Just what is the most authentic plastic sailing ship model?

Gentlemen,

We have been lamenting the lack of manufacturer's interest in plastic sailing ship kits in several threads in this forum.  Indeed, several of us have pointed out the obvious; the HECEPOB companies seem to be thriving and are consistently producing new kits of varying accuracy. The consumer interest is obviously there; why no new plastic kits?

The obvious answer is that the manufacturers are not trying to find out about the obvious consumer interest.  They are pointing to reduced sales that result from there being no new products for the plastic sailing ship modeler.  In other words, there is no apparent market research being conducted by the manufacturers.

My question is, "How many of us have written to the manufacturers?"  I still believe that WE NEED TO LOBBY THEM incessantly until they give us what we want!  I know that several of us have been doing so.  Please, everyone, send emails!  Send letters!  Let them know that we need new products.

Bill Morrison

Steves is, as usual, on target.  One of the more irritating things about the HECEPOB phenomenon, to my mind, is that it seems to have produced a certain number of (sorry, but I can't think of a more polite term for them) snobs.  They fight their way through of few of those...things, get reasonable-looking results that look nice on a mantle and impress the uninitiated, and then feel entitled to look down their noses at people who build plastic (sneer) models.  I quit participating in one web forum because it categorically rejected any references to plastic kits - and whole-heartedly endorsed the products of the HECEPOB companies.

Just how much money the HECEPOB companies are making I have no idea.  They must be selling a reasonable number of their products; if they weren't, they wouldn't still be around.  When I was working in a hobby shop (quite a few years ago) I became firmly convinced that the HECEPOB manufacturers, with their lousy materials, inept plans, irrational construction methods, etc., were driving more people out of the hobby than they were bringing into it.  But they do seem to be surviving.  I guess they know something I don't.

On the subject of movie tie-ins:  it's perhaps worth noting that three of the wood kit companies have in fact released H.M.S. Surprise kits.  (There really was an H.M.S. Surprise, by the way - a French frigate that got captured by the British.)  Two of those companies, Mamoli and Artesania Latina, are in the HECEPOB brigade; I've seen photos of their Surprise kits, which, I have to admit, certainly appear to be a good deal superior to the trash those companies usually churn out.  But the clear winner is the one from Calder/Jotika.  It quite obviously is a genuine scale model, designed and produce by people who know exactly what they're doing.  It also, unfortunately, is, like the rest of the Calder/Jotika line, priced far out of my reach.

jtilley wrote:

I don't see a renaissance of plastic sailing ship kits on the horizon - especially in the current economic climate. And in all honesty I'm not at all certain that's the best direction for the hobby of sailing ship modeling to go.  As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm inclined to think the "mixed media" approach might be more appropriate to the subject matter.

It is interesting to note, though, that the HECEPOBs do seem to be in somewhat of a renaissance.  In spite of being much more expensive, more time consuming and difficult to build, and (in many cases) markedly less accuarate than the plastic kits, there are lots of wood ship kits on the market and new ones appear fairly frequently. Plastic models in general have also been doing well lately, with lots of exciting new issues in every category except,of course, sailing ships. Unfortunately, there is, I believe, a rather strong notion among people who build, or who might consider building, models of sailing ships that the only legitimate medium for these models is wood.

       

Pavlvs wrote:

I wonder if there is not a law of decreasing returns at work here. The plastic kit makers say the sailing ships are not selling so they don't make new kits. The consumers see no new kits so they don't buy the kits that are there. The makers see low sales and therefore they don't make new kits. Etc... Some maker ought to break the cycle and make a state of the art plastic sailing ship kit and see what happens. Any suggestions on what that ship ought to be?

Going back to my previous post, the Revell Constitution is still around after 40 some years, so that gives a pretty good indication of it's viability as a kit subject.  Pretty intuitive, as it's certainly the best-known subject (at least in the US market) with a legendary history that's taught in just about every early US history course in school (=free marketing), plus it doesn't hurt that it's still afloat in Boston Harbor.

I was mildly surprised/disappointed that the Master and Commander movie didn't generate enough interest for (fictional) HMS Surprise or Acheron kits (thinking Top Gun on the water).  Probably because the film didn't do all that well in it's initial release.

Mark

 

 

I remember the Pyro Skipjack - but not very well.  My biggest recollection about it is of the furled, injection-molded sails.  The mainsail, as I remember, came in two halves; the jib may have been molded similarly, but had a triangular corner sticking out.  They actually, if memory serves (beware:  these days it frequently doesn't) were among the more successful efforts to represent sails in plastic. 

I've seen, fairly recently, that Pyro Skipjack advertised at some hideous price on the web.  I think the one I saw was motorized.  Now, there's a real contradiction in terms.  (The reason the skipjack hung around as long as it did was that Maryland had a long-standing law against dredging for oysters with powered vessels.  The only power provided for a skipjack was in the form of the little "pushboat," which hung on davits over the stern when not in use and shoved against a specially made block on the transom on those days of the week when pushing the skipjack was legal.)

I'm pretty sure the Skipjack did appear under the Lindberg label fairly recently.  But it's not  in the current Lindberg catalog.

I think Steves is right:  the only plastic Bluenose is the one from Aurora, dating from the fifties (or maybe the very early sixties).  That kit has been reissued fairly recently by one of the Asian companies - either Academy or Minicraft, I think.  One of Pyro's first plastic sailing ships was the Gertrude L. Thebaud, which looked quite similar to the Bluenose.  It was a nice, extremely basic, but reasonably accurate kit; I think Pyro pirated it from the old Marine Models wood version.  Pyro also marketed it for a while as an "American Cup Racer."  (Note the careful use of the word "American," rather than "America's."  The public apparently was supposed to think this was a vessel that had competed for the America's Cup.  A cup racer with stacks of fishing dories on her deck.  Yeah, right.)  Under that name it was also reissued by LifeLike and Lindberg.  Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be around at the moment.

Far be it for me to offer advice to the manufacturers about kit subjects.  But if I were in a position to make such a decision I'd probably lean toward a ship that either was preserved or featured in a movie.  How about a large-scale Wasa, or Morgan, or L.A. Dunton?  Seems like there'd be at least a small market in the gift shops associated with those ships.  (The last time I went to Mystic Seaport, I was downright horrified to see that the enormous gift shop there had exactly one plastic kit for sale:  a Lindberg Bismarck.  And no wood kits - despite the fact that Model Shipways offers the Morgan and the Emma C. Berry, with Mystic Seaport logos on the boxes.)  On the movie front, I'd think an H.M.S. Surprise would have at least a small market, due to the Patrick O'Brian novels and the movie "Master and Commander."  Nowadays the model companies don't seem to be as interested in movie tie-ins as they used to be.  Seems like the Orca ("Jaws") and the Andrea Gale ("The Perfect Storm") would have been natural kit subjects.  Or how about the Amistad?  She'd be a good subject for relatively inexperienced modelers - and for students studying the history of slavery (and Constitutional law).  Maybe the problem there is that the movie companies charge prohibitive prices for the use of their titles.  (It's interesting that Revell recently issued a "Caribbean Pirate Ship," meticulously avoiding the verbiage "Pirates of the Caribbean."  The kit is in fact a reissue of the ancient "Peter Pan Pirate Ship" - an excellent scale model of the non-operating prop that used to be at Disneyland in California.) 

I'm afraid, though, that all this is harmless dreaming.  I don't see a renaissance of plastic sailing ship kits on the horizon - especially in the current economic climate.  And in all honesty I'm not at all certain that's the best direction for the hobby of sailing ship modeling to go.  As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm inclined to think the "mixed media" approach might be more appropriate to the subject matter.

Another issue with sailing kits is the lack of built-in 'series". Dragon releases the excellent (and state of the art) Buchanan... then a derivative as it appeared in 1945. Now we have greaves-class, etc. Point is, once you invest in research and moldings, you can add the equivalent of a new sprue to make a brand new kit. Some new kits come with parts not even assigned yet, to cover future releases. I may be wrong, but I do not think you can do that with sailing ships, or at least not in a cheap, efficient way. ???    Each kit would be too different from the next, especially when it comes to the most exepensive mold to cast, the hull. But I may be wrong...

Something else I would pay for.... conversion/upgrade kits. Buy an old Heller/Revell/Lindberg kit, and purchase a 30-40$ USD "upgrade" kit with resin, PE, etc to dress up the old molds. I would even pay more if the upgrade was comprehensive enough (add rigging, PE tackles, a small rigging how-to booklet for the newbies, a rigging small tool, resin canons, etc). Also sell a separate "figures" kit, to populate your ship.

sailing ships are "projects", not leisure weekend (or spring break) builds, in the same category as a CV, or 4 engine bomber project. Therefore,the purchaser is more apt to spend a significant amount of money in such a multimedia kit. We just witnessed the 300$ Akagi flying off the shelves in many instances, with people plunking an additional 100-200$ in wood decks and PE frets. The question, how many Akagis does it take to break even? How many Consitutions? heck, how many Morgans? etc etc.  Obviously, the current answer is "not enough". Maybe as technology gets even better and the economy recovers we can have some sailing kits offerings. in the meantime, my stash is high enough and Revell is being kind enough in re-releasing some of their old classic kits.

steves - thaniks for that link, was new to me! cheers

bondoman wrote:

I remember building a very large scale model of a single masted boat in plastic. The subject was either a skipjack, not the SSN, Flying Fish, or a Baltimore Clipper. And also a two masted Bluenose.

 

A skipjack was originally released by Pyro, probably in the late '50's.  Lindberg may have re-released it later, I'm not sure.  The Bluenose kit was definately Aurora.

This might be a good place to remind everyone of forum member Epinniger's excellent and very comprehensive list of plastic sailing ship models:

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pinniger/models/sailshipkits.zip

If you have a question if, when, by whom and in what scale a particular sailing ship was produced in plastic the answer is probably there.

 

Well it goes without saying that it would have to be commercially viable, otherwise it's pure fantasy. Look at all the kits that came out in 1976 in time for the Tall Ships.

Endurance 1914- 2014?

Fram 1912- 2012?

Spirit of discovery and all that. Good movie tie-ins, and I always wanted a Fridtjof Nansen action figure. Really. He's my guy. Man crush, almost.

I wonder if there is not a law of decreasing returns at work here. The plastic kit makers say the sailing ships are not selling so they don't make new kits. The consumers see no new kits so they don't buy the kits that are there. The makers see low sales and therefore they don't make new kits. Etc...

Some maker ought to break the cycle and make a state of the art plastic sailing ship kit and see what happens. Any suggestions on what that ship ought to be?

Lindberg did a skipjack.  Don't know the scale but it was about a foot long.  My dad built one back in the early-mid sixties.

Mark

Question for all of you gents. I remember building a very large scale model of a single masted boat in plastic. The subject was either a skipjack, not the SSN, Flying Fish, or a Baltimore Clipper. And also a two masted Bluenose. These were big models, maybe 12"-18" long. Time frame: early '60s. Makers; at the time it would probably have been Aurora or Renwal or maybe Revell, but I doubt it. Oh, or Lindberg?

 

Any ideas? They (it) was/were a great thing for a young kid.

There are plenty of arguments on each side of the "plastic vs. wood" debate in the context of sailing ship models.  I've done a fair amount of work in both; I enjoy working with both, and in my opinion each has plenty of advantages.

But the notion that wood is inherently a better material than plastic to represent a wood prototype just doesn't hold up to scrutiny or logic - especially when we're talking about kits.  It's certainly true that some species of wood do a good job of representing real wood in miniature - but rarely, if ever, will you find those woods in a kit.  Boxwood, pearwood, and holly (my own personal favorite for many purposes) are just too expensive for the kit manufacturers to consider.  The American ones generally use basswood, which isn't bad stuff by any means.  But it's fuzzy, soft, and not particularly receptive to stain and other finishes.  The HECEPOB (that's Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank-On-Bulkhead) companies dote on woods like mahogany, walnut, and beach, most of which have grain so coarse that a scale sailor would trip over it.  My rants against the HECEPOB companies have taken up more space in this Forum than anybody has a right to take; in the unlikely event that anybody's interested, a Forum search on HECEPOB will provide a great cure for insomnia.  The bottom line is that a well-designed, well-molded, and well-painted plastic hull or deck can be made to look more like a miniaturized reall hull or deck than anything in a wood kit.

Fifty years ago plastic kit manufacturers (or at least one of them:  Revell) apparently regarded the sailing ship as the best subject to demonstrate the real state of the art, and push the envelope of design and molding technology to its limits.  And the medium does have the potential to produce spectacularly accurate and well-detailed replicas of sailing ships.  The combination of the injection-molding process and the panograph machine, even as long ago as the late 1950s, was generating molded details that none of the wood kit manufacturers could match.  The plastic molding process has the capability of producing finer detail than any modeler can by hand.  (If you don't believe it, take a look at an LP phonograph record.)  With the addition of modern computer-aided design and mold-making, the potential is there for some really superb sailing ship kits. 

But JMart is right.  The manufacturers aren't taking advantage of that technology, for one obvious, overwhelming reason:  they've concluded that sailing ship kits don't sell.  In other Forum threads we've argued over the question of whether the manufacturers are right on that point.  My own opinion is - regretfully - that they probably are.  Plastic kits require such an enormous investment in design, tooling, and marketing that they have to sell in the tens of thousands in order for the manufacturer to make money.  Are tens of thousands of modelers out there waiting with bated breath for a new plastic sailing ship kit?  I'd like to think so, but in all honesty I doubt it.

In any case, I'm not enough of an evangelist for the cause of plastic sailing ship kits to suggest that styrene is the ideal medium for this sort of model.  Plastic is great for some things, but not for others.  It's great for making figureheads, more than acceptable for hulls and decks (especially if the manufacturer can figure out how to make those parts reasonably thick - like Imai used to do), and wretched for masts and yards.  I've suggested before that the "ideal" sailing ship kit might be a multi-media production, with a cast resin hull, wood spars, and machined or cast metal or plastic fittings.  A couple of enterprising manufacturers have made some hesitant efforts in that direction.  I don't have the impression that any of those products has been a stunning success, market-wise, but I do think the potential is there.

In the mean time, we probably should be grateful for the kits we've got - even the "new" ones that, in fact, are forty or fifty years old.  I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing the grand old Revell Flying Cloud again.  Or the Airfix H.M.S. Prince, or the Revell yacht America, or the Airfix Revenge, or....

 

I'll take the Devil's advocate here. I've been an active model railroad builder for many years, and also build the occasional architectural model as part of my work. Wood is a nice modeling material and a true craftsman material, but it's hard to work with relative to plastic. It takes special tools, and most of all it's not scale. It's also really unstable and has to be backpainted, sealed etc. I get great results building wooden structures out of styrene and painting them. And this is dumb, but I hurt myself more building with wood.

I do think that laser cut decks and the like are great though. But I'll bet 90% of wooden model ships sold have never been assembled. Just my

Oh I agree that real wood is the best and can result in gorgeous builds... bur for us mere mortals, working in wood would require a whole new set of skills, tools and expense that I just dont have. With the new plastic molding technology (see Dragon Buchanan series), even finer PE (and even plastic!) detailing and the profusion of multimedia, there is no TECHNICAL reason not to have good sailing ship kits with PE frets and cloth sails. However, there is a huge ECONOMIC reason for plastic manufacturers not to produce sailing ships in styrene/multimedia.

I would pay the equivalent of a current 1/350 BB/CV for a comprehensive "premium" (ala Dragon) type of sailing ship kit (USD 150-250$). 

Just no one makes them 

 

I agree with Prof. Tilley especially about the sad state of the art in plastic ship kits. I think the cutting edge has gone over to the RECEPOB kits found in places like model expo and the like. Once you decide to get authentic with the wood grain and such, it is natural to go with real wood. If one wants to really do their Revell Constitution or Airfix Wasa to the detail max, they need only look at the fittings lists from places like Model Expo or Bluejacket. My modeling inspiration initially was watching and later helping my father build these Model Shipways kits. They were the gold standard that the plastic models aspired to and, I might add, achieved.

We cannot build in real aluminum or steel practically but wood is a substance we can work with and it seemed a natural thing to build wood ships out of wood. i think this is why the plastic model manufacturers have left the state of the art in wooden ships to the wood kit manufacturers and put their effort in things you cannot practically make out of wood. I would be interested to see a superdetailed B-17 with interior built out of wood!

My vote goes for the Glow in the Dark Pirate Ship...

lol  this one is the "Plan 9 from Outer Space" of ship kits, the worst one ever.  Out-sucks the HMS Beagle IMHO. Not even my daughter wanted to build it.. lol

My vote goes for the Glow in the Dark Pirate Ship...

 (From Revell Website) - release THIS month?? Im getting a couple! :)

 05094 Historic Whaling Ship Charles W. Morgan

Model details
Scale	1:110
Release date	03/2009
No. of parts	271
Length	400 mm
Height	306 mm
Skill Level	5

 

 

jtilley wrote:

On one hand, it speaks mightily for the artisans who designed that kit that their work is still so highly regarded more than four decades later ... Take a look at any aircraft (or AFV, or car, or modern warship) kit from 1965.  If the sailing ship kit had evolved the way all the others have during those 44 years

As ever, an excellent observation.

Consider what sorts of photo-etch a "new thinking" company would consider "normal" for a sailing ship.  Personally, my mind reels at such imaginings--jackstays; foot ropes; hammock nettings.  For smaller scales, 1/150 and smaller, fold-over deadeyes and bulls-eyes

Starting from our present 'state of the art' other items would seem likely, like realistic thicknesses for bulwarks (ever so important on gun-ported warships).  Using the advances in moulding technology to replicate hull forms; or the strongly cambered decks in the days of the spritsail topmast.  Or, just simple and minor items like that gun carriages are usually tapered to match the guns mounted thereupon.

But, it would seem sales volume is what drives our choices.  Which might explain why we do not see aftermarket accessories for the kits we have.  Ah, to have an aftermarket set of goodies for Chas. W. Morgan or Cutty Sark or the Connie . . .

An excellent and well-thought analysis, and I agree whole-heartedly with Prof Tilley in every respect!

Since Subfixer included that big phrase "still available today," I guess I have to agree with RedCorvette. 

Normally I'd recoil at the thought of giving such a title to one kit.  (Suppose somebody asked what was the best aircraft kit?  Or the best AFV?  Or, for that matter, the best twentieth-century warship?)  But so few plastic sailing ships are on the market now that there really isn't much competition.  I can think of a handful that could give the big Revell Constitution a run for its money:  the Heller Victory (which I guess is officially still available; Squadron lists it as in stock), the Airfix Wasa, and the Revell Charles W. Morgan (which apparently is about to be reissued by Revell Europe).  The Revell Golden Hind, one of my personal favorites, apparently is being sold under the Heller label.  Several fine old Imai kits (the 1/125 Cutty Sark, for instance) seem to be available from Aoshima.  Oh - and the little Revell Viking ship, currently (if intermittently) in the Revell Europe catalog, is, in its modest way, a genuine contender.  But most of those have serious problems of one kind or another.  (I have trouble overlooking the Heller Victory's failure to provide any means of attaching the yards to the masts, or the Wasa's "dummy" guns, or the silly vac-formed "covers" for the Morgan's whaleboats.)  The big Revell Constitution isn't perfect by any means, but in terms of its potential to yield a genuine scale model straight from the box I think it probably rates the highest. 

Food for thought:  the Revell 1/96 Constitution was originally released in 1965.  On one hand, it speaks mightily for the artisans who designed that kit that their work is still so highly regarded more than four decades later.  (In 1965 there was no such thing as a 40-year-old plasic kit.)  On the other hand, as we've lamented so frequently in this Forum, it's sad that the kit manufacturers have, to all intents and purposes, given up on the concept of the plastic sailing ship kit.  Take a look at any aircraft (or AFV, or car, or modern warship) kit from 1965.  If the sailing ship kit had evolved the way all the others have during those 44 years....

The Revell 1:96 USS Constitution would get my vote.

Mark