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#21
08-22-2010, 03:00 AM
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Hi Bob,
Sorry to hear about your loss of home and business due to the economic downturn. I live in Australia and we seem to have missed most of the problems that have occurred in America...perhaps you can combine wood building with paper and turn out more courses for one or the other, once the economic times improve, over there. Perhaps even books or e.books for specific models with a paper or card kit enclosed in the front of the book as a builders incentive to buy the book in the first place. The rest of the book could provide the would be modeller with the list of tools required and glue and so on and then set out how to build the model in the following pages..... I never use a pair of scissors when building a model. I always use a hobby knife because I can see what I am doing and I have a lot more control and you can't use scissors to cut out tiny windows, no matter how clever you are. All of my card models are far bigger in size than the kits which you have. I usually photocopy enlarge the small kits I decide to build, up to a much bigger scale and then I build in 3D, so that the detail which is printed in 2D on a card model, is replaced by a 3D object, or porthole or door or piping or whatever, so that when I paint the model or its respective parts, the detail stands out through the paint coat as they would have on the actual ship - and all of my models are for working radio control - in the water, after waterproofing. Truthfully, I have not built more than two sailing ships, because the rigging gave me the cold shudders. I got as far as the masts and spars and that was generally "it" for me.....those models have long since departed. It seems to me that Doris uses thin wood pieces, the same as would be used in marketry or parketry (pictures where different woods are used to make the objects stand out from the background) and this wood used to be available from woodworking craft stores, I think one side was sticky. You might be able to use the same technique on your card models to get the results you want. It would be great for someone like you to come up with a range of forms on which to build complicated rigging procedures to ween some of us less enthusiastic modellers off models which don't have much rigging in the first place!! And show us how to do it. I have written a number of articles which you might like to have a browse through in this forum - under BigBenn. I must say my building technique is different from what everyone else generally seems to build here, because of the climate I live in and the possible expectations I might have for my models at some point, later on. If you have any queries, don't hesitate to list them, as the modellers here, like me, have proven to be very welcoming and supportive and will help you through any problems you might encounter. Should you, at some time in the future, want to build sailing warship models from plans, then I have a huge library of sailing warship ships plans, from the 1200's or earlier, through to the late 1800's. I never bothered to catalog the plans I have because although I collected them over the last 30 years or so, there has never been any interest in them from the people I had contact with....... I have offered my total plans collection, in A4 and A3 page size, which numbers over 10,000 plans sets (Land, Sea, Air, Space) to the member of this forum, for free – (my large scale plans, of which I have over 400 and many sailing warships, I am selling off for US$55 each plus postage) also I have a really good collection of photocopies of rare early maritime lithographs of many sailing ships, battles, maps of cities and so on in another catalog, which I can photocopy and send out, if need be. Good enough, in many cases for slight enlargement, mounting and framing. I prefer to provide photocopies if I am working from photocopies, because none of the detail is lost in the copy. I charge a small fee to cover photocopying and postage (usually about US$5 to US$10) to cover my own costs as my pension does not go very far, as it is. In passing, if you remain interested in sailing ships, e.carmodels sells kits produced by members of this forum and your input of card sailing warship kits would be very welcome because I don't think anyone else does them...and I could provide you with the plans to make that possible...and your kits, once published in a digital format would require no further work, yet they might provide you with ongoing income, as they sell and resell. Each plan I provide which becomes a paper kit, I ask for a one off free digital kit for my own digital collection as an incentive for me to provide the next set of plans for the next model.....and that could be an unending supply...of Copyright free plans. Good luck with your transition from wood to card. I suspect you might find it rather hard to go from one skill to another, which you have to learn from scratch. There are a few pointers which might help, however. Card has no grain, so it is possible to bend quite thick pieces of card around a form, simply by wetting lightly the card and bend, then allow to dry. Pin in place with dressmaking pins. I use PVA glue, same as you probably did in your wood models. With card, you only need as much wet glue as you would find on the back of a postage stamp to join to parts together. I use an Excel hobby knife and triangular blades (which they usually come with) for all of my modelling work. The Excel hobby knife is held the same way as you would use a biro, with the same amount of cutting control. I also use a Maun Safety Ruler which is an M shape and a black biro for marking out and that's it, apart from paint - Chromacryl Acrylic Paint which can be bought at artist supplies. The rest of my building techniques are listed in this forum and should you wish to, you can find them and copy and paste the contents from the respective pages into your word processor and print them out and they would give you my building techniques to improve on and certainly give you some other building options. Richard (BigBenn) 
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#23
08-22-2010, 03:49 AM
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Thanks everyone, for your advice and the warm welcome here. I really appreciate it. Glen, I'll check out your Cleopatra build. That's one of the kits I have. And lancer535, thanks for the tip on glues. I'm already out of mat board so I'll pick up those glues when I get more board today.
I'm taking lots of photos because I hope to be able to build this model to completion and write a practicum on the build for my website. I've got a lot of customers and followers and I'm sure something like this would appeal to a quite a few of them once they see what can be done with a card model. I'll start a build log once I get past the framework stage. So far it's going just fine but it is time consuming cutting out all of those parts. Wooden kit have the advantage of having the bulkheads and keel pre-cut so assembly is easy and fast. My Bellona will probably end up as a hybrid of card modeling and wood modeling. It's too big of a temptation to use metal cannons instead of the paper ones and I'm sure I'll find other areas that beg for wood modeling substitution, especially when it comes to rigging. I'm quite a ways from that stage of the construction right now though. Thanks again for your comments and suggestions. Take care, Bob
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#24
08-22-2010, 04:07 AM
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Hi Richard,
Wow, thanks for the info on the plans you have, I just might be interested in that sort of thing. When you say "plans", are you saying that you have full sets of card model plans with all the parts already drawn that are ready to put together once printed out? Or are these regular model ship plans that can be developed into card model kits? I have extensive experience in developing wooden model ship kits in fully framed form. My HMS Kingfisher kit, which I sold for $1750.00, had over 2000 CNC milled parts. I had two CNC router mills that cut all of the parts out for my kits. It took 1 week just to produce two Kingfisher kits. I did all of the development of the parts myself using AutoCAD. So I'm some what of an expert in wooden model ship kit development. That being said, I'm not sure I'm up to developing a card model ship, at least not just yet. There appears to be quite a bit more parts to a card model ship then there are to a wooden model ship. But it's certainly something to think about. But if you have complete kit plans, I would definitely be interested in trying out a simple one masted ship for my business. I have been in business over 7 years now and my business started with my Freshman Course, the Model Shipways kit Armed Virginia Sloop. The kit manufacturer told me there was no market for such detailed instructions because the kit came with instructions. I sold over 200 copies in less than 6 months after he said that and he was selling more of that kit in a month than he used to sell in a year. That first course grew and now I have 10 such courses in varying degrees of difficulty. That part of my business is still going strong and selling well. I'm always looking for new subject models to build for additional courses but now that we live in an apartment, it's more difficult to build the models because of the mess working in wood makes. But if I could offer a start course in card modeling a model ship and even include the complete model with the course, I think many of my customers would be interested in that an it would bring more modelers into this aspect of the model shipbuilding hobby. So yes, absolutely Richard, I'm interested in your plans. Please get back to me by private message with some details on some small ships you have and thanks for the offer. Take care, Bob
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#25
08-22-2010, 10:32 AM
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Ah, Bob! I thought I recognized that name!
Quite a fan of your practicums, from way back. Welcome to the intriging world of paper/card modeling. I think you will find a very friendly group and a hobby that is quite amazing both in simplicity of the tools needed to enjoy building paper models and in the complexity of the models possible in this medium. I hope you will show us some of your builds when you get to that point. I suspect your skills at wooden ship modeling will serve you very well in this hobby, and very much look forward to seeing a build thread or two by you. Welcome aboard, mate! Cheers! Jim
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#26
08-22-2010, 10:53 AM
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Hi Jim,
Thanks for the warm welcome. Are you still building any models in wood. After seeing some of the models in this forum, I wish I had gotten into card modeling a long time ago. I'm primed and motivated and moving forward with my Bellona. I've ordered some wood vinyl like Doris uses and am anxious to get to that stage of construction. Given my wood experience and knowledge in how ships were built, I've got lots of tricks up my sleeve to use on Bellona. I'll certainly post a build log once I get some suitable work completed. Already ran out of mat board and am headed out to buy some more today. Take care, Bob
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#27
08-23-2010, 12:09 PM
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Hi Bob,
The small and large plans are regular model ship plans that can be developed into card or wood model kits - presumably from/with your experience with CAD programs. The only problem I see with a card kit is if it goes together easily and beta builders are there to check and see and get back to you, if you don’t do it yourself. I would imagine that it would be easy enough to scan a photocopy into digital and transfer the digital image(s) into your CAD program and continue from there, at least, that seems to be what the other blokes on this forum appear to do. With the wealth of card kits I'd like to build currently available via the internet, I'd prefer to leave it to others better equipped with those skills and with the motivation to use the plans I have collected - for some sort of use, rather than have my plans collections eventually end up in some dusty museum warehouse (and I went to a few during my collecting phase) when I die - or in the bin. Also you have a much different welfare system in America, to England and Aussie and I am aware you have to work harder for your hospital and retirement benefits, so my thinking is, why not make individual small plans from my small plans collections, available free and into something worthwhile for someone else. The point I was trying to get across, as I'm sure you are aware, was that a card kit created and stored digitally and sold digitally, is a one off enterprise and each sale represents a sale from the original digital card kit without any further input, selling say through e.cardmodels, so you don’t have advertising costs or any further input to create instant income. The wood kits you presumably make with your woodworking machines are much more labour intensive and noisy (which would probably go down like a lead brick with the other tenants in the building you are in, as noise travels through buildings easily) and you don't get to sell a kit until you have re created the parts, over and over. Thus the potential of a digital card kit for continuity of income is only the expense of the time it takes to create and store the kit once digitally, then you go on to build another different kit and another and so on, and so on, against the wood kits you have to individually create. Given your present accommodation - perhaps card kits might be more advantageous until you return to accommodation more fitting for your wood working machines - these trying times, only being an inconvenience, until things return to "normal", as they eventually will. Each card kit has the potential of future sales and an expanding market, without any further input and the range of other small plans that I have that could in turn be made into card kits, is extensive and generally, somewhat unique, especially some of the foreign and "old stuff", which most of it is. Since sailing warships are not my thing, how you would go about it is beyond my comprehension. I have not catalogued my sailing warships small plans collection, because there has never previously been a need for it, nevertheless, I don't mind having a look through it, if you will bear with me and I will give you some idea of what's there. On the other hand, were there any ships plans that you would particularly like - names of ships and dates would be a great idea. There are Polish paper kits of sailing warships, but they are published paper kit books and I have sold my complete collection of paper kits, including those - copyright for those would be with the author or publisher presumably. Richard (BigBenn)
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#28
08-23-2010, 12:15 PM
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#29
08-23-2010, 01:57 PM
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Hi Richard,
Thanks for the info. I no longer have the equipment so I will never produce wooden model ship kits again. But as you suggested, developing card model ship kits with detailed instructions like the ones I've written for wooden kits is very appealing. My biggest problem right now is time. I'm already committed to two wooden ship practicums (the term used to describe my detailed instructions) and have masting and rigging to do on two models that have been under construction for about a year now. I have to get that work done before I can take on any new projects so it's probably going to be some time after the first of the year. But I definitely am interested in doing some sort of card model ship kit with a practicum similar to my wooden kits and practicums. So let me hang on to your email address and at a later time in the year after I've given the subject ship some thought I'll get back to you. Thanks again, Bob
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#30
08-24-2010, 10:14 AM
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Hi Bob,
That's great. I will look forward to you contacting me sometime in the future if you so desire and we will tee something up then. Perhaps you could simplify things for me, by coming up with some model ships you might like to build of specific ships from history - that would give me an incentive to look and perhaps offer alternatives if I can't come up with specifics. Shame you no longer have the equipment so you will never produce wooden model ship kits again. You still have the customers it seems..... If its not a rude question, have you retired or are you still in some sort of employment? Yes, I have problems with time too, what with my computer interests, the internet, the caring component of my job and dog walkies and so on - I'm just off a pension at 65 by one year and a bit.....so this time next year, I will be within spitting distance of it. I do find that making models settles me down and helps me keep the lid on my emotions and that in itself is a panacea for me. Richard
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