Lindberg Brig of War

I'd say the "Brig of War" could be kitbashed into a reasonable small-scale model of the Fair American, using the Model Expo photos as reference, though it's probably not right for a ship like the HMS Sophie in the photo in your first post. Although Pyro/Lindberg's kit has a rather distorted hull shape, it's still quite close to the Model Shipways kit it was based on. (I made my initial comments before I knew of the kit's origins and before I'd seen the photos of the Fair American - I didn't realise there really were brigs with a hull shape and deck layout like that!

The Black Falcon is probably the best for converting into a British naval brig (which is what I'll eventually do) though this will still require a lot of work.

All chewing aside.

I have opened up the kit, well more like toy.  There is going to be some serious cutting going on to get any where close to the brig photo I posted or even some sort of reasonable interpretation.  If it fails or gets to be too much I have a plan to whack it into a cutter.  Also ordered the "Black Falcon" kit from SMER via Hannats.

JoeRugby wrote:

I am almost certain that the Lindberg is the Pyro kit. I am going to try a What If (since after all HMS Sophie was "fictional")  Here is one gentleman's take on the subject. However HMS Sophie was entirely fictional.  She was inspired by HMS Speedy, go here to see it... http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/JoeRugby/WSpeedy.jpg[/img All in all I am probably going to come nowhere close, but it should be fun.  Then again, I could come out like a....

 

 

Dang, I once had that little model that I used as a chew toy when I was a toddler.  I can't remember who in my family built it, but I really enjoyed chewing on the stern lamp and breaking the cannons off and chewing on them. 

 The hull ended up being my favorite toy in the bathtub.  Great floater.

Scott 

That's a great idea - I'd never thought of that. The hull size and shape would be ideal for conversion to a brig. (Though I'll be building mine as a mortar vessel, with only minor additions to the basic kit).

Converting the "Bomb Ketch" to a naval brig like HMS Sophie would probably be an easier job than kitbashing the Black Falcon into a reasonable scale model. The only downside is that the scale (somewhere in the region of 1/200) is noticeably smaller than the Lindberg La Flore/HMS Surprise, and the kit is a lot harder to find.

So what about converting the Bomb Ketch to a "regular" brig by reworking the deck and rearrange/rebuild the rigging? I remember that the hull lines of this one seemed very believable so it might be a good starting point....

I was surprised to see how similar the Pyro "Brig of War" is to the Fair American in general form. It's not quite as bad as I imagined, although the hull width is definitely exaggerated (the Pyro kit somehow gives the impression of a small rowing boat dressed up to look like a larger sailing ship)
Here's a picture of the Model Shipways Fair American:
http://www.modelexpo-online.com/images/p4637b.JPG
The Model Expo site is well worth checking out even if you don't build wooden models - there are some excellent photos of completed models and also downloadable instructions for many of the kits, which are very useful reference sources.

Back to the subject of Pyro kits, the "British Bomb Ketch" is another very good one (I found this kit at a collector's fair last week for only £3). It's a fairly good representation in about 1/200 scale of an 18th century Royal Navy mortar vessel.

"glorified walnut" nails it! Even as a kid I could hardly believe that my "Marie Gallante" was supposed to be a model of a ship that actually sailed the seven seas! And the fancy allover white paintjob with red trim lines and triangles just added to the "Disneyland" impression - but years later I learned that the Pyro "Golden Hind" sported the same color scheme! 

 I still liked these kits, but they made a rather strange impression alongside their non-distorted "Real-Heller"-cousins "Pourquoi Pas?", "Occident", "Phenix" and "Royal Louis" etc. and made me wonder if there were actually two different "schools" of craftmanship working for Heller. BTW, the "Fair American/Orgueilleuse" could actually swim with a bit of ballast!

Over the years I have had several of the old Pyro ships, some smaller, some bigger, and it always appeared that some of them were very toylike and heavy-handed in the details (i.e."Ark Royal", "Göta Lejon") while others were really well-made scale models (their "Revenge", the small "Bounty" or the "Roman Merchantman" among others). Quite a mixed bag, but that seems to apply to other manufacturers as well, at least to a certain extent.

I think honneamise is right.  The Fair American model an the USNAM, and the Model Shipways kit, are pretty chubby - but not that much so.  Several of those little Pyro kits were "artistically" distorted in their hull proportions.  (If I remember right, the Golden Hind looked sort of like a glorified walnut.)  They were great fun for an elementary-school kid with fifty cents to spend at the corner drug store, though.

What cannot be seen very well in the picture is the ridiculously abnormal length/width-ratio of the model (about 1:3)! Really more of a toy but still not without its own "charme".

I once had one of these as well as a Heller "L Órgueilleuse"-Brig. The two are perfectly identical with one exception: the size of the Heller kit is just about 2/3 of the Pyro Original. It has obviously been pantographed down right to the smallest detail including the wood texture.

Quite some of the early Heller "Cadet"-series kits were downscaled Pyros but Heller sold them as renamed "French" vessels. Other examples are the "Half Moon" which became "La Providence", the "Golden Hind" became the "Marie Gallante", just the "Bonhomme Richard" kept its name for obvious reasons. So, if you want your old Pyro kit to occupy less shelf space, you could give the Heller versions a try - they might even be cheaper because they were still available during the 80s!   

That Lindberg kit is the old Pyro one, all right.  Lest we be unfair to it, we should remember that (a) it dates from the mid-fifties, and (b) it's only about six inches long.  It does have one thing to recommend it over the old Aurora Black Falcon:  The Pyro/Lindberg kit has some legitimate historical provenance.  It was pirated from the Model Shipways Fair American, which, in turn, was based on an eighteenth-century model in the Naval Academy Museum.  Model Expo currently sells a revised, plank-on-bulkhead version of that kit.  To take a look at it, go to www.modelexpoonline.com .  Click on "Model Shipways" in the "Featured Kit Manufacturers" box in the upper right of the homepage, then scroll down to the Fair American.  You can download the instruction manual as a PDF file; the information in that document probably would be helpful.

The little brig actually was one of the more sophisticated in the line of small sailing ships from Pyro.  Some of them - including the Santa Maria and Mayflower, if I remember right - had one-piece hulls, wood dowels for spars, and paper sails.  The little brig has a hull that's shaped more-or-less right, "copper sheathing" below the waterline (or is that just copper paint applied to "planking"?), and some rather nice-looking guns.  Hardly a masterpiece - but it could be worse. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mind blowing!  That seems to fit the bill better than the Lindberg.  Well it seems that I will be making yet another order.  Thanks for the information.

Interesting - I didn't realise the "Brig of War" kit was as simple and crude as that!
A better option, if you can find it, might be the SMER re-issue of the old Aurora "Black Falcon Pirate Ship" (the only other plastic model of an 18th century brig, to my knowledge). It is also incredibly crude and will require a lot of "kitbashing" and scratchbuilding to produce a good model, but is a lot larger than the Pyro kit (about 1/110-1/120 scale; not too different from that of the Lindberg "La Flore") and both the hull shape and the mast/yards are a lot more convincing in appearance. The hull shape is very similar to the HMS Sophie in your photo, although it has a forecastle deck.
This kit was the first sailing ship I ever built, and built nearly OOB; I learnt a lot about painting and rigging from building it, but now I know more about sailing ships it looks laughably poor to my eyes, even though I recently re-rigged it! I have since bought another of these kits, which I'm eventually going to kitbash into a more convincing representation of an 18th century naval brig. I'll scratchbuild the deck (saving the skylights and a few other fittings from the kit deck), scratchbuild a replacement transom and stern gallery, and add cannons, ladders, fife rails, boats, crew figures and other bits from the spares box.
Here's a photo of the box art (on a UK retailer's website) which looks more or less exactly like the kit does (even down to the crudely-moulded transom detail)

I never thought I'd actually recommend this clunky old 1950s relic to anyone, but judging from your photo of the Lindberg Brig of War it looks like it might be a better option. 

Whatever kit you choose, good luck, and I'll be very interested to see the finished model!

I am almost certain that the Lindberg is the Pyro kit.

I am going to try a What If (since after all HMS Sophie was "fictional")  Here is one gentleman's take on the subject.

However HMS Sophie was entirely fictional.  She was inspired by HMS Speedy, go here to see it...

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/JoeRugby/WSpeedy.jpg[/img

All in all I am probably going to come nowhere close, but it should be fun.  Then again, I could come out like a....

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have the impression that Life-Like's range consisted entirely of reissues.  They ranged from Pyro sailing ships to Pyro life-sized pistols to (I think) Pyro 1/1200 warships to the extremely old Palmer cannon kits (which were also marketed for a while as "box-top rewards" for Quaker breakfast cereals).  I think I also remember a handful of Life-Like 1930s-vintage racing aircraft that (I think) also originated with Pyro.  And the wonderful old British Inpact line of pre-WWI and inter-war aircraft kits, in 1/48, were marketed for a while in the U.S. under the Life-Like label. 

Most of the sailing ships recently appearing under the Lindberg did indeed originate with Pyro.  Exceptions:  the big Sea Witch, which (I think) originated (though not in exactly the same form) with Marx, the Wappen von Hamburg, and La Flore.  I'm fairly certain the latter two first appeared (in the U.S., at any rate) under the Lindberg banner, back in the mid-sixties.  (I think Pyro may have been out of business by then - but I'm not sure.)  The Wappen von Hamburg and La Flore quite clearly were designed by the same people; they in fact shared some parts.  They also have some characteristics (e.g., the flexible plastic, injection-molded "shrouds and ratlines") that, to my knowledge, were never to be found in any other plastic sailing ship kits.  I've always suspected that those two kits originated with some European manufacturer, but I have no idea what firm that might have been.

Thank you kindly gentlemen!

Virtually all the Lindberg sailing ships originated from Pyro, including (I think) the Wappen von Hamburg and La Flore now sold as "pirate ships". Many of them also appeared under the "Life-Like" brand name in the 1970s.

Were Life-Like a different company to Pyro, or was it simply a name change? I have at least one kit where the Pyro name on the box has been covered with a "Life-Like" sticker.

I'd have to see a picture to be sure, but I'm pretty certain the answer is yes. 

The original Pyro kit was somewhere in the neighborhood of six inches long, and included injection-molded plastic "sails."  The original price (when my mother bought me one at the local drugstore) was 50 cents.  It was based on the Model Shipways Fair American wood kit.