Higaki Kaisen Article Final Part and Ships in Scale Going Quarterly

The latest issue of Seaways’ Ships in Scale is out with two major pieces of information. First is the third and final installment of my build of the Higaki Kaisen Japanese coastal transport kit from the Japanese manufacturer Woody Joe.

The second bit of news is that Ships in Scale has now switched to a Quarterly format, down from its bi-monthly distribution. This generally has more to do with the time constraints of running the publication, rather than any issues regarding content or finances.

For authors of ship modeling articles, like myself, it mostly means that there will be a longer period of time between submission of an article and its appearance.

I still have an article to submit on building the HMS Alert. I suppose the sooner I get that sent along, the sooner it will appear. I’ll be looking at getting that sent off in the next several weeks.

Wasen Mokei 和船模型

The third and final part of my Higaki Kaisen build article is out with the latest issue of Seaways’ Ships in Scale. While I was actually relieved to see the previous article, so those building the kit would have the information I’m trying to pass along, it’s kind of sad this time around. Though I’ve had other multi-part articles published in the magazine, I’d really like to keep writing about this kit to generate more interest in this and other Woody Joe kits.

Of course, there are other Woody Joe kits to write about. It’s been my plan to write about building the Hacchoro with modifications based on my visit to the replica boats in Yaizu harbor. But, it takes time and I have other projects I need to be working on. So, finding time for that one will be a bit rough.

But, at least all the information on…

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Charles Yacht Review in Next Ships in Scale

A couple months ago I wrote up a formal write-up of my out-of-the-box kit review of Woody Joe’s Charles Royal Yacht and submitted it to Seaways’ Ships in Scale magazine. A couple days ago I got the proofs and the layout looks really good. Today, I finished some minor corrections and sent the corrected proof back to the editors. 

The article is 10 pages long with a lot of photos, including four provided by the Japanese ship model society The Rope thanks to SMA and Rope member Don Dressel, who connected me up with his friend and Rope member Norio Uriu. Mr. Uriu provided several photos from which I chose for this article. My intent was not only to show the model kit, but to introduce readers to the Japanese ship modelers and to provide some information about The Rope.

Given that this is my third Woody Joe kit review and these kits are not marketed in the U.S., it will probably be my last one for now. The first kit I reviewed was the Kanrin Maru, a Dutch-built Japanese screw steamer that was the first Japanese government ship to visit the United States, the second was the beautifully designed Edo period coastal transport called a Higaki Kaisen, and then this one, a ship that has no Japanese connection at all. Those seemed to cover the range of Woody Joe ship model kits, so I figured they were a good representation.

Woody Joe’s Higaki Kaisen

Charles Royal Yacht

Kanrin Maru

My next ship model articles will probably have more to do with the building of one of the Woody Joe kits. I’d been planning on writing up my Higaki Kaisen build, so maybe now is the time to get started on that.

If I do another kit review, which I really like doing, I may target one of the European manufacturers such as Caldercraft or one of the kits of Amati’s Victory Models line, since those seem to generate a lot of interest among modelers on the Internet. The only problem for me is that I’m currently doing some work for the U.S. distributor for these product lines and I don’t want to show or give any suspicion of bias based on that fact.

In any case, look for the new kit review article in the May-June issue of Seaways’ Ships in Scale, which I expect we should see in the next 2 or 3 weeks.

Mary Taylor Article – Final Update

This last week, I returned the edited proof of the final installment of Mary Taylor article I wrote for Seaways’ Ships in Scale.

I seem to have miscalculated the number of parts the article would be broken into. I even had to go back and re-check my own text to see if something had been cut. But, no, the article parts were simply larger chunks than I’d anticipated. So, this next issue will see the third and final installment.

I have to say that realizing this has left me feeling a bit sad. Yes, it’s great that the whole thing is now out there, but the ongoing process of having your work in print is really a great feeling. Now that I know it’s over, it’s left me kind of wondering what to do next.

It’s kind of motivated me to push ahead on a magazine version of the Woody Joe Kanrin Maru kit review. Also, I’ve been working on the Kanrin Maru build and I’d really like to write about it. But, I really want to be careful not to be building the model so I can write about it. When that happens, the quality of the build becomes somewhat secondary and I don’t want that to happen to my work. Still, I do like to write, so I think I just need to be careful about my builds.

In any case, July/August 2013 is the final article section. Now, you readers out there have it all together and, hopefully, someone will take what I wrote and run with it and build their own Mary Taylor model.

And, who knows, it was a fun project and I do have a BlueJacket Mary Taylor kit sitting on the shelf. Maybe I’ll build the kit with modifications. Well… no, I think I have enough projects in the works for now. I guess I’ll leave that to another modeler.