, and the roof's shape is not discernible from the scroll painting. Since the walls don't actually cant inwards very much, I figure that it's simplest to build rectangular, as if all the joints were at 90 degree angles. In addition to the deck house structures, there are a pair of cross-beams mounted up high on posts. I don't know exactly what these structures are for. But, often, the mast is shown leaning on them. Also, the height of the cross-beams is above the top of the roofs, so it might be possibly to lay something across the top, again, perhaps the mast. These were used to tie pole-mounted lanterns to (see the scroll painting) and might have also been used to tie banners. I set the mast in a lowered position, leaning on the forward crossbar, but I don't know if that's how I'll display it. Still have to think about the sail. You can see I also added the wall panels on the main yakata. I wasn't sure how these would have actually appeared. To me, it looked like these might have been something like rattan. Not wanting to weave these, I ended up taking very thin dowels and glueing them side-by-side to a wooden backing. When the glue was dry, I then pressed across the dowels at a 90 degree angle with a dull blade. This crushed them a little, making not only the cut, but leaving the suface slightly rounded at each cut. From a distance, I think they look okay. I will probably do the same thing for the upper panels, though they will be mounted in an open position, "hinged" open, and secured by some kind of hooks to the underside of the roof. At least that's the plan.

Those cannons are looking great Nils. Sorry I'm late with the wishes, but a belated Happy Geburtstag to you! (Sorry, I couldn't remember how to write the whole phrase in German)

jct, it looks like you've solved the color match issue. The hull looks great. On my HMS Alert, which used printed paper (as opposed to the boxed, laser-cut kits which require you to paint the whole thing), I ended up painting almost every single surface in some way. Even my deck has a thin wash of paint. I think it actually makes the paper model of the wooden ship look more natural. Looks great. I'm going to start experimenting with the acrylic mediums myself. Nicely done!

Dr. Per, I believe that this is an earlier Swedish-Nowegian Union flag which was in use at the time of Mariefred's construction.

Hello Nils, Just catching up with your work now. Wonderful work and progress on a most interesting subject. I'll definitely be following along!

Hi jct, The paint I use is the stuff that Shipyard used to sell. It's still used in their boxed kits, though they put it into their own jars. The brand is an artist's acrylic called Renesans, specifically the line called Renesans Colours, but it's a Polish brand and it's hard to get here. I really love the stuff because it's a dead flat color that has some transparency. You thin in way down and it still adheres well to the slick paper. I found a source, but it's in Poland. It's not a problem, except that they only take bank transfers as payment. In the US, banks charge $25 a pop for the privilege. The closest alternative that I've found are the Blick Matte Acrylics. They're again artist's acrylics, but they go on dead flat. Best thing, for artist's acrylics, they're pretty cheap at $1.99 for a 2 oz. bottle. You can get them direct from Blick: https://www.dickblick.com/products/blick-matte-acrylics/. It's actually very good and I may switch to it since it's easily available. Regarding planking material, I personally found that high-end inkjet printer paper works really well. It has a very smooth surface that takes paint really well. I laminate a few sheets together using 3M spray adhesive and it should give you planks, or parts, that are strong, but flexible, easy to cut cleanly, much better than cardboard. In fact, I don't like using cardboard, I much prefer laminating these sheets together. You get much cleaner edges that won't break down the way cardboard can.

Thank you for the nice comments Druxey, Carl. It feels a bit simple at times, given the purely straight lines of so much of this build!