Building Shipyard’s Dutch Fluit Schwarzer Rabe, 1627 – Part 3

As you may have noticed, I’ve now officially elevated this build of Shipyard’s 1/96-scale paper model kit of the Dutch fluit Schwarzer Rabe to a full fledged project, with its own place in my Ship Model Build Logs menu.

It seems that after completing the 1/72-scale Hanse Kogge Bremen laser-cut paper model, for which I did not maintain a build log here, I was itching to keep up with the paper models. I wasn’t really sure if I had been doing a good enough job with my Dutch fluit Schwarzer Rabe, but I thought I should give it a chance. So, I continued the build this weekend, adding more details to the hull, and starting a blog on papermodelers.com, which I will basically echo here, or vice versa.

As we last left this build…

Shipyard’s Dutch Fluit Schwarzer Rabe – A brief update

After three weeks of taking care of my 95-year-old convalescing mother, I am now taking her up to stay with my older sister for a while. My sister is retired and lives in Washington state, so the journey from the central California coast is a long one. For safety reasons, and in order to carry everything my mother will need, we are traveling by train – a bedroom aboard an Amtrak sleeper car. It’s certainly not the most luxurious way to travel, but it works, and we get to see some beautiful scenery. 

Travel means that this ship modeler again finds himself without a ship-modeling project for several days. However, I was fortunate enough to have had a paper model kit to work on for a bit, and very much enjoyed the time I got to spend on that.

I won’t go into a lot of detail, except to recap that I ordered a model kit from Ages of Sail, a Shipyard paper model kit of the 17^th century Dutch fluit Schwarzer Rabe. Don’t ask me why a Dutch fluit has a German name – I don’t know. But, it is a nice looking ship, at least in the way that the manufacturer portrays it. The ship was a real ship and participated in the Battle of Oliwa in 1627 between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Navy and the Swedish Navy. The Schwarzer Rabe was part of the 1^st squadron of the Polish side of the battle. One of her opponents was the Dutch-built ship Papegojan, of which Shipyard also makes two kits. 

Shipyard’s Dutch Fluit Schwarzer Rabe – A Paper Model Saves the Day

It’s a happy day when a paper model kit shows up to give me back a taste of ship modeling again. Last week, my Dutch fluit model kit showed up in the mail and it didn’t take me long to open it up and get started.

As I mentioned before, family health matters have me stuck in the house where I grew up, with no trace of ship modeling material except text and images on the Internet. In order to give me back a small part of my absent ship modeling self, I ordered the paper model kit from Ages of Sail. I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to build the Dutch fluit Schwarzer Rabe (Black Raven) or the Dutch pinnace Papegojan. Both paper model kits are available and in 1/96-scale. I ended up buying the Schwazer Rabe for about $38. But, looking back, I realized that there is a special edition set, The Opponents of the Battle of Oliwa, which contains both kits. Didn’t really matter though, as Ages of Sail, where I got my kit, doesn’t stock that particular product. But, it’s out there somewhere.

Anyway, the Schwarzer Rabe kit is plenty of project work for the duration. The kit was a little under $40 from Ages of Sail and can be purchased here. The kit is a 1/96-scale paper model kit from Shipyard of Poland, and measures just about 16″ when complete.