Most of you who have been following my blog know that I’ve been experimenting with making paper ship models. Shipyard’s 1/96-scale HMS Alert was the first kit I attempted and completed. That was several years ago now. Earlier this year I completed Shipyard’s laser-cut model kit of a Hanseatic cog (Hansa Kogge). After completing the Alert, I started playing around with a larger subject, Shipyard’s 1/96-scale HMS Mercury kit. But, that was pretty involved with a full gun deck, lots of canons, plus a relatively long hull. Last year, I started working on a something a little more reasonable to tackle, again a Shipyard paper model kit, the fluit Schwarzer Rabe.
But, though they are quite detailed and well made, Shipyard is not the only source of paper ship model kits. There are other makers of kits such as WAK, Oriel, and others. But one in particular has recently caught my attention, as the designer is has posted some of his scratch builds on the ship model forum ModelShipWorld.com. His screen name and his company name is Seahorse, and while I’ve seen some of these kits and scratch work before, I hadn’t really stopped to take a look at them because I wasn’t paying that much attention to paper models. But, now that I’ve taken a deeper interest in them, I’ve started noticing his kits, and look very interesting.
Of course, you’ll find him and his work on papermodelers.com as well, which I’ve started spending more time on, particularly with the cog build and now the Schwarzer Rabe build, which I’m posting there as well as here on this site.
I don’t really know a lot about the maker, and I’m just really parroting what I’ve read on MSW here. His name is Tomasz Weremko, and apparently he has designed a number of kits that are published by WAK, but now publishes his own work, which you can find here: https://seahorse.pl/en/
I can’t directly attest to his products, but others have given him high praise, and I’m anxious to get one or two of his kits to check them out. Being paper models, they’re certainly very affordable compared with wooden ones, though add-on accessories can add up quickly, like laser-cut frame set, cannon carriage set, sail set, etc.
Most of the kits are of smaller subjects, so don’t expect any HMS Victory, or even 28 gun frigates. The largest kit I’ve seen on his site is probably the Wodnik, A.K.A Meerman, a Polish galleon from the Battle of Oliwa, which the subject of my current paper ship model project, the Schwarzer Rabe, also participated in, and on the same side.
For now, I’ll leave it up to you to check out. I should try to resist the temptation of buying yet another paper model kit (or 2 or 3). But, I may break down and get something so I can check out how his kits compare with ones I’ve worked on in the past. Anyway, paper kits can stack up in the closet model stash pretty easily without spending too much cash. Or so I keep telling myself…
Ship Modeler 