Kitamaebune by catopower - Woody Joe - 1/72 scale

[catopower]

Hi Peter,

 

LOL, the Kitamaebune is acutally a smaller model than the either the Hacchoro or the Yakatabune! 😉

 

At least, it's smaller in length by about 3" and even an inch or two shorter in height than the Hacchoro. But, the Hacchoro and Yakatabune are both much simpler to build, and better introductions to Woody Joe kit building. The nice thing about the Yakatabune kit is that you have an opportunity to add some details if you want, since it has a little tatami room interior.

 

The Hacchoro looks pretty nice with it's sails set and all the sculling oars. There are things that could be done to detail it too. I've considered building another one that's modified slightly to include details that would show up on a real Hacchoro, or at least on the two remaining replicas. 

 

The mini-kits are kind of neat too and they're small enough to base a diorama on one. I've considered having the mini-yakatabune in a diorama of a river or canal lined with cherry blossom trees. Still might do it, as I have one spare kit AND the cherry blossom trees that Woody Joe makes. Water dioramas always look cool to me.

[catopower]

I bet you thought I wasn't going to ever make any more progress on my Kitamaebune project, didn't you?

 

Well, I had decided to move ahead with a sail construction plan I came up with in order to try to mimic the different nature of Japanese sails. Well, I spent a lot of time experimenting and just staring at sail material and at the kit provided sails. Then, I decided to go ahead with what should end up being a pretty labor intensive sail construction.

 

I decided I'm going to assemble the sail from separate panels. I MAY stitch the panels together in some fashion, but at the earliest stage, I'm going to be gluing up the panels. I glue most of my ship model sails now, as it avoids creating out of scale machine stitching. 

 

Cutting the sails was simplified greatly by using my Silhouette Cameo 3 machine. I drew up a series of long rectangular panels using the Silhouette Studio software and used it to cut a 12" x 12" piece of cloth. To make sure the cuts were clean, I pre-treated the cloth with Terial Magic, which I believe I talked about in a previous post. This stuff, when dry, makes the cloth somewhat paper-like. The cloth cutting session itself didn't take all that long to draw up and run the cutter.

 

 

Of course, a lot of cut strips, when peeled off the adhesive faced cutting mat, makes kind of a messy bunch with lots of strands stuck together. I cut the loose threads and then cleaned up each strip, trimming away loose threads. I then applied a thin bead of Aleen's Tacky Glue to one edge and attached a piece of thick, beige thread to one edge. I did this with each strip one at a time.

 

 

It really didn't take me as long as I thought it would, but I still had to spread the work over a couple nights. The main sail on the Kitamaebune is made up of 24 strips in panels of 6 strips each. 

 

I haven't quite decided if I am going to juse use the one piece of thread separate each neighboring strip, or if, like on the real sails, I should use two threads, basically lining each panel with its own piece of thread on each edge. 

 

Actually, I lied. I created the strips narrow enough to require me to use two threads between each neighboring panel. So, if I don't use two threads, the completed sails should end up a little too narrow. So, two threads it is.

 

Now, I didn't really think about it before I glued the threads to the sail strips, but the identification markings on the sails should really only appear in the cloth, I think. I don't want the threads painted, so I will have to be careful with the painting. I should also do the painting before I add thread to the second edge of each strip, just to be safe.

 

Now, I haven't decided what identifying pattern I'll use on the sail. I could try to do a little research and see if I can identify one that's specific to a certain ship or trader. Few people would ever "get it", but I guess I'll see if I can look something up this weekend. If nothing else, I'll probably just paint a short segment of a couple sail panels.

 

Below is a photo of a model in a museum in Japan, though I don't recall which one. This is actually one of the old Woody Joe kits before they went with the laser-cut parts. It's a bit more of a "shipmodeler's model" requiring more woodworking and it's also a noticeably larger kit. Not as detailed or as accurate, but it sure looks like a Japanese ship model.

 

 

There were actually two different kits available of similar large side. Sadly, these kits aren't available anymore, but I did manage to squirrel away one of each when you could still get them. I'm afraid to start one, because then the kit will be gone for good. I've thought about just scratch building a model based on one of the kits, so I can keep the original kit intact. Does that sound silly?

 

Anyway, I still have 5 sail strips left over, so I think I'll prep those too, as I'll need them to make the bow sail.

 

 

 

[druxey]

Ha! So you are back with a vengeance, Clare. Your sail construction technique looks quite original, so I'm looking forward to how it will come together when complete.

 

The idea of making a scratch-built model and placing it beside the unassembled kit is interesting as well.

[catopower]

Hi Druxey, we'll see how the sail turns out.

 

I made a sample section of three strips glued up with two threads between each strip. I realize today that it looks VERY flat. The gluing up is strong and convinced me that this should work okay, which is why I'm proceeding with this method.

 

 

 

But, I am considering that instead of glueing the strips to each other, perhaps I can tie them together. You can see the horizontal ties in the sail in the last photo of my previous post. The Woody Joe printed sail also shows them, but on their sail, they are more numerous and very small.

 

 

I'm sure I would use fewer ties, as doing this will end up being really time consuming and tricky at this scale.

 

I'll experiment a little to see if it's even worth doing. If it doesn't add to the appearance, then I might as well just glue up the panes and also glue on lots of tiny thread pieces on both sides of the sail or something.

 

 

[catopower]

Well, I started experimenting with faux stitching tonight.

 

I began with a length of thread that I'd pre-treated with Aleene's Tacky Glue to stiffen it. When dried, I cut some very tiny 2mm length of it. I'm hoping there's an easier way cut lots of 2mm lengths, possibly by lining up several threads on a piece of double-stick tape or something, so I can cut several pieces in a single pass instead of one at a time.

 

In any case, I then used a pair of fine tweezers and dipped one 2mm piece in some Aleene's, then placed it across the seam between strips of cloth. The result looks like this:

 

 

I originally started placing them about half that distance apart, but it looked way too busy. These are about 1cm apart. Still probably out of scale for the 1/72 scale model. But, as we all know, it's difficult to make sails correct in scale. I might place them a bit closer together on the actual model. We'll see.

 

Aleenes turns out to be pretty tough. It's hard to remove these things after a very short drying time.

 

You might note the slight gap between the cloth strips near the bottom. That's because I'd taken a scalpel blade and separated the cloth slightly. I think this shows me that it's possible for me to fasten the sails together only with these ties glued on. Of course, the back side needs them also, and they need to be lined up with those on the front side. But, I had little trouble doing this since you can easily see through the cloth when backlit. 

 

So, I think I have a plan to move forward now. This strips will be fastened together in groups of 6, and there will be four of these large panels. The next issue will be how to lace the 4 panels together. However, in that case, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with hand sewing the lacing. You can see in the printed cloth provided by Woody Joe, how the lacing between panels goes. I will probaly also try to show a bit of gap between the panels, particularly the gap that lines up with the mast.

 

Wish me luck!

 

 

[catopower]

Just a heads up on some thoughts about the faux stitching...

 

As interesting as this looks on that museum model and in the last photo I posted, it doesn't actually look quite correct, so I'm not quite sure what I'll end up doing. I thought this was a good solution. But, I have a feeling that this is kind of the old model makers solution to a complicated issue. Most models seem to show some kind of horizontal ties like this, but if you look at the replica ships, what's mostly noticeable is lacing. 

 

Here's a model by Toshitaka Nakazono of The Rope...

 

 

 

And this one by Taketoshi Tanaka, former president of The Rope, and the model used by Woody Joe to develop their Higaki Kaisen kit...

 

 

Both images are from the english language site of The Rope, in their Photo Gallery of Japanese Sailing Ships and Boats.

 

So, if I do go with the little ties, at least my model will be in good company. And, I guess I can start by making the ties a little shorter, if possible. 

[catopower]

While researching sails, I ran across a great website by a ship modeler in Germany. He scratch built a model of the replica ship Naniwa maru, which is a higakikaisen replica. The website entry is from back in 2012. It looks to me like his model was built at a scale of about 1/50, so it's a nice size.

 

Aw with other builders taking on a scratch build of one of these ships with only limited information, I found his model pretty amazing.

 

http://www.googlehupf.at/shipwright/?page_id=276

 

[catopower]

Minor update. I'm moving forward on the sail construction, gluing up the individual strips into four separate panels.

 

Before gluing any of these together, I painted a section of a couple of the strips. These are markings used on the sails of these northern port transports to identify who they belong to. I'm not sure how my sails will look with the markings and may change my mind as to where the markings appear on the sail. But, so far, I'm expecting them to appear as two short rectangles centered high on the sail, separated by two blank strips. 

 

I still have time to change the plan as I can rearrange the existing glued up sections a little. I'm going to see if I can take another look at some examples of these markings and make the final call today.

 

In the meantime, you can see how this is progressing...

 

 

 

Again, each panel will be made up of six strips, so I'm basically half-way done making the panels. I will also have to decide soon if I will add fake ties of some kind. If I do, it will be a very slow going process. 

 

So far, Aleene's Tacky Glue has proven to create a very strong bond.

 

Clare

[cog]

On 8/26/2020 at 12:05 AM, catopower said:

ship modeler in Germany

Actually top level domain (TLD) ".at" is Austria, they do speak German there too His work ... fabelhaft

[catopower]

Doh! Thanks for the correction Carl. I'm sure the Austrians love that. 🙄

 

 

[catopower]

Sail panels are now glued up.

 

 

I checked the width of the full sail and it looks a little wide, which I figured might happen. Just compound errors in the measure of things added up. But, I preferred to err on the large side rather than small. 

 

 

I'll compensate by cheating slightly, and I'll remove one of the of strips from each of the outer panels. This will put the sale a little on the narrow side. But, when I lace the sails together, I'm going to try to work in a slight gap at the top and bottom, as appears in a number of drawings and on the replica ships. This effectively widens the sail so it should hang nicely from the hogeta, or yardarm.

 

Next step, I'll need to trip the strips so that they line up nicely at the bottom. I managed to glue them up so they line up nicely at the top. But, some strips stretched more than others and the bottoms are a little uneven, as you can see in the first photo.

 

I'll have to be a bit careful, as the strips are glued up with the ropes in between the, but they shouldn't present any real problems.

 

I'm actually considering leaving that short mast at the bow bare-poled. The sail will be really short in order for the bottom end to stay clear of the main stay tackle. I've seen a number of drawings and painting that show the sail, but in a configuration that's physically impossible, showing the sail occupying the same space as the stay tackle... Unless we're talking about shifting into 4th or 5th dimensional space...

 

Anway, it's a little more to think on. In the meantime, I have this sail to complete.

 

Clare

 

 

[druxey]

This is looking very nice and neat, Clare.

[catopower]

Wasn't really happy with the number of strips having to get cut down to 22. The largest Kitamaebune, which this model represents, had 24. In fact, you could generally tell the cargo capacity of a transport by how many of these panels make up the ship's sail. So, I went back and I prepped and cut a new piece of sail material.

 

But, then I thought I might do better if I experiment a bit with the sail on the Tonegawa cargo boat that I posted about a little while back. It's the same scale, and the sails would have been made the same way, but with only 9 shorter sail panels instead of 24 long panels of the Kitamaebune. 

 

One thing about these Japanese sails because of the way the individual panels are sheeted, they have a very distinct, ruffled look. So, I decided to focus on that this time. 

 

I basically cut the strips to length, bent them around a small dowel, then glued them together at a slight angle, forming a kind of v-shaped valley between adjacent panels. I also cut the top and bottom edges of each panel to impart a slight curve, to give a sense of the panel hanging down of its own weight. 

 

 

It's not bad, but it doesn't billow the way the real sail should. As you can see below, they hang straight down. At the bottom of the sail, the edges tend to curve forward just a little. I'm working on ways to solve this issue now. But, I do like the way each panel billows just slightly. Next step is for the whole thing to look more natural.

 

 

The sheets will tie off to a heavy rope that runs across the hull. Note the jumble of simulated rice bales. I'm not sure what to do with these, now that I'm working on a sail. These ships would only need to mount the sail if they are heading up river. Upriver basically means away from the big city toward the farm lands. In that direction, they would not be carrying rice bales. If I want the rice bales, the mast would most likely be lowered as the sail wouldn't be necessary. But, realistically, if I have any rice bales at all, it would probably be full, having loaded up at one location and sailing down to unload them at a dock in old Edo. But, for a representative model, some bales would look nice and so would the sail. So, I'm figuring I'll stack some in the hold in a manner than balances out the load a bit.

 

So, the next step is to try to create a sail that billows a little AND has ruffles.

 

My first and simplest attempt doesn't look too good. I tried treating the sail material again with Terial Magic. The stuff that stiffens the sail material nicely. But, I'm not done with this yet. I got a little more billow out of it, but the sail now needs some touch ups to even out the surface.

 

 

Behind the model here, you can see one of the books I located on these boats. It's called Takasebune Monagatari or the Takasebune Story. On the cover, you can see a photo showing an example of how the sail looked in operation.

 

Of course, after I get this all figured out, I still need to apply what I learned to the Kitamaebune model. 

 

Clare

 

 

[Tim Murphy]

Clare, I do think that you are on the right track with the pattern of your sail construction. They definitely have the  correct appearance. Great progress!

Tim

[druxey]

You are definitely getting there! Would rigging up the sail in some way and applying a hair dryer gently help mold it?

[catopower]

Thanks Tim, Druxey.

 

I'm not there yet and may have to redo the sail build yet again, but it is a small sail I'm doing the testing with, so it's not THAT much work. 

 

Druxey, I think you're right in that I'm going to have to rig up the mast and sail to see if that will help things out. The hairdryer is probably a good idea – I'll try that.

 

[Tim Murphy]

Clare, once you have the sails up on the mast, Druxey’s idea of the hair dryer will help. Why not some spray starch to give the sail some body.

Tim

[catopower]

Hi Tim,

 

I'm already treating the sails with something other than starch in order to give them the existing shaping, so they already have a lot of body. 

 

I actually sprayed them again, lightly, and it started to undo some of the shaping I'd already done. I'm hoping that a little bit of the hot air will allow me to shape the sail just a bit, so that when it cools, the stuff will hold it in shape.

[catopower]

With the completion of my Shipyard card model of the Bremen cog, I'm ready to get back to my Woody Joe Kitamaebune model.

 

First, here are some update photos of my Tonegawa Takasebune...

 

 

 

 

 

There's still a little more rigging to go, plus it not quite full of cargo. But, it's very close.

 

Meanwhile, I'm hoping to apply what I've learned about making the sail for this model to the Kitamaebune. Unfortunately, I'm about to start yet another attempt at making the Kitamaebune's sails. I've lost count of how many attempts this has been. This is the fourth, I think. The last set probably would have been okay, but I discovered I'd made the sail panels too narrow. Not sure how that happened, as I thought I had everything measure out.

 

To quote the famous Bullwinkle J. Moose "This time, for sure!"

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by catopower

[catopower]

I've been awfully idle this year, and have had a hard time starting back into my projects again.

 

So far, the only thing that I've had any motivation for has been a card model from Shipyard of the Dutch fluit Schwarzer Rabe. I started that kit as simply something to do while I was out of town taking care of my aging mother for a month. Later, it turned into an ongoing project, and at some point, I had a hard time putting it down. I finally managed to pull myself away from it, but it still took a while to get back to my Japanese boats projects.

 

Then, earlier this week, I managed to make a trip to Monterey to study a model of a Japanese fishing boat that I was alerted to by the curator of the Japanese American Citizens League Hall (JACL) and Museum in Monterey. I'd made arrangements to meet him and to examine and record measurements and details of the model. At some point, I'll try to create a drawing and maybe a larger scale model based on this information.

 

But, that whole process kind of got the juices flowing again. Plus, a friend of mine is organizing a "Japan Day" event at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and invited me to set up a station to display my Japanese boat models and to possibly work on them there during the event.

 

With there being plenty of Kitamaebune in Japanese art and my model being so close to completion, I finally broke down this past week and started back into it. 

 

So, here I am, back at the sails. I've decided that the method I used for the Tonegawa Takasebune may be too delicate for so much larger a sail, so I've gone back to earlier design ideas.

 

Basically, I'm back to simply sowing the seams between the strips of sail cloths. I will make the sail up from 4 panels, and I'll attempt to then lace these panels together.

 

I didn't use the Terial Magic stuff that I did for the smaller sails. I found that it stiffens the cloth so much that it make it harder to sew straight lines. Also, I had used my Cameo Silhouette to draw dotted seam lines for me to follow. I modified this to just draw some tiny reference marks at the top and bottom of the sail cloth, which I would then connect with pencil line. The full dotted seam lines stood out too much, and since I couldn't sew straight enough at the time, my stitching kept drifting, revealing these lines. But with pencil lines, after the sewing is all done, I can wash them out.

 

So, I sewed the cloth for a new set of sails (well, two pieces of cloth for one big sail and enough left over for the small sail) a few days ago, using a lighter colored thread. I hadn't done much sewing in a long time, so my seams were a bit off in places.

 

 

I was actually pretty impressed with how much straighter my seams were, but if you take a closer look, you can see it's still off in places. But, since I realized that I did prefer the darker thread for a more authentic look anyway, I set these aside and yesterday I repeated the whole process with darker thread. The above cloth turned into a practice run, and I think it actually paid off. The newest cloth seams are pretty well right on the money and very straight, if I do say so myself. Those, I washed by hand to get rid of the pencil lines, and they're air drying now.

 

There is actually one more continuous, horizontal seam that I need to sew about 2/3 of the way down the sail. In the kit, this has an arch to it that follows the arch of the foot of the sail. I just realized that these are arched to give more of the illusion of a billowing sail. Though not exactly accurate, it's actually quite effective, and it makes the model look more like a real ship. So, I'll look at doing the same with this model.

 

One thing is that I plan on "scalloping" the bottom edge slightly, to give more of an illusion that the individual cloth strips are billowing and held back by these seams, much like in the photo from the Takasebune book I posted previously.

 

 

But, at this point, I need to pause and think about the order of tasks and give some thought to how I'm going to finish up the sail.

 

More later!

 

 

 

[druxey]

Claire - you're back!!! Nice to see you return.

 

The scalloped effect of the sail foot in the photo is interesting; is there a practical reason for this, such as directing air flow more efficiently? 

[catopower]

Hello Druxey, good question! It's not actually scalloped. It's simply that the sails are individual cloths that are laced together. The sheet lines are attached at the foot of the sail at each of these lacings, so these "seams" can't billow out, but the sail material itself can. You're just seeing sail material here just kind of hanging down, or out.

 

On a model, I can achieve an illusion of this effect a little better by actually scalloping the foot of the sails a little, which I ended up doing with the Takasebune model. The head of the sail would actually be similar in that the sail material at the "seams" would be up close to the yard, but hang down slightly in between "seams".

 

Yes, I'm back... or rather back from lurking... 😳

Edited August 7, 2021 by catopower

[druxey]

Thanks for the claire-ification! It looked as if the individual cloths were scoops in the photo, prompting my question.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Great subject! How goes it?

[catopower]

Good question, Eric.

 

I had a display of my model Japanese watercraft at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco last month, and I included the unfinished Kitamaebune.

 

The event was part of a "Japan Day" event that an acquaintance of mine organized and had asked if I'd be interested in participating. How could I not say yes to that? Started off a simple plan to set up the models and maybe work and something as I talked to visitors at my table. But it ended up taking more and more time, and next thing I know, I was asked to spend another day at the museum as they having a videographer come in and do interviews with all the "artists". It got more and more involved, and I'm REALLY glad it's done now. But, on the actual day of the event, it was fun, and several of my ship modeling, and other friends came by in support.

 

 

 

But, regarding the Kitamaebune model, as the event loomed, I thought maybe I should just use the original kit sails and get it done. I didn't do that and, as I said, I just displayed it with a bare mast. Most people didn't know what they were looking at anyway. Well, probably nobody knew what they were looking at, which is a main reason I want to get the models displayed more.

 

After the event, I really started to notice that the sail on the Takasebune looked very detailed and very correct, at least to my eye. So, while I had these various schemes as to how I was going to try to make the sail, I think I'm going to go back to the method I used that was pretty successful for the Takasebune.

 

I'm currently trying to finish up a large fishing boat based on drawings in the Souvenirs de Marine. It's being built to the same scale as the Kitamaebune and Takasebune models, or 1/72, so it's very small at about 9-1/2" long. That also means it's pretty easy to build and goes relatively quickly. However, interpreting the drawings and deciding how I wanted to approach construction, causes me to sit and stare at the information and the model a lot.

 

This weekend, I've had something of a burst of interest on working on my projects again, so it probably won't be long before that is done and I'm making progress on the Kitamaebune.

 

Also, my new Atakebune from Woody Joe arrived a couple days ago, and I've got that to get started on soon too!

 

[Ekis]

I am also building a Higaki Kaisen on my side. 😁
And then will come the Atakebune that I received 3 days ago!
In other words, I'm going to look very carefully at your shipyard to see what I'm going to upgrade on it ! I think this model needs a lot of improvements... 😀

[baskerbosse]

Looks like a nice event.

Ships look great!

 

Atakebune? Wow. Sounds interesting!

 

Peter

[BobG]

Well, darn, my wife and I and our son, who lives in SF, were at the Asian Art Museum the week of September 13-20 so we just missed your display. We went to to see the amazing interactive teamLab, Continuity display. What a mind blowing experience of interactive, digital art!

[Landlubber Mike]

Clare, I've seen your models individually on various threads here, but seeing them all together on display is really impressive.  You do fantastic work on these really neat subjects! 

[catopower]

Peter, Bob, Mike, thanks for the kind words of support!

 

Ekis, the Higaki Kaisen kit is a more serious ship model kit. Woody Joe really designs their kits to be buildable by first time modelers. But, their Higaki Kaisen kit is more of a ship model kit for ship modelers, designed with the assistance of the former president of the ship model club the Rope Tokyo. Definitely more challenging a kit than the Kitamaebune kit, and supposedly even the Atakebune kit. I wrote a 3-part article in Seaways' Ships in Scale on it, so I'm interested to know what you think about the kit.