Dutch Eastindia Company research vessel Duyfken by Seahorse. Card kit

[Ab Hoving]

I like kits, but I am basically a scratch builder and I especially distrust kits of Dutch old ships. This is caused by the fact that the Dutch never made as much good material available to model builders, like for instance the English did, mostly because the Dutch never made plans of their vessels. This results in kitmakers producing fundamentally wrong models.
Making a card kit of a replica of an old Dutch ship is a smart solution. The research for the Duyfken was mostly done in the end of the 90s by Nick Birmingham in Fremantle, Western Australia, where the replica was built. I had the honor to be invited to visit the project as an advisor. I spent a wonderful week there.

Eight days after my order the package with the kit was delivered from Poland, which is remarkably shorter than some years ago :-). It consisted of a 14 page booklet with 8 pages of parts and 6 of explanations, both in text (Polish and English) and very clear diagrams.
Apart from the basic kit you can also order blocks, gun barrels and lasercut sheets (3).
 

The whole package is very well produced with good printing and fine colors. I was especially interested in the inventive way Tomek Weremko, the driving force behind his new kit company Seahorse, does his planking. (see his threads her under 0Seahorse, like this one amongst others:)

Paper kits usually have problems with producing fair lines, often caused by the ribs showing through the planking. We know from his postings, also at Papermodels.com that Tomek has a method of making beautifully fair hulls without any use of filler. He is demonstrating this technique in this kit, which will be an eye-opener for many of us.
The scale is 1/100, which is very small and the builder ends up with a 31 centimeters long model, although the hull is only 25 centimeter. A real challenge for the miniature lovers to build this humble ship, which was the first vessel ever to map parts of North Western Australia early in the 17th century. 

 

I can strongly recommend it!

 

Ab

 

 

[demetri]

 

Hello

and Happy new year! Where could I buy the kit? Any email address or website ... Thank you.

[Ab Hoving]

And a happy new year to you.

 

Excellent question. How stupid if me.

Website Seahorse: https://seahorse.pl/en/

 

Good luck