Bob Cleek

Just a tip if you haven't tried it as yet: You can practice technique using water as a medium on absorbent paper, perhaps with a touch of watercolor or food coloring mixed in if your paper doesn't show much wet/dry contrast. Often, just plain water will show up quite well. Brown paper bag paper works well because it gets dark when wet. In this way, There's really no clean-up after practicing that needs to be done unless you've run some colored water through your gun and even then, all that's required is to just rinse it out. 

Just a tip if you haven't tried it as yet: You can practice technique using water as a medium on absorbent paper, perhaps with a touch of watercolor or food coloring mixed in if your paper doesn't show much wet/dry contrast. Often, just plain water will show up quite well. Brown paper bag paper works well because it gets dark when wet. In this way, There's really no clean-up after practicing that needs to be done unless you've run some colored water through your gun and even then, all that's required is to just rinse it out. 

Ah, but if you needed to know the time in order to navigate, I bet you would be!  

Ah, but if you needed to know the time in order to navigate, I bet you would be!  

No. It's not a "very debatable topic," notwithstanding how much it's been debated. There's a big difference between something which is "debatable" and something which is "debated." Just as there is a big difference between an opinion and a fact. As the saying goes, "We have a right to our own opinions, but not to our own facts."
 
When a fact is easily ascertained under conventional standards, such as "the night sky is dark," opining that the night sky is light is not the fair expression of an opinion, but, rather, an erroneous statement of fact, which, when propounded seriously as fact is often colloquially referred to as "BS." When one expresses their opinion about an ascertainable fact, it constitutes the proponent's admission that they actually don't know what they are talking about, in which case, when they assert a position, they are said to be "BS-ing." Given the obvious olfactory limitations of the medium, it's sometimes difficult to easily discern whether someone is "BS-ing" on the internet. It is generally a dead give-away when, after having been soundly proven wrong, the proponent of "BS" continues "BS-ing" with deflecting comments such as "Well, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree," "Well, I have a right to my own opinion," and, "Well, I'm afraid we're way off-topic at this point."
 
Vessels rigged with deadeyes and lanyards today will frequently have lanyards colored other than very dark brown or black because their lanyards are today frequently made of synthetic cordage which does not require treatment with old-time tar-based coatings to preserve it and the vessels' owners don't care about authentic period appearances. If a model depicts a modern deadeyes-and-lanyard rigged vessel, the model should obviously depict the lanyards as the color they appear on the prototype vessel with allowances for "scale distance viewing." If a model depicts the deadeyes and lanyards on a vessel during the "pre-synthetic cordage era," considering scale viewing distance, they should be black. That's a fact which was never in dispute until some ship modelers started putting light colored (sometimes even ecru or white) lanyards on their models and asserting that light colored lanyards were correct "in their opinion."  There's no need to opine. Deadeyes and lanyards continue to be used on vessels of all sizes to this day and when natural cordage is used, it continues to be tarred and painted black to ensure its longevity, just as it was in earlier times. This isn't an opinion, it's a fact. (I once owned and maintained a ketch traditionally rigged with deadeyes and lanyards and I've done my share of full-scale traditional marlingspike rigging on more than a few other vessels. I know the difference between black and any other color and the difference between natural fiber cordage and synthetic.  )
 
Interestingly, now that high-strength UV-resistant cordage [Dyneema (tm)] is becoming popular in the high-tech racing machines, we are seeing modern deadeyes and lanyards and cordage standing rigging replacing turnbuckles and wire cable standing rigging on modern sailing vessels across the board. The lanyards pictured here aren't black because they don't require tar and paint to keep them from deteriorating in the elements.
 

 

 
Today's cordage comes in an unlimited range of colors. I'm sure somebody will rig a deadeye with a fuschia lanyard some day, but that's not going to make fuschia lanyards correct on a 18th Century ship of the line. I suppose if you are modeling a modern day vessel with deadeyes and lanyards you can correctly make them any color of the rainbow.
 

 

 
 

Actually, the thingy doesn't really tie the knot, you do this separately. All it does, it keeps the knot close to the pearl in this case.
 
You can do this perhaps even more easily with a needle held in a pin-vise around which you make the knot - pull on the loose end until the knot sits close to point were you want to have it and slowly pull out the needle while still pushing it against the pearl or whatever.

My first kit was the Vanguard Lady Eleanor.  The quality of the materials and the instructions were excellent. The finished model does have a few minor mistakes but I am happy with the finished result. As my skills improve building more challenging Vanguard models is definitely in the plans for me. This is definitely a hobby where you get what you pay for. Considering the time and effort a good quality kit is well worth the investment.
 

PIeter, In addition to the David Antscherl designed kits I would look at Syren's Cheerful for a top quality kit before considering any others.  
Allan
 
 
 
 

I couldn't agree more. I'm on my first kit, Polaris from Occre, and whilst it is indeed a good beginner kit in that it's simple, it is also uninspiring and often frustrating to work on.
 
The cheap materials (especially the "walnut" ply which has the tendency to crumble as soon as you touch it and the 0.6mm "walnut" strips which are so hard and brittle that it's nearly impossible to do anything with them) are really no fun at all to work with. The instructions are simplified so much that if you follow them you don't learn to plank properly (and if you try the wood quality drives you insane (this is where I'm struggling now, I almost binned my model last week) and you don't learn to do rigging properly (I've decided I'm not going to try on this model, I just don't have enough knowledge to make something of it).
 
So in the end, at best, you end up with an OK model... I'll be putting much more thought into what my second build wil be. The Vanguard kits are at the top of my list, because they seem to have excellent instructions and are designed so even a beginner can achieve a good result. 

I'll throw in one more technique pointer I learned from a professional painter.
 
Be very careful to keep your roll of tape from laying down on any surface which is not dust-free. Easiest way to accomplish this is by habitually storing all your opened packages of tape in a zip lock plastic bag. (This will also keep the tape fresher. The adhesive won't dry out over time.)
 
If a roll of tape is laid on a dusty surface (like a bench top right after sanding,) the adhesive on the edge of the roll will pick up all the dust and grit. It may not be visually apparent, but it's there. When the tape is applied, that dust and dirt ends up right on the edge of your tape and often gets under the very edge of the tape. This promotes paint bleeding beneath the edge of the tape and makes getting a sharp clean edge when the tape is taken up much more difficult to achieve. 
 
I second Keith's endorsement of 3M tapes. Cheap masking tape is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Regular blue painter's tape, even 3M, isn't really made for getting perfect masked edges at fine scale viewing distances. (It's made for house painting.) For razor sharp lines on models and a less aggressive adhesive that doesn't lift paint so readily, I'd stick to 3M or Scotch "Fine Line" tape (from the automotive paint supply store) which comes in a range of tape widths down to 1/4", or Tamiya's model tape, which I believe is pretty much the same thing packaged in a smaller quantity at a higher price. These tapes are specially designed to produce perfectly sharp paint edges on curved surfaces and are made of thin material that minimizes raised paint line edges. They'll cost a bit more more, but if you keep the roll in a plastic bag, it should last for years.
 
 
 
 

For example, consider Syren's Medway Longboat. It's not exactly a "beginners" model, but an attentive, determined, careful builder who can follow instructions (or ask Chuck Passaro, the kit designer here on MSW) can build quite an impressive model of an Admiralty longboat that is identical in all respects with the contemporary model at the Royal Maritime Museum at Greenwich.
 
Syren's website makes the instructions available. The link is halfway down the page: Medway Longboat (1742) (syrenshipmodelcompany.com)  Chuck's instructions make all the difference in the world. As far as I've seen, only Syren and Vanguard have produced models with instructions that make it possible for an entry-level modeler to succeed if you follow them step by step. There's no reason your first model has to end up looking crudely built if you take time and follow good instructions. You'll find many here at MSW who have "gone over to the dark side" and scratch-build spectacular works of art over a period of years after spending the better part of a lifetime studying and researching their subjects. Without that knowledge, which takes time to acquire, it's impossible to build a kit model that looks like the (professionally built) picture on the kit box without extensive "kit bashing" and replacement of stock parts and materials with after-market upgrades. You'll get there soon enough, but you aren't likely to take any wrong turns starting out with something like the Medway Longboat kit which really does make it possible for a dedicated beginner to build a model any modeler would be proud to display. 
 
In my opinion, the best way to learn is by building a challenging, sophisticated kit that has good instructions, rather than a "dumbed down" "beginner's kit" with inadequate instructions. 

I'll throw in one more technique pointer I learned from a professional painter.
 
Be very careful to keep your roll of tape from laying down on any surface which is not dust-free. Easiest way to accomplish this is by habitually storing all your opened packages of tape in a zip lock plastic bag. (This will also keep the tape fresher. The adhesive won't dry out over time.)
 
If a roll of tape is laid on a dusty surface (like a bench top right after sanding,) the adhesive on the edge of the roll will pick up all the dust and grit. It may not be visually apparent, but it's there. When the tape is applied, that dust and dirt ends up right on the edge of your tape and often gets under the very edge of the tape. This promotes paint bleeding beneath the edge of the tape and makes getting a sharp clean edge when the tape is taken up much more difficult to achieve. 
 
I second Keith's endorsement of 3M tapes. Cheap masking tape is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Regular blue painter's tape, even 3M, isn't really made for getting perfect masked edges at fine scale viewing distances. (It's made for house painting.) For razor sharp lines on models and a less aggressive adhesive that doesn't lift paint so readily, I'd stick to 3M or Scotch "Fine Line" tape (from the automotive paint supply store) which comes in a range of tape widths down to 1/4", or Tamiya's model tape, which I believe is pretty much the same thing packaged in a smaller quantity at a higher price. These tapes are specially designed to produce perfectly sharp paint edges on curved surfaces and are made of thin material that minimizes raised paint line edges. They'll cost a bit more more, but if you keep the roll in a plastic bag, it should last for years.
 
 
 
 

I'll throw in one more technique pointer I learned from a professional painter.
 
Be very careful to keep your roll of tape from laying down on any surface which is not dust-free. Easiest way to accomplish this is by habitually storing all your opened packages of tape in a zip lock plastic bag. (This will also keep the tape fresher. The adhesive won't dry out over time.)
 
If a roll of tape is laid on a dusty surface (like a bench top right after sanding,) the adhesive on the edge of the roll will pick up all the dust and grit. It may not be visually apparent, but it's there. When the tape is applied, that dust and dirt ends up right on the edge of your tape and often gets under the very edge of the tape. This promotes paint bleeding beneath the edge of the tape and makes getting a sharp clean edge when the tape is taken up much more difficult to achieve. 
 
I second Keith's endorsement of 3M tapes. Cheap masking tape is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Regular blue painter's tape, even 3M, isn't really made for getting perfect masked edges at fine scale viewing distances. (It's made for house painting.) For razor sharp lines on models and a less aggressive adhesive that doesn't lift paint so readily, I'd stick to 3M or Scotch "Fine Line" tape (from the automotive paint supply store) which comes in a range of tape widths down to 1/4", or Tamiya's model tape, which I believe is pretty much the same thing packaged in a smaller quantity at a higher price. These tapes are specially designed to produce perfectly sharp paint edges on curved surfaces and are made of thin material that minimizes raised paint line edges. They'll cost a bit more more, but if you keep the roll in a plastic bag, it should last for years.
 
 
 
 

I'll throw in one more technique pointer I learned from a professional painter.
 
Be very careful to keep your roll of tape from laying down on any surface which is not dust-free. Easiest way to accomplish this is by habitually storing all your opened packages of tape in a zip lock plastic bag. (This will also keep the tape fresher. The adhesive won't dry out over time.)
 
If a roll of tape is laid on a dusty surface (like a bench top right after sanding,) the adhesive on the edge of the roll will pick up all the dust and grit. It may not be visually apparent, but it's there. When the tape is applied, that dust and dirt ends up right on the edge of your tape and often gets under the very edge of the tape. This promotes paint bleeding beneath the edge of the tape and makes getting a sharp clean edge when the tape is taken up much more difficult to achieve. 
 
I second Keith's endorsement of 3M tapes. Cheap masking tape is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Regular blue painter's tape, even 3M, isn't really made for getting perfect masked edges at fine scale viewing distances. (It's made for house painting.) For razor sharp lines on models and a less aggressive adhesive that doesn't lift paint so readily, I'd stick to 3M or Scotch "Fine Line" tape (from the automotive paint supply store) which comes in a range of tape widths down to 1/4", or Tamiya's model tape, which I believe is pretty much the same thing packaged in a smaller quantity at a higher price. These tapes are specially designed to produce perfectly sharp paint edges on curved surfaces and are made of thin material that minimizes raised paint line edges. They'll cost a bit more more, but if you keep the roll in a plastic bag, it should last for years.
 
 
 
 

I found 3M masking tape to be the best. 

How you remove the tape matters too!  Avoid pulling /lifting it up at 90-deg. to the surface.  Instead, get one end loose and pull it horizontally, back towards the other end.  This will minimize lifting forces that cause the adhesive to take wood fibers with it.   

The Rope Walk makes rope..  I don't think the server can do that, unless he has some kind of combo machine I am unaware of..

Certainly not to be argumentative but I have three low cost pin vises that were fine for hand drilling when the jaws actually held. But, if I mounted them in a drill to make multiple holes they wobbled like a hula dancer. I purchased two Staretts that cover 0-1/8 inch and they run true as a judge. I like the rubber coated ones so they don't roll off my bench and certainly not anywhere near $120. They are reasonably priced and well worth the price! An example:  https://www.amazon.com/Starrett-166C-Insulated-Octagonal-Handle/dp/B00375DEPI/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2AZX2RQPW3PSQ&keywords=starrett+pin+vise+166a&qid=1643428419&sprefix=starrett+pin+vise+166a%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-3 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure. 

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

Would it be a valuable service to create, post, and maintain such a list so that modelers could be encouraged to avoid purchasing such kits?  Perhaps add "lack of accuracy" warnings to the forum kit database if it comes to pass.  It certainly makes sense to ostracize counterfeit ship kits. Are kits of "counterfeit" ships all that much different? 

It has nothing at all to do with Howard Chapelle. It was just a follow-up to your insightful "segue" comment that " Too many manufactures of kits grab a concept (no matter how wrong it is) and make a product.   That product then becomes what many buyers will believe was the real thing." Sometimes thread-drift leads to unexpected flashes of brilliance. And sometimes not. In this instance, I thought your observation was spot on.  

SaltyNinja, considering your interest in West Coast fishing boats, you may want to contact someone at the San Francisco Model Yacht Club .(https://sfmyc.org/) There are a number of radio-control modelers there who have built a miniature fleet of Monterey fishing boats:
 

 

I noted that Aleksei Domanov recently moved from Belarus to Poland. I don't know what his reasons for moving to Poland were, but it would appear to be a plus for modelers in Europe and the Americas.  From our perspective, Poland is definitely the more favorable environment for an international mail-order business  because Poland is part of the European Union and Belarus is not. 

While Howard I. Chapelle wrote in an era when his position as an academic author and employee of the Smithsonian was accorded the respect it deserved, he was nonetheless quite controversial in some matters. 
 
The controversy for which he is most famous had to do with his correct assessment that the USS Constellation of 1797 and the USS Constellation of 1854 were entirely distinct ships, a dispute which festered for some time between Boston, with USS Constitution and Baltimore with USS Constellation, which promoters argued was one and the same with the 1797 frigate which had actually been broken up in 1853, the USS Constellation of 1854, built a year later, being the original Constellation's replacement.
 
Chapelle's drawings have been criticized for inaccuracies and a penchant for his substituting information when such was lacking. Given the nature of the work he was doing, and particularly the work of others he was directing during the WPA Historic American Merchant Marine Survey, these being out of work architects, engineers, and draftsmen who were not always conversant with naval architecture and marine engineering, those inaccuracies are understandable and not "controversial." Nobody disputes them.
 
Chapelle's writing style may seem pedantic, "harshly judgmental, and/or "arrogant," to today's reader, but at the risk of being accused of the same (as has happened before ) Chapelle's prose style was entirely appropriate in its time. It is only fairly recently that an ethic of "political correctness" has our diluted our academic literary style, resulting in what one might call the "Little League Syndrome" where "everybody wins a prize," and God help anybody who's heard to say that the losing team lost because they played poorly! What today's readers would consider arrogance in dismissing the work of a predecessor with the comment that they "were not educated" was taken as an authoritative assessment by Chapelle at the time of its writing. Chapelle wasn't alone in his forthrightness and candor. Most commentators of the time were similarly unrestrained in their criticism when they found cause to express it. L.F. Herreshoff was famous for his curmudgeonly, and often quire humorous, prose on the subject of yachts and yachting. In Chapelle's day, the uneducated would never have disputed the pronouncements of the educated, affording them the respect due their degrees, but not so today when "everybody has a right to their own opinion" and the internet provides a platform for hucksters and snake oil salesmen to peddle their wares to the gullible and most feel socially constrained to stand mute when confronted with stupidity.
 
You can get a good sense of Chapelle's "straight from the shoulder" style from his articles Ship Models That Should be Built (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org) and Ship Models That Should Not be Built, (Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org) which are available in the forum's "Articles Database" (under "More" in the top of the page menu.) Just imagine what sort of reception you'd get in this forum if you expressed Chapelle's opinion that:
 
"There are enough Flying Clouds, Constitutions, racing fishermen, and imaginary galleons God knows, and there is surely some type of boat or vessel that will interest a modeler that has not yet been modeled. But, if you are not interested in accurate models and desire to build stuff of a level of truthfulness of a Hollywood movie "Pirate Ship" or "Spanish Galleon" forget I brought the matter up."
 
 They'd scratch your eyes out for sure.