catopower

Nice kit review James. I'm glad to see AL back at it under the new ownership. I know that some people are concerned about instructions on DVD. I don't have a DVD drive on my main computers either, but downloading the 500-page pdf shouldn't take very long for most of us. My download was just about one minute. Viewing it doesn't require top hardware either. My computer is 9 years old, has 16GB of RAM, and it flies through the pages without a hitch. However, DVD drives are very slow, and accessing the pdf on it could be a lot less enjoyable unless you copy the file to your hard drive and view it from there. Viewing the file where your doing your building might be more of an issue for some.

This is an old topic, but I would just add a word of caution. Make sure that when microwaving wood that the towel wrapping is wet and that you monitor the process very closely if you're not familiar with it. I know of a guy in a ship model club I belong to tried this method, kept at it, because the wood wasn't flexible. He let the towel dry out, the wood dried out, the microwave oven caught fire and was destroyed in the process. Cost him a few hundred dollars. Now, this is clearly user error and nothing really to do with heating the wood really. But, just something to be aware of.

Welcome Tim. This is the Panart/Mantua kit. It's 1/78 scale. I recognize it from the details, particularly the base. It's this kit: https://www.agesofsail.com/ecommerce/mantua/panart/ma738-panart-victory-wooden-ship-kit.html But, as Mark said, it basically needs to be rigged, and just about any Victory rigging plans should work.

BikerMart, I think you'll generally find that Billing Boats kits, if not blessed with great instructions, seem to have very accurate shape. And, while it's no Caldercraft Victory kit, I was just recently looking over the instructions for the Billing Boats HMS Victory kit, and compared to other kits, it looks like it's pretty buildable, and should result in a very nice model. But, good luck whichever way you choose to go. I'm sure you'll get lots of great support here!

I think kit instructions are difficult to write, and time consuming to develop, which is why most kits have terrible instructions. Particularly in older kits, I think, where you were expected to figure out a lot of things yourself. Looks like you've got a good attitude and a good handle on it though. I didn't even notice that you had mentioned that you have the full Corel HMS Victory kit too. Well, that will certainly be a challenge. But, it looks like you have all the right references for it!

Hi Steve, I love your approach to this build. You're really doing a great job and giving me a whole new respect for how well a kit like this can be done. It's interesting that yours is a 40 year old kit, I think I read in one of your earlier posts. I think if you opened one of these kits today, it would look exactly the same. Your build is really coming along, and I'm enjoying following the work.

The plywood in the OcCre kits is definitely fragile when dry, so definitely make sure to dampen the bulwarks piece. The problem is that you don't want to soak it too long or the layers will start to separate. I'd test soak a piece of the plywood scrap in the kit to see how much you can bend it after just a few minutes of soaking, as well as how long you can safely soak it before the plywood layer separate. As Jeff pointed out, it's mostly the bow stern section that needs the dampening/soaking. You can probably just do that in the sink, or wrap the piece with a wet cloth. First, make sure you bevel the frames a little more than you show in the photo. Also, the instructions indicate that bow needs to be filed down to a width of 2mm as well as the skeg – aft end of the keel.

Hi Anthony, I'm curious what you used for the HMS Blandford, as you say it was your first scratch project. A number of suggestions have already been made here. But, one comment I have is that Jeff Staudt's HMS Granado cross-section plans would be an interesting change from the other cross-sections, as the Granado was a bomb vessel. Also, I've noted that he incorporates some simplification, which should then be an easier build than some of the others mentioned here, if that's an issue.

Yeah, I've seen too many questionable kits, both in paper and in wood on ebay. These days, the only things I'll use ebay for is if I feel like getting materials or tools when I can't find them elsewhere. Well, that and used computers. Pretty hard to pirate that stuff! But, thanks for the original posting Chris. I'd actually looked at a couple kits I was familiar with and considered buying off of ebay. This is a good reminder not to do that. The particular ones are easy enough to get from gpm.pl where I've purchased many things before. Plus, when you go to legit seller's websites, you often discover so much other cool stuff you just gotta buy, including kits as well as after-market accessories, etc.

I'm just speculating. What do I know???

Small update for anyone interested! You might have noticed that the kit doors are made so that they work as boarding ramps. While I've seen doors on other atakebune models and painting like this, it's not the way the museum model's doors work. On that model, and in the original artwork, they are outward-opening double doors, with a metal bracket on the inside for barring the doors shut. For boarding, I believe there would be ramps dropped down from inside. The one good thing about this arrangement is that a counter attack might be prevented from boarding the atakebune by shoving the ramps all the way out or cutting them loose. If the ramps and the doors are one in the same, you have to re-raise the ramps to close up these openings. Assuming these actually have ropes for lowering/raising the ramps, if there ropes are cut, there's no way to close up the big hole in the side. And, yes, in any case, the sculling oars in front of the doors have to be taken in before I can do anything. If you look at my earlier model photos, you can see how the doors looked before I did any work to them. Below is an update photo I took before modifying the doors. But, note that I've added most of the remaining horizontal trim on the yagura, or box structure. The very bottom rail has to be left off for now, as I have a modification to make to it at the stern. But, the upper 3 rails were added, giving the model is little more detail in depth, like the museum model. I started modifying the doors on one side. But, I can't fix them into place yet, until I decide if I should leave any of these open. The problem is that the interior does not at all look correct. To begin with, the sculling oars are not full oars, they're only the lower portion that sticks out. I could make a few of them full-sized, but then I'd have to come up with a way to properly rig them with ropes, called hayao. By the way, these doors aren't fixed into place. I just have them taped into place from the back side. I'll eventually need to add something to represent hinges. And, I'll think about leaving one open door. More later.

At that period, I think most likely color is black for the mast tops, doublings, bowsprit.

Here are the results of my latest minor modification. Below, you can see how the deck looks just aft of the mast. I cut open a slot and made a cover for it, which fits nicely into place. You can also see a pair of mast supports behind that, and there's deck reinforcement plate behind that. The reinforcement place is probably just a thicker section of the deck in reality. It is through this thick plate that a pair of halliards lead out from the deck and up to the tip of the mast. The photo below is actually an earlier photo where I was using a temporary assembly to figure out the positioning and workability of the mast support on the left. Also, you'll notice that the thick plate I just mentioned is not in place yet. Leaving the mast free and the deck covers removable allows me to illustrate how the mast might appear if it is in a raised position. Again, this is only speculation, based on what little I could see of the deck of the Saga Nagoya Castle Museum model. But, I think this makes sense, and this shows it as workable. More work on the yagura, or box structure, to come next.

Welcome John, and good luck with your Terror build. It's a very interesting ship and I'll look forward to seeing your build progress.

Thank you, Druxey. It's a good question, to which no one will ever know the answer. It's all speculation. I figure that either, A, it gives the occupants of the castle structure a better view without having the mast so close to the structure, or, B, it's an intermediate step in tucking the whole mast down below deck where it would lower the center of gravity of the ship. On most ships, the mast is lowered across the top of the ship, and the simple, single structure on top of most Atakebune had a hole in the front and back ends for the mast to pass through. But, with such an elaborate structure on the deck, that just wouldn't be possible here. And we don't actually know what the inside of the yagura or box structure looks like, so it could easily have a kind of space down the middle for storing not only the mast, but the yard as well. But, it's just my guess. I'm going to try to pass this by some knowledgeable folks in Japan to see what they think about the idea. Most likely, the best answer I'll get is that no one really knows for sure.

For those following my Atakebune build, my apologies for the progress delay! I could try to make an excuse that sanding down all those sculling oars got boring and slowed me down. But, that wouldn't be entirely true. I did finally finish sanding those oars. I guess the model only needs 66 of them, but I'm sure I counted 72 in the kit. Maybe there are spares. Also, I made the mast. It has a square cross-section and is tapered, but was actually quite easy make, as the parts are all laser-cut and simply need gluing together and then staining or dying of the wood. Also cut the hole in the deck planking. That was easy too, as the thin plywood sub-deck has the hole already cut, so the planking just needed to be cut through. As I mentioned before, the forward rake of the mast is quite unusual, and it doesn't appear on any other Japanese watercraft I've ever seen or read about. But, I'm more convinced about my speculation that the mast would have been raised to a vertical position when carrying the large squaresail. One thing I found interesting that is unexplained about the kit, is that there is a hole cut down below to hold the foot of the angled mast in place. However, there is a second hole just in front of the first. If you place the foot of the mast there, the mast sits vertically... Below, you can see the lower structure with the two supporting holes for stepping the foot of the mast. My guess is that the designers at Woody Joe agreed that the mast would be raised to a vertical position when carrying a sail, but had it stay in its position at the very front of the hull. My belief is that the foot of the mast remained in the same location, and that the mast was hauled into a vertical position, which really moves the body of the mast very close to the front of the castle structure. In any case, I don't plan to raise the sail, so I'll leave the mast in its forward leaning configuration. Now, I'm going to place the panels that would cover the slot for raising the mast. I'm considering actually cutting open the deck now, so I can illustrate how this process would work, and how the mast would look in it's raised sailing position. Hmmm... Okay. I'm off to it.

Welcome Artesania Latina! You made two of the very first wooden ship models I ever built!

Congratulations, Mike! And thanks for supporting the ship modeling community in this way. Good luck with the business. There are still some titles I want to buy, so I'll be sure to send some business your way soon!

The castle structure is now done, except for the decorative fish fittings that adorn the corners of the castle towers. These fish figures are called shachihoko, and are found on many castles, gates, and the homes of some nobles. I'll save these for later, as it's easy to knock them off during construction – Something I know from first-hand experience. Anyway, here's where we are as of now... Next, I'll need to get back to finishing the lower hull modifications. But, before I get to that, I thought I'd start taking care of the many sculling oars I'll need. These are partial oars, so I don't have to make the whole oar, just the lower part that sticks out of the ship. This ship is represented as having 36 pairs of oars. Below, at the bottom, you can see the pieces as provided on the laser-cut sheets. Immediately above those is an example of one oar that's been cleaned up. At the top is a sculling oar from another model, so you can see what the whole thing should look like. I might have to make some full-length oars from scratch if I display any of the doors open. But, I don't know if I'll do that, as that leads to so many other details that aren't provided in the kit, like the internal deck, walls, and structural members, etc. Cleaning up all these oars is slow going. Below are 12 cleaned-up sculling oars. Only 60 more to go. Now, another modification I'm considering, though perhaps this one will be fairly minor. The kit includes a forward leaning mast, equipped with a yard and sail. Only a mast is depicted on the museum model, as that's all that's shown in the original painting. But, the kit looks like this: Now, I think whole idea that the mast wasn't in the center of the ship is somewhat controversial. But, that it leans out in front of the shipmay be even more controversial. To my knowledge, this arrangement isn't seen on any other Japanese ship in history. Now, I have noticed that the museum ship has a feature on deck that leads me to think that the forward leaning position might be just to drop it out of the way from the castle structure, and that it might be pulled upright when actually sailing. This would pivot the mast at its base, deep inside the hull, and cause it to come up through the deck, a bit further aft. Unfortunately, the best museum photo I have that shows any of the deck in front of the castle structure is the on below. But, in it, you can see a few features that I've marked out with color arrows. The red arrow points to what look like mast supports. To me, these are familiar as the tops of supports that stand to either side of the mast. The mast would usually be lashed to these supports. The green arrow points to what look like deck panels. Removable panels that stick up from the main deck would cover a long, narrow opening, through which the mast could be raised to a vertical position. Similar panels are seen on coastal transports. And, similar slots for the raising of masts are seen on other types of Japanese sailing craft. Now, this could simply be a museum invention to try to explain how this forward leaning mast might work. But, it makes sense to me. I can't see the whole features, but I can speculate. And, it would be easy enough to add this to the deck. Plus, it would give me a reason not to add the sail provided in the kit, which looks a bit odd to me anyway. I suppose the yard arm could also easily be stored below deck and brought up through that slot when they decide to raise the mast and sail. I'm going to try running this by a couple people who are familiar with atakebune before I make modifications there.

Not done yet with the castle structure details, but I did finish with the eaves detail and with with edge "tiles". Also, if you look closely, you'll see that there are new pieces added to the peaks of the roofs, as well as some decorative pieces that kind of accent the corners. I've only finished about 1/3 of those. You'll notice that some of the ends of these decorations haven't been painted yet, but that will come. Also, there's a piece across the top of the natural finished roof that I haven't added yet. Since this roof is longer than what the kit provides, I have to fashion that piece from scratch. I just haven't figure out yet if this needs to be a natural finished strip. But, I think it probably is. There is also a decorative piece that will fit on the end of that strip. There's a little laser-cut piece provided in the kit for that. The last parts of the castle structure are castings that go at the ends of the two main roof peaks. More on that later. I'll this part of the model done by tomorrow, if not later tonight.

Regarding my Atakebune model, I'm working on more of the details of the castle structure. There's plenty to go onto the rooftops, but first I need to add the simulated supporting structure underneath. On the left are the pre-milled strips that go underneath the eaves of the roof. I gave these a couple treatments of natural teak stain, but the milled wood has a fairly rough surface from the machining, so the color application isn't perfectly smooth. Still, it's actually better than it looks in these photos. Anyway, the parts are mostly unseen, except at the edges. On the right are the edging pieces for the tile roof. These will go on later. I painted the underside of the roof a dark gray near the edges before I added these eaves pieces. They have to be cut to fit, but all the angles are 45 degree, so that part is actually pretty easy. One thing is that on some of the eaves ended up a little narrower than the rest – that might be a measurement error during the roof construction. But, I had narrow these pieces in a couple places. The hardest part yet to come is to fit pieces under those overlapping corners like the one just left of center in the photo below. The edging pieces for the tile roof will get applied after I'm done with the eaves. They'll need a little more cleanup due to the splintering from the machining process. I did some cleanup already, but it looks like it could use some more, followed by repainting. In any case, this is just to show where these will fit. This won't take that much longer. Then, I've got some trim that will go on at the roof seams and a few decorative castings that go onto the roof peaks.

After taking a couple weeks off the Atakebune project, I'm back on it now. I had a couple things come up. Plus, I wanted to make some progress on another project that I'm just about finished up with – a build of Amati's American galley gunboat kit they call the Arrow. I didn't do a build log here, but I'll post some photos in the gallery in a couple weeks when it's done. Anyway, as I got back to the Atakebune, I've been thinking about next steps. A fellow wasen enthusiast (wasen is the Japanese term for a Japanese-style wooden boat) found a website of a modeler in Japan, who's built a number of historical Japanese subjects, including another Atakebune. So, I got a ship modeler friend who is a member of the Japanese ship modeling society The Rope Tokyo to make some inquiries. Now, I'm in email contact with him and getting some pointers about making Japanese-style sails and such. Anyway, it's a pretty interesting site: 日本丸図＆模型 | 信長の鉄甲船の復元模型、阿武丸 (sayama-sy.com) Yes, it's in Japanese. But, you can open it up in Google Translate if you like. Or try this link, which should open up in Google Translate: https://www-sayama--sy-com.translate.goog/lf?_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en You'll see some interesting modern paintings of atakebune and such. I have to learn more about the artist. Most of these paintings, and the model built by the owner of the site, depict a different atakebune from the one I'm building. But, still one of the large type.

Well, more progress this week on the castle structure and finishing the trim on the stern section that I rebuilt. I have to say that I'm really starting to like the way the castle structure is looking, now that the lower trim is in place. Next, I'll be finishing the details of the castle structure roof, including adding the simulated beam structure to the undersides of the overhangs. Then, I'll be able to finish the details of the box structure.

Knightyo, I don't mean to be disputing your memory on your build. But, I have seen this kind of thing before. And as I recall (my own memory may be very disputable here), it wasn't so much an issue of the copper flaking off, but some coating/finish applied to the completed model that has worn or flaked off, leaving partial exposure. Or possibly that something spilled on the copper which was not initially noticeable, but caused the copper beneath to tarnish at a different rate from the rest of the hull. Maybe something like CA that was used to help affix/repair some tape that didn't adhere well? This small blemish aside, you're coppering job looks excellent.

LOL 🤣 Druxey, I know you mean that in only the nicest way. However, I can't help but have flashbacks of my old girlfriend looking at hours or days of my ship modeling work and saying "It doesn't look any different..." 😣