Saturday, October 22, 2016 - Introduction
During the end of last week I issued on the internet an order for a kit of a new ship model. Yesterday I regularly received the package from the manufacturer and now I am going to open a new shipyard that I believe will keep me happily busy for the next months. Knowing myself I think I'll need, excluding unforeseen situations, a whole year to finish it, but this is just a raw idea.
My thinking is that the model I chose was greatly illustrated with a plethora of images in the topic "Italian boats (and not) in the Adriatic Sea". Goto here to review it http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/14414-italian-boats-of-the-adriatic-sea/ . I'm referring to the "Gaeta Falcata" or "Gajeta Falkusa". As widely explained in the topic mentioned above it is a boat originating from island of Vis and used in the past by fishermen of Comiso, a village of that island.
The kit is produced by a Croatian company, MARISSTELLA from Split, established in 2008. I discovered this company on ModelShipWorld forum where it has, in the home page, a ad banner. MARISSTELLA has a very interesting catalog, especially focused on boats of the Adriatic Sea. The first impression is positive: the material inside contained is quite valid, the timber is of good quality and the two paper sheets of building plans are very well made. The wood pieces are laser pre-cut, using both plywood and solid wood.
For now, in my opinion, the major weakness consists in the building instructions: they are written in Croatian language and English.
Well, you may say, you know English quite well and so, where is the problem? The problem is that that English is a lot to be desired and definitely looks like a translation made with Google Translator, most probably a version of a few years ago, and it is therefore hard to understand the concepts to be followed for the building. Luckily there are plenty of photographs of the various build stages, which help me a lot, but, although abundant for some steps, they are totally missing for others and I find several problems in understanding the whole process in a consistent and methodic way.
For now I'm spending a bit of time to read them, interpret them, understand them, and given that I'm studying them, rewrite them in a better English with the objective to propose this translation as a gift to the kit manufacturer when all the steps will be checked (this just to avoid me too to write wrong things).
Finally, again in terms of weaknesses, I would expect that at least all the frames of this model, in the classical three-pieces structure, were already laser pre-cut. Instead the kit provides many walnut and lime 3x3mm strips that must be soaked and bent before being applied inside the hull. This operation, anyway possible, stretches and increases the overall processing time. Being it a kit, it seems a pretty serious lack. I'll experience in practice how much more time it will need.
We will analyze more in detail later all the steps that will lead to the building of the hull inside and outside. Now it isn't the right moment.
Here, instead, I would like to propose some of the kit images and the material contained inside.
First, a bit of data:
01 - 20161021_163657.jpg
During the end of last week I issued on the internet an order for a kit of a new ship model. Yesterday I regularly received the package from the manufacturer and now I am going to open a new shipyard that I believe will keep me happily busy for the next months. Knowing myself I think I'll need, excluding unforeseen situations, a whole year to finish it, but this is just a raw idea.
My thinking is that the model I chose was greatly illustrated with a plethora of images in the topic "Italian boats (and not) in the Adriatic Sea". Goto here to review it http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/14414-italian-boats-of-the-adriatic-sea/ . I'm referring to the "Gaeta Falcata" or "Gajeta Falkusa". As widely explained in the topic mentioned above it is a boat originating from island of Vis and used in the past by fishermen of Comiso, a village of that island.
The kit is produced by a Croatian company, MARISSTELLA from Split, established in 2008. I discovered this company on ModelShipWorld forum where it has, in the home page, a ad banner. MARISSTELLA has a very interesting catalog, especially focused on boats of the Adriatic Sea. The first impression is positive: the material inside contained is quite valid, the timber is of good quality and the two paper sheets of building plans are very well made. The wood pieces are laser pre-cut, using both plywood and solid wood.
For now, in my opinion, the major weakness consists in the building instructions: they are written in Croatian language and English.
Well, you may say, you know English quite well and so, where is the problem? The problem is that that English is a lot to be desired and definitely looks like a translation made with Google Translator, most probably a version of a few years ago, and it is therefore hard to understand the concepts to be followed for the building. Luckily there are plenty of photographs of the various build stages, which help me a lot, but, although abundant for some steps, they are totally missing for others and I find several problems in understanding the whole process in a consistent and methodic way.
For now I'm spending a bit of time to read them, interpret them, understand them, and given that I'm studying them, rewrite them in a better English with the objective to propose this translation as a gift to the kit manufacturer when all the steps will be checked (this just to avoid me too to write wrong things).
Finally, again in terms of weaknesses, I would expect that at least all the frames of this model, in the classical three-pieces structure, were already laser pre-cut. Instead the kit provides many walnut and lime 3x3mm strips that must be soaked and bent before being applied inside the hull. This operation, anyway possible, stretches and increases the overall processing time. Being it a kit, it seems a pretty serious lack. I'll experience in practice how much more time it will need.
We will analyze more in detail later all the steps that will lead to the building of the hull inside and outside. Now it isn't the right moment.
Here, instead, I would like to propose some of the kit images and the material contained inside.
First, a bit of data:
- 1:20 scale
- total length (with boom) 70.4 cm
- packaging dimensions 65 x 21.5 cm
01 - 20161021_163657.jpg