New Shipyard Detail Sets

I just saw that Shipyard (Vessel Company) announced the release of three new details sets for their 1/96 scale frigate paper model kits, HMS Mercury, HMS Enterprise, and their newly re-released Santa Leocadia. These detail sets consist of multiple sheets of laser-cut parts, and are designed to enhance these kits and make them easier to build.

HMS Mercury Detail Set

As you can see, you get a lot of parts with these sets, and they’re all pre-cut for you. This is a big time saver, and you don’t even have to laminate paper together to get the parts to the right thickness, eliminating another step in the construction process.

Also, things like gratings aren’t just flat two-dimensional representations of gratings. They actually have depth – though, I can’t tell from photos if these are cut all the way through or just have laser-engraved holes for details.

Of course, these new parts replace multiple parts in the original kit and may take a little instruction to show how they go together. You might also note that while the original parts are printed in color, the laser-cut detail parts are cut from plain card stock, which means that these parts will need to be painted.

Color matching to other printed parts in use could be an issue when painting these parts. But, I think that’s going to be a pretty minor issue, as these parts appear to all be deck fittings, so they are either to be painted black, red, or a natural wood color. This seems to differ from the old GPM offerings which included detail parts for the hull, and those would have to be painted to match hull colors as well.

The price on these sets looks pretty reasonable at 79 Polish Zloty, which is currently about $17. It’s unknown when Ages of Sail will start to stock them. For now, you may have to order direct from Shipyard: https://shop.model-vessel.com/index.php?id_category=63&controller=category&id_lang=2 Ω