American Revenue Cutter – Seahorse – 1:72 – Card Kit

[Jsk]

I once owned a rescue dog who needed a lot of behavioral work. So after some one-on-one sessions with a specialist we eventually graduated to attending obedience classes with others. I can’t say that we ever overcame all the issues (and I’m not sure who was training whom!) but I certainly learned the value of positive reinforcement. Consequently, since I have a tendency to be easily distracted and leave unfinished projects laying around, I wanted to reward myself for completing my first wooden ship model.

 

While I enjoyed the wood model, my situation is perhaps not the best for them. Simply put, sanding wood makes too much dust for me to do in our living spaces and I really don’t have an interior space to do it. With the arrival of Winter sanding outside isn’t much of an option. So I’m putting off the next wood model until Spring and the return of good weather. So returning to my interest in card models I read up on the models produced by Tomasz Weremko, aka, Seahorse. Card models are certainly more apartment friendly than wood models and they are much more budget friendly. Level of detail, of course, is entirely in the hands of the builder and designer. While I’ve tinkered with designing and building my own card models, I’ve never actually built a commercially available kit.

 

I still consider myself a novice builder and while I love the look of fully rigged ships I hesitate to commit to building one. I wanted something small, preferably in 1/72 scale to match my last model, and without too much rigging. I first decided that Searhorse’s Armed Virginia Sloop would fit the bill. However, its 1/100 scale means that some of the details are going to be quite challenging for my hand-eye coordination. I confirmed that by reading Clare Hess’ build log. (Mr. Hess’ log can be found here: https://shipmodeler.wordpress.com/2022/07/29/building-the-armed-virginia-sloop-paper-model-part-1/)

 

But Seahorse also offers a US Revenue Cutter in 1/72 scale. In addition, according to Mr. Weremko’s complexity scale the cutter ranks as a ‘2’ as opposed to the sloop’s level of ‘3’. It ticks all the boxes! Did I mention the budget friendlyness of card models? I ordered both as full kits complete with laser cut parts, sails, dowels and (almost) all the necessary bits and bobs provided. Both kits and shipping from Poland came in at $72.00 USD.

 

I ordered directly from the Seahorse web site on December 4th and eagerly awaited the arrival of the kits from Poland. After checking the tracking website daily (which stopped showing progress once the packages arrived in Los Angeles on the 9th) they arrived in my mailbox on December 16th. Mustering my dog-training discipline, I’ll save the sloop for later but I instantly opened the cutter package and reviewed the contents.

 

As expected, there’s nothing disappointing about this kit. The basic model is presented as a saddle-stitched (e.g., stapled) booklet with full color photos of a finished model on front and rear covers. Ah, something to aspire to! There is, of course, a minimum of written text in both Polish and English comprising of a short history of the ship and ‘Basic Rules and Tools’ for construction. There are four pages of pictorial instructions, two pages of parts printed in black on white paper and two pages of parts printed in color on card. Now, in my set there was a second set of the card-printed parts inserted into the fold. I’m not sure if this was an oversight or if the second loose set was included because the printing of the first set (which is bound into the booklet) is a bit weak. Or, perhaps Seahorse can sense a ‘newbie’ and kindly included spares. Whatever the reason, intentional or not, it gives me a sense of security and a makes me think that Seahorse is a quality operation. (It’s also a bit unsettling that I joyfully anticipate looking at a centerfold of a model… ship!)

 

There are a couple of hazards for neophytes. The first is that the required thickness of card for laminated parts is appended to the part number and is easily overlooked. The number is followed by ‘//’ or ‘*’ or ‘**’ to indicate 0.3, 0.5 or 1.0 mm card thickness. However, I think I’ve shielded myself from this potential error by purchasing the laser cut parts sheets. I’m also puzzled by this sentence in the instructions: “To avoid too many symbols, uncommon thickness of some parts should be matched to the width of the stripes covering its edges.” I can only assume that this refers to the keel which is considerably thicker than 1.0 mm and has a piece that runs along the bottom edge of the keel. That ‘edge’ piece appears to be about 4 mm wide so, therefore the keel should be laminated to that thickness. Now that I’ve typed that up it makes sense to me.

 

I also see a couple parts with ‘W’ numbers which are not part of the printed sheets. I believe these need to be created from wire (which is mentioned in the ‘Basic Rules’). The templates for these parts are on the fourth page of instructions along with the mast and spar diagrams. The most numerous of these appear to be the rail stanchions surrounding the deck to prevent crew from falling overboard.

 

My last observation is in regard to the copper sheathing below the waterline. It’s interesting that Seahorse has provided a simple solution and a detailed solution to the sheathing. On one side of the copper colored sheet the sheathing is designed as strips to cut and apply much like the hull planking. But if you flip the sheet over you find that it has been printed to represent the individual sheets of copper. So, depending up on your sense of fanaticism, er, level of detail, you have options. I like that.

 

All said and done, I’m quite happy with my purchase. I’m not certain when I’ll get started on the cutter and the Virginia sloop is certainly farther down the line. (Maybe the sloop will be next Winter’s project.) At this point I’m still mustering my canine-induced self-discipline and working on resizing my skipjack design. But once I’ve hit the ‘proof-of-concept’ stage in that project it’s ‘game on!’ on the cutter.

 

Pictures (or it didn't happen!):

[mugje]

Looks like a fun project! Will be interesting to see how you tackle it. And nice review/story