a new approach to kits

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

i have been selling timbering sets for Hahn models for years the problem before 3D printing was the stern carvings and figureheads. Many model builders loved the building of the models, but the carvings and figureheads were always an issue.
finally when 3D printing became possible that change everything almost, 3D modeling required skill and the cost of 3D printing made the timbering sets to expensive.
i had a couple options either job out the printing so i could include them with the timbering sets or invest in a resin printing set up, or have master prints printed and make molds and cast the parts. When i did the Alfred stern i realized even though you are working from plans what you end up building is never an exact match to the plans. what i found out either you build the model and scale the 3D parts to fit your built model or print the parts and build the model to fit the parts either way it required scaling. Then one night it came to me more and more builders have a 3d printer or know someone who does or use an on line print service, give away the STL files so a builder can print their own parts custom scaled to the model they are building.

 

[Bob Cleek]

It seems you are in good company. Great minds think alike:

"Mass production using interchangeable parts was first achieved in 1803 by Marc Isambard Brunel in cooperation with Henry Maudslay and Simon Goodrich, under the management of (and with contributions by) Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham, the Inspector General of Naval Works at Portsmouth Block Mills, Portsmouth Dockyard, Hampshire, England. At the time, the Napoleonic War was at its height, and the Royal Navy was in a state of expansion that required 100,000 pulley blocks to be manufactured a year. Bentham had already achieved remarkable efficiency at the docks by introducing power-driven machinery and reorganizing the dockyard system." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts

The question presented to ship modelers thereby, however, is what effect the mass production of commercially manufactured ship model parts has on the characteristically unique artistic value of finished ship models in the marketplace. The major objective, and result, of interchangeable parts technology, a critical prerequisite for the Industrial Revolution, was a concurrent reduction in the production costs of the individual products manufactured and an increase in profits occasioned by their mass marketing made possible by their increased supply. (This system diverted profits from the craftsmen who made the products, to the owners of the infrastructure that mass produced them, creating capitalism as an economic system.) From an economic perspective, rarity increases a product's economic value to the extent a market exists for a product, and availability decreases a product's economic value to the extent a market does not exist for a product. Consequently, the less demand there is for a product, the less of an advantage there is in its mass production, even to the point of decreasing that limited demand itself, and particularly so where the motivation for demand is the appreciation of the artistic handcrafted character of such products. In practical application, does the mass production of ship model parts promote or discourage the art of ship modeling in the long run? While it presumably increases the number of ship models, does it increase their demand in the marketplace or will it "kill the goose that laid the golden egg?"

While on the subject of golden eggs, consider the "golden eggs" created by the jewelry firm House of Faberge, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. As many as 69 Czarist Russia Era eggs were created under the supervision of Peter Carl Faberge, of which 61 are currently known to have survived. The most expensive of these has sold for $33 million dollars. In the second half of the 20th Century, Theo Faberge, Peter Carl Faberge's grandson, created a much larger number of very similar jeweled eggs and sold them under the trade name, "The St. Petersburg Collection." These sell for around $1,000 to $7,500 each in today's market. Going Theo one better, there are retailers right now selling software downloads for 3D printing of plastic "Faberge egg" kits. You don't even have to be a skilled jeweler to make one! But what are they worth when completed? Are Admiralty Board ship models any different?



I suppose it boils down to whether one is a capitalist or a Luddite. Although primarily an "Arts and Crafts Era" Luddite when it comes to my hobbies, what I understand of Marxism enables me to appreciate that 3D printing technology could "put ownership of the means of production in the hands of the workers," but in the case of ship models, and, I suppose, Faberge eggs, I wonder whether we can trust them to manage it wisely!

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

i have been involved in model ship building since the 1960 so i have years of watching the hobby/art evolve. My first ship model kit came in a long yellow box with instructions, fittings and a solid hull. Once the hobby started to catch on kits were mass produced, and a major drawback was a limited amount of fitting were cast and used in every kit regardless of scale or historical period. This gave "kits a bad name. Then along came kits out of Europe which were advertised as plank on frame museum quality which actually they were plank on bulkheads and far from museum quality, but better than the solid hull kits. Although this new generation of kits were better they still were far from a model of a ship. One problem which is still around is providing narrow strips all the same width for hull planking. This made planking the hull very difficult, if you actually knew how a hull is planked you needed different widths of planking so you can shape them to fit. Still even to this day a limited amount of fittings are used for a number of kits. Back in the 1970 i asked Harold about making kits for his models the answer i got was NO! no, no, no kits are evil and degrade the art of model ship building and teach nothing of how ship were built. Ok then i get it, so how about just a milled wood package, no instructions, no fittings, nothing mass produced. Well! that idea went well with Harold. So each and every timbering set from the 1970s to today are custom made to order and no two are alike. From the standpoint of marketing, it was limited to those who had basic skills of carving. Sure i could have done carvings and figureheads, made molds and cast the parts but now i crossed the line into "mass production" and everyone is exactly the same.
one idea was to laser cut "blanks" giving a builder a basic starting point.



with just knives a builder can carve in details





the carvings are still so small the chips were tiny



i tried it and results were ok by starting with a laser cut and etched blank, but the problem was i carved the pieces at a much larger scale than the ship model. When the carving was reduced to scale the carving became much harder so i scrapped the idea.





3D CNC carving was a possible idea but at the time very expensive. and i saw kits getting more and more expensive as new technologies were being used and the loss of "hand crafted" models being lost.
Then came 3D printing but it encountered resistance the old school cried never! will i put any plastic parts on my wooden model. But now it has become accepted, and you see printed rigging blocks, figureheads, carvings, cannons etc.
As kit prices continue to rise and manufactures add more and more finished parts fabrication and hand work is falling to the wayside. High end kits are pricing themselves out of the hobby market BUT high-end models can be built at a fraction of the cost.

.STL or .OBJ file like the laser cut blanks are just a starting point. If you have basic 3D modeling skills you can add details or take out details, print only parts of a file, scale the files or print them as is. but the files are workable and can be altered by you the builder.

putting fabrication and skills back into the hands of the builder rather than in a box. But at this point the problem is teaching how to actually build a scale model of a wooden ship.

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

more and more hobby builders have 3D printers but the problem is creating the actual print file that requires skill about as much skill as actually carving the piece. Adding a printed piece to a kit or as a separate purchase is still expensive. But if you could buy the file like from on line sourced like listed below, then it makes it affordable. Print it yourself or have a friend print it for you. If you have the actual file you can manipulate it to fit your personal need. Say you want to do a stern section model then pick your scale, pick which parts you want to print.

talking about this with a friend he did bring up the "letting it loose in the wild frontier of the internet." what that means is yes you the creator of the file has it on line and for sale as a download. What is stopping anyone from offering the same file to friends or resell at a discount? nothing!
you can ask the file is personal use only and not for resale but trying to enforce it? it all comes down to the honesty of the model ship community.

i wonder if files can have limited use like typing in a password 3 tries and you are out. a limited access to a print file you do not actually download it but buy the file and print the file. Every time you want to print the file it cost you. If you do not have the file you cannot share it.

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Best useful 3D objects to make with a 3D printer — 345 designs・Cults

Here is a selection of the best STL files for useful, functional and practical 3D prints to make with 3D printing

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[Kurt Konrath]

I have a resin 3D printer, and getting good usable prints for a beginner is not that easy.

I need to spend more time reading about what different setting do to the model, when a print doesn't turn out.

 

[Roger Pellett]

Dave, I must respectfully disagree with a statement that you made above. How were the early POB kits better than solid hull ones?

First of all solid hull kits allow skilled craftsmen to duplicate hull lines to a high degree of accuracy. Towing tank models that must accurately match the naval architect’s hull lines were carved from laminated lifts of pattern makers pine. Been there-done that!

I believe that US Navy exhibition models are still solid hull

And last but not least, for the few of us that do not build models of wooden ships, eg; iron or steel hulled. why bother with planking? Sculpting a hull to match a lines drawing is for me one of the joys of ship model building. The solid hull also is a great foundation for hull plating. A POB strip planked kit of Titanic is not the best way to build a model of this ship.

I believe that the real driving force behind the POB model was/is economics. A small box of sticks and plywood was and still is cheaper than a large heavy box of solid wood.

I understand the desire to demonstrate craftsmanship with attractive exposed framing models of wooden ships, I once built one from scratch myself. But over the years my interests have changed and my current project is a steamship with hull carved from nice pieces of pine.

Roger

 

[manning16]

Fully concur with Dave..I'm planning my next scratchbuild ..am partial now to Navy Board/ Admiralty style models.. I have a sizable stash of Pear, box and holly.. I have scratchbuilt several frigates and would like to do another, but the carvings are another matter.. I am not allowed to carve the bird at Thanksgiving... It would be great to have pre carved cnc carvings or 3d printed available. in certain scale, comparable with good plans.then as you pointed out, build the hull to match the carvings... I had to extend the keel/hull for my RC build for the same reason..I feel that this would create an avenue for builders to model more obscure or unavailable ships..

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

oops i did not mean to discredit solid hull models the half model was the methods to layout hull lines. I knew model builders of Great Lake freighters like whale backs who built a solid hull. What i was trying to say was in the world of the ship model hobby when the bulkhead models were introduced as museum quality plank on frame it was a step up in the hobby or as advertised as such.

 

[Roger Pellett]

IMHO, mostly advertised as such!!

 

[rshousha]

This is an interesting discussion and is in line with my own idea of the "Virtual Factory" for model-building. Instead of expecting everything to be in a single box, modellers have access to a number of sources of materials to build a particular model.

3D-printing is one part of the equation; timbering is another; rigging is another; and so on.

I think this is the way the industry is evolving.

Now, the question of IP for the .STL files is a difficult one. Indeed, some people do like to work for nothing, but 3D drawing does take a lot of practice and is quite costly if one wants to use the best software. It does not take long for a tinkerer to realize there are serious limitations with free this or free that.

For the time being, I only sell parts, but if I can find some system that "knows" how many times a part is printed, or on what machine it is printed, it may be easier to sell the .STL files themselves. In the meantime, here is a recent set of 3D-printed parts I have created for a large R/C sailboat.

I am doing my best to organize my business so I offer what I can do best, and send modellers to people who can do what I can't do.

 

[Signet]

Then one night it came to me more and more builders have a 3d printer or know someone who does or use an on line print service, give away the STL files so a builder can print their own parts custom scaled to the model they are building.

I think that's a great idea, but it may not be practical. My son has a resin 3D printer and I've designed some barrels and such and he's made them for me. But complex carvings, I'm sure, can be VERY time-consuming to design and require software that I don't have. Just adding the raised emblem to a cannon barrel was a challenge for me. Anyhow, /someone/ has to pay for the time and skill to design those 3D item. So, I would think, you would have to add some cost to the kit to cover that work, amortized over the number of anticipated kit sales. Actually, that might work out fine, doing that. When custom 3D parts are included with a kit, kit manufacturers would have to not only include the cost of making the parts, but also include something for the designer.

OTOH, the actual cost of 3D parts is not that great, especially if done in quantity, so including them might still be better. In that way, satisfying also those who are unable to economically have the parts made.

As to kits vs scratch, this 3D discussion is kind of at the basis of why I build kits. I enjoy some research (mostly by buying a good monograph), but feel the economies of quality kit builders supplying quality materials, and especially custom-made or custom-size parts is much better than trying to source all those materials myself. I did the same thing when building clocks: Kits supplied better, drier, straighter materials in the right size and thickness, at a lower price, compared to buying and processing it all manually.

 

[X Bubble Head]

There are numerous free and paid file-sharing sites available to download 3D-printed parts.

Piracy is always an issue once a 3D model is "released into the wild," since there are far more people with 3D printers than those with the skills to create 3D models.

With niche models that fetch higher prices, many buyers don't understand how much time, research and effort goes into making a high-quality 3D model - months in many cases. Making a 3D model that looks accurate is just the first step. Making a model that prints well is another. When I take a commission, the buyer is also paying for my experience. There is no Staples "Easy button" to learn 3D modeling, and it can take years to reach the point where anything can be made -efficiently, in the least amount of time. 3D printing is not "plug and play" as manufacturers tend to advertise. Every printer company's online forums are full of posters asking for help with failed prints.

One alternative is to sell 3D parts as a project file- not the original STL/OBJ etc. This site is one example. The revenue split is better, but the files have to be listed exclusively on their site for three years to get the higher return level:

Sell My Design | Aladdin Model

www.aladdinmodel.com