catopower

I continue to make progress on the model, but there isn't really much to say. I completed construction of the rail, adding the pieces that make up the underside. With these in place, it's a much stronger structure. To fit the pieces into place, I had to soak the cedar pieces a little bit to impart a slight bend or twist here and there. I took the shortcut of wrapping the pieces with a wet paper towel and put them in the microwave for about 30 seconds. This was just enough to do the trick. Along the underside of the rail on the upper hull planks there is a laser-scribed line to help position the underside pieces of the rail. The pieces glued and clamped into place After the rail was completed, I went ahead and added the stem and other hull details include a thick strake located on the upper hull planking, just underneath the recently completed rail. You may notice that the stem is lighter than the rest of the hull. Like the stern beam, the stem is make of Hinoki or Japanese Cypress instead of Sugi, Japanese Cedar.

Hi Bob, You're inspiring me to get to work on my second Higaki Kaisen model. After finishing my first one, I received another as a gift. Also, I managed to acquire one of the larger Kitamaebune kits, which are out of production, as well as a Sengokubune kit. Their larger size is better for display purposes, but these aren't as detailed as the Higaki Kaisen kit and, I think, not as accurate. So, for now, they're just in the standby stack! Looks like you're getting close to the home stretch here. Have you thought about making a ship's boat to go with it? Don Dressel made one for his model. I thought about it, but never got around to figuring out how to make one. I figured I'd eventually add one on top of the forward deck house, but nothing yet. Anyway, your work looks terrific, and the finish is superb. Looking forward to seeing you and your model at the NRG conference next year! Clare

Thanks Richard, Bob, John. Welcome Antony – No worries, there's plenty of project left... I got stalled for a bit when I got to the rails, but managed to complete the bow and stern decking. The bow deck first required installation of support beams. The beams are provided pre-cut, but the ends needed to be tapered to fit snugly against the hull planking. The deck itself is made up of two pre-cut pieces of cedar. The stern deck is made up of 5 pre-cut boards, but the pieces are of different widths. The instructions don't show you, but the plans provide the labels, so you can locate the needed pieces. You don't have to read Japanese, but you do have to match the characters on the plans with those on the parts. To those familiar with Japanese, the labels are all in the phonetic alphabet known as Katakana. In this case, the parts are: ウカイ ウカロ ウカハ ウカニ ウカホ These characters don't actually mean anything, they're basically no different than labeling parts as A1, C2, etc. Most of the parts in the kit are identified this way. Something else to note is that the pieces aren't necessarily placed on the sheets in any order. Efficiency of material was very obviously given precedence here, so related parts may be separated quite a bit. You can see this by how these deck pieces are located on the laser-cut sheet. The deck parts are glued up and I then placed them on the hull and traced the edge onto them using a pencil. This was then trimmed by knife and sanded to fit the hull. One thing you'll notice is that the part labels are etched onto each part, so you have to either hide the labels or sand them off. Or, you could always just ignore them. They're not that easy to see unless you're looking closely. In this case, I just glued the boards so that the labels will all be on the underside of the deck. Now, here's where I was at a bit of a loss. There are rails that attach to either side of the boat. The ends are notched to fit to the beams at the bow and stern, but the pieces are too long to fit. So, the notch at one end can be used, but the other end has to be cut to deepen the notch. More than this, where on a western style ship, we're accustomed to installing framing and then attaching the rail onto that, with Japanese boats, the process is reversed. The rail is installed to existing attachment points first, then the supports are added afterwards. This is something that I've seen in hull construction of Japanese boats too. The hull planks are edge fastened and bent/clamped into place in the process, and the framing is installed afterwards – Lessons in traditional Japanese boatbuilding! Of course, this isn't limited to the Japanese or Asian ship/boat building. Thinking back, I recall local ship modeler and marine archaeologist Ed Von der Porten talk about modeling a Basque whale and about how frames were added after the planking process had begun. Anyway, I finally worked it out in my head, and the rail construction is in progress. I should have the rail completed soon, but I think it's been the hardest part of the build so far. More later... Clare

Hello Druxey, thanks for the comments. Always nice to have you following my builds! Last time, I left off with the basic hull completed. Now comes the detailing. A pair of beams are provide which are attached directly on top of the upper hull planks. These are first tapered from underneath so that at the ends they are reduced to half thickness. The fore beam referred to here as the ツノ or Tsuno (tsue-no), and the stern beam is the オオトコ or Otoko (oh-toe-koh). The heavy stern beam in particular is a common feature of traditional Japanese boats as it is used to mount the rudder on some boats, and usually bears the seat for the sculling oar. One thing you might note about these beams is that the parts are made from a lighter colored wood. True to the original boat, unlike the hull planks, which were made of Japanese Cedar, these parts were usually made out of Hinoki (Japanese Cypress) because its greater density and strength. At this time, there are some extension pieces located at the midships frames (I was calling them beam initially, but now they're built-up high enough to call them frames or bulkheads). I don't know what it's called yet, but this boat has an extended rail outside of the hull and these pieces are the central supports for it. These small pieces initially had a lot of char from the laser cutting on top and bottom. I was as careful as I could be to not take off too much material. But, the cedar is relatively soft and it sands a little too easily here. But, I seemed to manage okay and essentially got the char off. By the way, something interesting about that space between the frames that you see in the photo. In the center portion of the hull bottom, there are a few holes. I believe that this might have served as some kind of "live well" that must fill with water through those holes. There are in fact, two sets of holes. Near the forward bulkhead, there are two smaller holes in the bottom, and I believe these open into a smaller, separate section that might have been for storing bait. I'll report on this at another time after i've collected some facts. So, next step was to add the upper and lower slotted beams, which will hold removable doors to allow access into the bow and stern storage compartments. The ends of the beams had to be sanded down to fit nicely in place. A special template is provided to make sure that the beams are properly aligned. One side of the template is used for the bow and the other side is used for the stern. The angles are different enough so that it's pretty obvious which side is used for which end of the boat. You don't need to read Japanese to figure that much out. One of the issues I ran into was that the tops of the upper hull planks weren't perfectly aligned. So, I made an extra effort to make sure the gap between the upper and lower beams was consistent. After the stern pieces were done, I assembled the floor of the bow storage compartment. Interestingly enough, the two pieces that make up the floor aren't two symmetrical halves. In fact the joint between the two doesn't even run parallel to the centerline of the ship. You can see what I mean when you look at the photo. I'll cover the completion of the holds next time. The next step is to add the deck beams to the bow compartment and then the add the bow and stern decks. Clare

Thanks John, this is a really looking kit, and as long as I don't screw up the steps, it should turn out very nice! With the lower planks in place, there are next two support beams that were glued in place. Like the pair of lower support beams that the lower planks lock into, these upper support beams are notched so that they fit into holes in the upper planks. When the glue on those beams was drying, the upper planks were cleaned up the leading edges were tapered the same way as the lower planks. The lower planks were then glued to the support beams described above. As with the lower planks, the upper planks were then initially glued only at the transom and at the stem. Fitting the planks was fairly easy at the stern, but was a bit harder at the bow. There, the planks are hard to seat tightly against the stem since there is some overlap between the upper and lower planks. This definitely took a lot of hand pressure and the use of medium CA glue since I couldn't get a clamp onto the bow. I just had to hold the planks tight as long as possible until the glue set. At the stern, the planks were much easier to glue. But, I did run into one self-created problem that was actually less of a problem than I'd realized. The stern edge of the transom should have been lined up with the edge of the notch where you see the rubber bands in the above photo. I cheated a little in order to fix the problem by trimming the leading edge of the notch, effectively moving the notch forward. A beam is supposed to fit precisely into this notch, so I had to sand the stern edge of the planks just enough so the size of that notch was retained. But, as it turns out, the top of the transom gets sanded flush with the top of the planks and later the whole section gets covered with planks right up agains that beam anyway, so you wouldn't have been able to tell that the transom didn't touch the edge of the beam, unless you looked up at it from underneath the boat. With the planks secured in place, I then ran a thin bead of CA glue all along the inside of the joint between the upper and lower planks. Lots of clamps made sure that the planks were held properly together until the glue set. After a while, it was safe to then remove the temporary strong-back, which was a nice and satisfying milestone in the build. With that, the basic hull is complete and we have something that now looks like a boat. There is still the outer stem to add as well as some stern trim that protects the ends of the planks, but aside from that, it's pretty much time to start detailing. Clare

Welcome, there's plenty of room for all! I don't expect we'll be here all that long. Though it's not a simplified construction model, the design is not complicated. The next stage of the build is the hull planking. On a traditional Japanese boat, there are basically only 4 planks, 2 on each side, with the upper planks making a nearly vertical surface. The kit refers to the lower planks as カジキ or Kajiki and the upper planks as タナ or Tana. The term Kajiki is the same term used for the lower planking on the Bekabune as described in Brooks' book and blog. And in fact, the Tosa term for the upper plank, Tana, is related to that of the Bekabune, which is the compound word Uwa-Tana, but run together the "T" becomes a "D" sound and becomes Uwadana. Diagrams in the kit show that the leading edge of the lower planks need to be tapered. There are measurements shown in the instructions, but the exactly shape of the tapered area is not precisely defined. It ended up being a matter of getting something to look like the shape shown in the diagram – a shape that reminds me of the tip of a samurai sword. After tapering the leading edge of the planks, it's then a matter of fitting the planks on. The laser-cut planks have square openings that line up with square tabs that protrude from the central beams on the model. These are actually located slightly aft of center, but they are at the widest point of the boat. I found that mating the planks to those notches was a pretty tight fit, but it was good that the fit was snug, as this helps hold things together while gluing. I glued the planks to these notched frames first and let that dry, which seems to be how the instructions want you to do it. Next, the planks were fit to the transom and glued only at the transom. From what I could tell, it seemed that the top of the planks should be kept low against the frames, so that the planks ended up sticking up above the frames by only a small amount at the stern. On the forward half of the boat, the planks seemed to mostly line up with the top of the frames. The planks were then glued to the stem, which is called the Miyoshi (mee-yoh-shee). The planks had to be positioned so that the very forward edges were flush with or just barely past the stem. After the glue dried, the rest of the planking was glued to the bottom and the frames using medium CA and the applicator tips supplied in the kit. Those, by the way, were a perfect fit for ZAP brand glue bottles. I found it a bit of a struggle to hold the boat while trying to glue the lower planks into place. The strong-back in the center is only glued in at the top and bottom of the transom and the stem, so it's very flexy. It took a while to learn to hold the whole thing while bending the planks and gluing them into place. I should also mention that the kit never has you soak any of the planking. It's long and thin enough that it flexes pretty easily. I suppose it might have made sense, as a ship modeler, to try to pre-bend the planks. But, it certainly wasn't necessary and I managed without soaking or pre-bending the planks. I left the whole thing to dry and then came back and sanded the upper edges of the lower planks. When dealing with the upper planks, the will overlap the edges of the lower planks, and to make a good bonding surface, or watertight surface in the case of the real boat, the outer edge at the top of the lower plank has to be sanded roughly vertical. On the real boat, iron nails would be drive into the bottom edge of the upper plank and into this flat edge of the lower plank. Of course, there's more to it than that, but that's the basic idea. At this stage, the model is just about ready to receive the upper planks or the Uwadana. Clare

Hi Grant, Ken, Carl, Bob welcome! Hope you enjoy the build. It's been an exciting start. I saw one of the blogs on the build of this kit maybe about a year ago, but couldn't find the kit anywhere. When I found one in a listing in Japan, I snatched it up, hesitating only to make sure it would actually get to me one way or another. I've been in contact with boat builder Douglas Brooks for about 2 years now and, following his work, I've been wanting to try scratch building a boat he refers to as a Bekabune, a seaweed harvesting boat from Tokyo Bay. It is relatively simple and small, but I didn't want to fully commit to it yet because I felt there were just too many questions in my head about the building methods. With him the only source of information, I didn't want to be bugging him all the time. I think the Tosa Wasen model project will help me through some of those building issues. I'm getting a sense of the difference between the two boats, what kinds of things might have been simplified in the kit design, construction techniques, etc. I don't expect this to be a long project – I'm already on step 8 of 41. But, I do have a rigging repair I'm finishing up at the same time and then some. Plus, I'm translating each step to make sure I'm not missing anything major, and that takes time. Still, though I'm in no rush, I'm betting I'll be done by New Year. Clare

I purchased this kit from a dealer in Japan, having found it on the Internet some time ago. This is a very accurate model of a traditional fishing boat from a region called Tosa on Shikoku Island, which is one of more Southern of the 4 main islands of Japan. The kit was produced by a company called Thermal Studio, which is actually a manufacturer of glider kits. I suspect that there is some personal connection between the owner and the Tosa Traditional Boat Society. The manufacturer indicates that this kit is made under the supervision of that group. I won't go into too many general kit details, since I already discussed the details of the kit on Model Ship World here: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/12018-110-scale-japanese-fishing-boat-kit-from-thermal-studios/ The build begins with the floor piece. There are apparently different regional names for this and I don't know what the name is in the Tosa region. The term カワラ, or Kawara, is shown a lot for it in the instructions, so I assume that's the regional term in Tosa. I'll have to send an inquiry about these things at some point. The first step in the kit is to bevel the bottom edge of the kawara. To aid in this, there are laser scribed lines. Interestingly enough, the sheet with this part is actually scribed on both sides. I've never seen that in a model kit. This means that the manufacturer had to register the wood and the laser in some way so that the cuts on one side line up with those on the other side. Something interesting about working with the Japanese cedar. Where those dark lines in the grain show, that's where the wood is more dense. When carving, you have to be aware of that because those lines are harder to cut through than the lighter colored wood in between. These dark lines are also harder for the laser to cut through. So, if you look in those etched trapezoidal holes, you can see lines of wood that line up perfectly with the grain. I started to trim out those ridges in the cut-outs. There aren't that many really, so I'll probably continue with that as I go. The other issue with those lines is that they can make the laser scribed lines very hard to follow. Woody Joe uses laser scribing to mark the beveling lines on their kits too, but they use light color Hinoki, so I 've never had to deal with hard to see scribed lines before. The next thing is to partially cut through the Kawara at the dashed line. This is where the bottom of the boat angles upwards. In his book Japanese Wooden Boatbuilding, Douglas Brooks describes this as Kirimage (kee-ree-mah-gay), or "cut bending". I don't know about the Tosa boats, but the Aomori boat he worked on used a technique like this, though there's more to it. In my case, I thought this was a good opportunity to bring out my Japanese hobby saw, which is a very thin pull-type saw. The problem was that it was too thin. It cut nicely, but didn't leave room for the piece to bend upward. So, I pulled out my old razor saw and I cut the line several times, holding the blade at different angles, so that it would cut more of a V-groove. With that done, I could add the floor frames. These are permanent frames, thought a long strong-back piece serves as a temporary alignment guide. This was interesting because so many Japanese boats are frameless, or close to it. At some point I'll look into this further. On the real boat, these may have been added after the planks were in place. There was a fair amount of char on the edges of these and all the other wood pieces. The kit includes a large flat sanding block that made clean-up of these parts pretty easy. I did notice that there was a fair amount of smudging on the wood faces though. I cleaned these up as best I could. I used the sanding block, but tried to keep working very lightly. I test fit the stem to how it was all going to work. The stem is made up of an inner piece and an outer one. The outer stem gets added later, but the inner one goes on next. I wanted to make sure I understood the design before continuing. First, I had to made sure the strong-back was properly aligned. The main issue was to keep it centered and perpendicular to the Kawara. The piece is also to be spot glued at the very ends to keep it in place until it is removed in a later step. Here's where I'm at now. Steps 1 through 6 have been completed. I have only to bevel the stern most frame and the transom to complete step 7, then comes the lower planking. Japanese boats use very wide planks that are often very thick. On the Tosa wasen, the planks appear to be as much at 18" wide. I went ahead and started prepping the lower planks. Where I am cutting in the photo, the laser does not completely cut the dark lines of the wood, so I have to go over this with the X-Acto a few times on each side to cut the pieces free. Clare

Actually, it makes more sense for me to review the kit here so it's not mixed in with the build itself. The kit is not all that heavy, about 1-1/2 pounds, but it's in a long box. I think this kicked the shipping cost up a bit, which was just about $30. Still, a ship model kit, particularly one this rare, for around $170 total, is not bad. That's just about what I paid for the Woody Joe Hacchoro and the Yakatabune kits I bought from Zootoyz. Having ordered through Amazon Japan, the only seller of the kit did not ship internationally, so I had it sent to someone that then re-shipped it for me from Japan and they didn't charge me any service fees. He's done this twice for me and I don't want to impose on him any further. There are companies specifically set up to forward packages from Japan. I just finished setting up an account with one called Tenso.com. Next time, I'll try them out. By the way, it looks like I may have been wrong about this kit being out of production. I thought it was no longer manufactured because the company that makes it, Thermal Studios, primarily makes large model glider kits and doesn't list the Tosa Wasen kit at all. However, I emailed them about it and if we understood each other correctly, they produce the kit. Perhaps it's more of a local item since they are apparently close to Tosa, Japan, and seem to have some kind of connection with the Tosa Traditional Boat Society. The kit itself is basically made up entirely of several laser cut sheets, plus a small bag with various kinds of parts, some other separate laser cut and milled wooden parts, instruction booklet, plan sheet, and even a sanding block. The laser cut sheets are made from Sugi (that's "Sue" plus "Gee" with a hard "G") or Japanese cedar, just like the real Tosa boats. Sugi is aromatic, though not as strong scented as Hinoki used in so many Woody Joe kits. The parts are laser etched with Japanese characters to identify them. This makes locating parts a little more time consuming than if they were numbered. But, I guess it's just a matter of pattern matching. The bag of parts contains all the milled wood parts, all short pieces. Also in the parts bag is the metal anchor, the anchor rope, metal rings and fastener. The kit also includes a roll of yellow hobby masking tape, and for some reason, some plastic applicator tips used for applying CA glue. As expected, the instruction booklet is all in Japanese. The black and white printed book is 26 pages long and includes a parts diagram on the back cover, showing all the laser cut parts on their sheets. The diagram is pretty small and you really need a magnifying glass to read it. But, magnified, the part identifiers all appear to be readable. Instructions are divided up into 41 steps, with each step being clearly illustrated and each looking to be pretty simple steps. Time will tell if the Japanese text printed in the booklet is really necessary or if the model can be build solely by the drawings. But, in addition to the booklet, there is also on large plan sheet that gives a nice overview of the boat at full scale, which, by the way, is 1/10 scale. Overall, this looks like a really nice kit and it's not that expensive. An additional bonus is that the manufacturer, Thermal Studios, created a blog showing photos of the construction steps. This is really nice because it reinforces the written/printed instructions, giving you another view of the steps. Also, using Bing or Google translators, you can view the blog pages in English (or whatever your native language). This isn't always that great, as the translation can be pretty questionable, but it often helps. Thermal Studio's Building a Wasen Blog Having attended Douglas Brooks' talk at the NRG conference this past October, and having been reading through his book on Japanese Wooden Boatbuilding, I can say that this kit looks very authentic and true to the way that the traditional Japanese shipwrights would have actually constructed their boats. This kit would make an ideal study project for someone who is interested in following the work described in Mr. Brooks' book. Personally, I've been planning on scratch building the Urayasu Bekabune that he discussesin his book. I think that building this kit first will help me a long ways towards understanding Japanese boatbuilding so that I can eventually attempt that scratch project. Clare

Hi Denis, The real gratings were wood. Iron gratings don't show up until the steel hulled ships of the late 19th century. The brass gratings in the Amati kit I think were intended to create a very accurate representation of wooden gratings. The idea is not to leave them brass, but to paint them appropriately. As I recall, the gratings show fine detail in proper scale. Personally, I would consider using them, as there's no real advantage to buying manufactured wooden ones. Most of the time, the wooden ones are out of scale and may not fit as precisely as the kit design intends. The only time I'd consider wooden ones is if you got ones produced by Chuck Passaro's Syren Ship Model Company in 1/64-scale, or if you were going to make your own, which is a bit of a process. Clare P.S. This thread is posted in the wrong topic. Should be in the Deck Furniture or Kit Discussions sections or something similar as it is not a build log.

Well, the kit showed up on Friday, wouldn't you know it! I wasn't home and it was shipped via EMS, a fast Asian shipping service that requires signature, so I had wait until Saturday to go pick it up at the post. But, I now am in possession of the kit and it looks great! I'll start a build log on it immediately, starting with an overview of the kit. Thanks all, Clare

Generalizing all Italian as having bad instruction kits does a disservice to kits like those of Amati's Victory Models line. And if you look at say, a Mantua kit, is it really any worse that 70% of Caldercraft kits? Only three Caldercraft kits that I am aware of have excellent instructions. The majority have 6 printed pages and half of those are parts list. I think the real dividing line is between old products and new ones. Many of the newer kits have better instructions in general. However, you're almost never going to find great written instructions in a European kit because they have to be made to serve a large population of diverse languages. As a result, they have to rely on a great deal more visual instruction. People in the USA are a bit spoiled because it's easier for manufacturers here to write instructions as they only have to care about writing in English. It's not the way of the world. Also, there's a tendency to think that it must be easy to write instructions and that it doesn't cost much. But just writing an article or two on building a model, I can tell you that it's time consuming. It's a bit of a struggle to decide what needs to be included and what to leave out, because you can't give complete instructions on every little step. Then to have to get it translated into multiple languages and make sure the translation even makes sense? The trend seems to be to move further toward the visual guide – follow the photos. No language issues to contend with. No writing, typos, editing, translating. It's just the way things are. The best way to learn is to start with a simpler model and figure out what kinds of issues you run into a as a ship modeler. As has been said before, after a few models, you can pretty well just work from the plans. I agree that Midwest are the best to start with, but sadly they're going to be increasingly harder to find. I usually recommend getting a couple ship modeling books like Ship Modeling Simplified by Frank Mastini to start with. But, of course, if you're already here on MSW, then just ask questions, post build logs and soak up the knowledge! Clare

Happy Thanksgiving All! Unfortunately, that means there's no mail service today and I just checked tracking and the kit just passed through US customs in neighboring San Francisco yesterday. It's so close I can taste it! It's a little like chicken... Well, I should have it by Saturday anyway. So, I'll just have to be patient. For anyone as anxious to see more, as I am, here are a couple of the photos from the Amazon-Japan listing I ordered from: Clare

Thanks everyone. I'm anxious to start a build log, but I should probably wait until I actually have the kit in hand! So, in the meantime, I found another blog with photos of a finished model that looks really nice: http://thermal2.exblog.jp/17591843/ If you have trouble connecting, or just don't feel like visiting the site, here's a photo from it: What I really like about this kit is the scale. It's not just that 1/10 is a big scale. It's also the same scale that traditional Japanese boat builders generally use for drawing their plans. Apparently, these are usually drawn on planks of wood and only show the bare minimum information necessary, which is less than what we're used to. I've been in communication with Douglas Brooks and I should make an attempt to scratch build a traditional Japanese boat, but this will help me get a better sense of how they go together. I have to say also that the Woody Joe kits I've built have definitely helped me develop a better understanding of Japanese traditional construction. Even though the kits aren't built in the same manner, the overall design is more apparent to me now. In fact, I'm feeling like I'm almost able to build one of the complicated coastal transports from scratch. I see at least an attempt on the horizon... okay, it's a pretty distant horizon. Time for me to go back and imagine where the kit might be in its transit! Clare

Okay, I just had to share about this. I've seen this blog before that features a 1/10-scale traditional 20 foot long Japanese fishing boat from southern Japan. This looks like an awesome model and when I first ran across this blog, I was sad to discover that the kit is apparently out of production: http://thermal2.exblog.jp/18578474/ Then, today, Kazunori Morikawa of zootoyz.jp posted the link on his Facebook page. I saw this and just HAD to take another look to see if I could find the kit. I went onto Amazon.co.jp and THERE IT WAS! Only 1 available. At around $140, it was a lot cheaper than other projects I've been spending money on, so I grabbed it up. I have someone in Japan who can ship it to me so I had it shipped there. I hope to have it in my hot little hands in less than 2 weeks. This kit is not a Woody Joe kit, but Woody Joe's Hacchoro and Yakatabune kits are probably most similar to it. This kit is rare enough that I may just have to build a copy of it from scratch and keep the original intact. Here is another Japanese blog site with a few photos of a finished model: http://thermal2.exblog.jp/17591843/ I'll definitely have to start a build log for this one if all works out. I'll report back later! Clare

grsjax, I remember the kit, but unfortunately, I never built it. I built a couple of the original Laughing Whale kits, the Sharpie and the Swampscott Dory. The Dory is now made by BlueJacket. I also still have the big Laughing Whale kit of the Muscongus Bay Lobster Smack in the closet. Had it for something like 15 years thinking it would be neat to build it for RC sail. In general, the kits are a bit rough in the die-cut area, but their subjects are nice boats. The plans are pretty simple, but usable. Instructions are very basic as I recall. With a little work, should make a fine model. Hope to see a build log soon! Clare

Dr. Per, they still list it on the website. But, I've contacted him on two occasions over the past couple years and he says he doesn't make them any more. I don't know if it's good or not, but was willing to try it out. I was finally ready to bight the bullet last year or so and found out they were discontinued. Clare

Hi Dr. Per, don't take it too hard. It's difficult to overcome a name that is so connected to such an extremely successful show. That said, perhaps we can all work a little harder at not taking over another person's thread with off-topic comments? I myself have purchased a few of the Vanda-Lay products. When working on my first scratch builds, I used their Acra-Mill Plus set up to help me make my own blocks. It actually worked quite well for cutting the strips to size, thicknessing them, and then slotting both single and double sheave blocks and also slotting them for the stropping rope. The AcraMill Plus uses the same "universal" tool holding clamps, which I agree aren't a great design. They do work, but as you said, they can mar the plastic of the Dremel tool. Also, it's possible to clamp too tightly and affect the motor itself. But, the parts are well machined, and the Vanda-Lay tools are particularly useful when you don't have much room to work. They also used to make a Treenail Maker that I wish was still available. Very good review! Clare

The taffrail is now complete. Was a bit of a challenge getting it all together, but it seemed to turn out okay. I still have some small details to add, mostly the beds for the mounting of the swivel guns. Besides that, nearly all the hull detail on this model is done. Next step will be to add the cannons into place. 1/96 is probably too small for me to rig tackle blocks, but I'll think about it. This ship has 12 guns to rig. It's not like it's a 38 gun frigate, and there is a lot of open space on the deck, so I'll have to give it some thought. Also, rigging is coming up pretty quick and I have to start working on the shrouds and adding blocks to the mainmast. More on that next time. Clare

Didn't do much on the Alert while finishing up the Yakatabune model. But, now that that's out of the way, time to put some work in on the Alert again. This year, I decided not to risk any damage to the model by bringing it to the NRG conference, but a number of people asked about it. So, I kind of regret not taking it. For one thing, it serves as a great advertisement for Shipyard paper model kits in general. However, this model is far enough along that I now need something in the earlier stages of construction again. I do have an HMS Mercury kit in 1/96 scale that will probably do the trick. I also have the GPM detail kit for it. Plus, I believe that there's a set of sails and a masting kit at Ages of Sail that's been part of a box of stuff that's just been hidden on a shelf for the last year and a half. So, that may be the next background paper model project. In the meantime, I cut a thin strip of photo paper that I printed a black line on. I then painted the edge of the thin strip and cut it in short length to serve as trunnion caps on the Alert's cannon carriages. I've also been working on the spars and added the yard to the topsail and the gaff to the mainsail. I also added swiss pear blocks to the spreader yard, but I've been feeling like I want to make as much of the model from paper as possible. So, I'm going back and adding paper blocks in place of the swiss pear ones. They don't look as good, but the more of the model that is paper, the better, since it IS a paper model. I've also started adding the stanchions of the taffrail that surrounds the quarterdeck. This is one of those things where I "thought" myself to a standstill. Having thought less about it, I've now started to make a little progress again. I'll swap the blocks and see if I can't finish the taffrail soon. With that and adding the cannons done, it will officially be time to rig. Clare

Bob, your Higaki Kaisen is looking great. Sorry you didn't make it to the conference with your model. I was hoping to meet you. As it was, this year's conference was sort of the opening of Japanese traditional boat models. Speaker Douglas Brooks gave a talk that was extremely well received and he was very happy about how well the conference went for him. I think he sold almost all the books he brought. There were two models he brought that were built by his teacher in Japan, so there was some Japanese boat models there. Any thoughts of making it to next year's conference in San Diego? Regardless, I'm enjoying watching your progress on the model and getting some inspiration from your work! Clare

Beautiful job on your Yakatabune, Richard! I love the way you built the lighting. Hey, I know what you mean about having to reattach the support rails. I had the same issue on my 1/24 scale version. Congratulations! Clare

Pat, nice coppering job. And I love the feathering screw – Very cool! Your build has me thinking about my early steam era projects. Gotta get back to the Saginaw (1859), plus continuing development work on the Kanrin Maru (1856). Very inspirational! Clare

I appreciate all the supportive comments, All. Thank you. Hope to see some more ship modelers trying out these kits. And, also hope to see some of you in Mystic! Clare

Thank you Mark, Grant, Jeff for the kind words! And, arrrr, I think I WILL have a beer now! Clare