AL’s Independence – Swivel Guns

It occurred to me that I haven’t been posting enough about my own traditional western-style model ships what with my Japanese boat models and now the Japanese shrine build. Also, as I’d been in something of a slump due to project overload, I thought it might help me move forward by writing some more project updates.

Though I’ve written plenty about the cannons on my model, I don’t think I’ve said anything about the swivel guns. Clearly, I’ve replaced everything else from the original kit, and the swivel guns are no exception. I’ve being going back and forth on the scale of this model, and for the person I’m building this for, I don’t think the exact scale really matters. For the swivel guns, I ended up going with the 1/48-scale turned brass swivel guns sold by Syren Ship Model Company.

AL kit barrels in brass. Lumberyard replacements in pewter.

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Shipyard Sail and Masting Accessories – Now at Ages of Sail

For those ship modelers who are interested in paper models, Ages of Sail now carries the sail sets and masting sets produced by Shipyard.

I used the sail set for my HMS Alert build and it worked out really well. The color of the cloth is that of natural linen, and the sail sets are laser-cut, so there’s no concern about fraying edges. The details are all lightly laser-etched into the cloth, and at 1/96-scale, drawn or printed sails are probably more scale accurate than sewn sails.

I didn’t use the included line for the bolt ropes as I wanted to match the rigging on my model, which was mostly Morope brand line.

I found the sail cloth pretty stiff, which worked out fine for my model. I don’t know how they would work for furled sails, but I didn’t try washing them to see if they’ll soften up. It would be interesting to find out.

Anyway, it’s nice to know that you can now buy these in the U.S. instead of having to navigate Polish websites and have them ship overseas.

Ages of Sail

If you’re familiar with Shipyard products, you probably recognize the fact that their line of Paper Model ship kits only contain the paper parts necessary to build the model. They kits give you drawings for proper dimensions of the masts and spars and patterns for the sails, but don’t include material needed to build them.

These materials are easily obtainable at fabric stores and hardware stores. But shipyard also produces separate accessory sets so that you don’t have to make the sails or hunt down the proper size dowels and such.

Now, Ages of Sail has made these accessory sets available, and you can find them on our online store: Shipyard Sail and Masting Accessories

These sets are available only for the 1/96-scale Paper Model ship kits. They are the equivalent of what Shipyard already includes in their boxed 1/72-scale Laser Cardboard series kits, but of course, at a different…

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Building Woody Joe’s Shinmei-zukuri Shrine – Part II

Last time, I started Step I of Woody Joe’s Shinmei-zukuri shrine kit. I tried to cover everything needed to understand the built up to that point. With all the description and explanation, we didn’t get to the end of the first step, so we’ll taking care of that now.

The Instructions Again

Reviewing the instructions for the next task, parts 9A, 9B and 9C will be needed, noting again that there are two of parts 9A and 9C, but only one 9B. Again, these are laser-cut piece on sheet number 9. This is in a different bag, but again, the bags are clearly marked and so are the individual sheets as you can see below.

Changes to this Site

My apologies to those who follow this blog site or make periodic visits. You’re probably wondering why everything is so screwey. Things keep moving, titles keep changing, menus are all different or missing…

Well, I decided that it’s time to do some reorganizing and Spring cleaning. Part of this was prompted by the need to add a new menu so that I could separate any non-ship model related work, like the Shinmei-zukuri shrine kit I recently started to build. Plus, there are 3 other non-ship model kits in the closet and one completed castle I wrote about a couple years ago.

Also, I discovered that there have been some problems with this site, again brought to light when I started that shrine model kit. For some reason, it was showing up in my ship modeling news, even though I specifically have it categorized as a non-ship model. There are other issues that I’m starting to butt up against with this WordPress site. Though I have to say that this system has really made it relatively easy to manage a website like this.

Obviously, I still have some studying to do to better understand all the functions, but I’m very happy with it. I’ve been using the free version too, but I think that’s going to have to change so I can get some help from the WordPress staff on some issues. They helped me on another site I work on and they were a great help. As a bonus, the occasional unrelated ads that you see here should also disappear.

In any case, please bear with me as I do some reorganizing here. If you want to provide any feedback on the site and its organization, please feel free. Let me know what you think. Just use the comments feature on any page to send your thoughts. They won’t appear on the site, but I’ll get them.

Thank you!

Victory Models Sale at Ages of Sail

If your looking for a great kit for your next project, it’s hard to go wrong with one from Victory Models, Amati’s high-end line of kits developed by ship modeler Chris Watton. And, now is a really good time to buy one if you’re in North America, as Amati’s U.S. distributor, Ages of Sail, is having a rare sale on these kits. Another good reason to buy from them is their free Amati parts replacement policy.

Ages of Sail is offering a special, very rare, limited time discount on them kits from Amati/Victory Models. From now through June 1st, 2017, you can save $50 to $150 on one of these amazing kits. There’s no special coupon code to mess with, just visit our website and see the savings. Check them out now Amati is […]

via Spring Special on Amati Victory Models! — Ages of Sail

Building Woody Joe’s Shinmei-zukuri Shrine – Part I

In my previous post, I went over the contents of the kit and gave some details about it, so I’m just going to dive in here and start Step 1. Progress will probably start a bit slow, since I’m describing some of the features of Woody Joe kits in general as I go.

The Instructions

As I mentioned before, the instructions are very well illustrated and it looks like you should be able to build it without being able to read any of the text. However, since I’m writing this blog, I figure I might as well translate what I can.

Shinmei-zukuri Shrine from Woody Joe

I’ve recently found myself spinning my wheels on the ship modeling front. This happens from time to time with my projects when I get a bit overwhelmed or stuck. My scratch model of a Japanese rice field boat, the Gifu Tabune, was one kind of distraction to work on. That took only a couple days, but there was a lot of thinking that went into that build, since it was from scratch, and I’m still learning a lot about Japanese traditional boats. The ideal would be a simple kit, where I can just build it and not spend a lot of time on it or have to put a lot of brain power into it, as I’m in short supply these days.

As it turns out, I’d purchased a collection of simple Woody Joe kits from Zootoyz. If you follow my blog at all, you’re already aware that I am always recommending purchasing from the online Japanese hobby dealer Zootoyz.com for those looking for, among other things, Woody Joe kits, which are not available directly in the U.S.

Shinmei-zukuri Shrine

Renesans Paint Colors for Shipyard Kits

Those of you familiar with Shipyard paper kits may have come across some color reference numbers and wondered what colors they correspond to. Shipyard references a brand of paint called Renesans, which is an artist’s acrylic line of matte finish colors that work really well with the paper kits. They are included with Shipyard’s boxed edition Laser Cardboard series of kits, but the problem is that you can’t buy the paints here in the U.S.

[Edit: Problem solved! See note at bottom of post]

Shop Notes I is Back in Print

The venerable Ship Modeler’s Shop Notes book is back in print. I bought my first copy of this book in a perfect-bound edition way back around 1993. Heavily used and with many sections pages breaking loose from the binding, I located and purchased a newer used copy. But, I grew so attached to my old copy that I still haven’t gotten rid of it. Now that the book is back in print, perhaps it’s time to say goodbye to the old book and pass it along to recycling…

Ages of Sail

The popular Ship Modeler’s Shop Notes (book 1) was first published by the Nautical Research Guild in 1979 and has been out of print for many year, but it is now back in print and copies are In Stock at Ages of Sail!

From the NRG website:

The Nautical Research Guild’s Ship Modeler’s Shop Notes book, first published in 1979 and out of print for several years, is now back in print. This popular and insightful volume discusses the construction of ship models in numerous articles written by marine historians and ship model builders. Edited by Merritt Edson and assisted by Ben Lankford, Edward Mueller and Norman Rubin, the book is a compilation of shop notes and longer articles from out-of-print material contained in Volumes 1 through 25 of the Nautical Research Journal. This book has been a standard for ship model building, and highly acclaimed by professionals and…

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Modeling a Gifu Tabune – Adding Details

Wasen Mokei 和船模型

I added some details to my 1/20-scale rice field boat since my last post, so I took some new photos.

Again, the the bow rises up too much because of the distortion in the drawing I used. The actual amount of rise at the bow should be 250mm at full size, or 17.5mm at this scale. On this model, it ended up being 21mm.

For the nail mortises, I have a tool I made for my 1/50-scale Kamakura Umibune that actually seemed to work okay for this model. At this scale, the tool makes mortises that would be about 20mm wide, or just under an inch. For smaller nails, maybe this is okay.

I just took a guess at the spacing between nails using a higher density of nails at the transome or todate and the bow, which I would normally call the miyoshi, but I don’t know if that term applies…

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