Ship Modeling from Scratch: Tips and Techniques for Building Without Kits

By Edwin B. Leaf

Book Overview

Building a model from a kit is an excellent way to develop your modeling skills. But once you've mastered the basics, where do you go? If you're looking for a challenge, you move on to scratchbuilding. And that can be imposing: With a kit, you worked with someone else's plans, materials, and building instructions. Scratchbuilding makes you master of your own fate. You do the research, choose the subject, the scale, the material. The choices are limited only by your enthusiasm.

Edwin B. Leaf scratchbuilt his first model--a Baltimore clipper--nearly fifty years ago, and he's been refining and building on his skills ever since. In Ship Modeling from Scratch he lays out the principles--from concept to construction to display--on which scratchbuilding is based. In clear, concise language complemented by detailed illustrations he tells how to interpret existing drawings or create your own, what materials to choose, what tools to buy, and what techniques to use to build everything from plank-on-frame, plank-on-bulkhead, or modern steel hulls to creating sharp and properly scaled details--paint to portholes.

Building a model from scratch is a singular pursuit that requires patience, confidence, and ingenuity. With Ship Modeling from Scratch open on your workbench, you have your own private tutor guiding you through the troublespots.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B007YTPNRA
• ISBN13: 9780070368170
• Release Date: October 1993
• Publisher: International Marine Publishing
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Good information

Having not known a lot about ship modeling before reading this book, I was wiser after reading it.

Scratch ship modeling

Ship Modeling from Scratch: Tips and Techniques for Building Without Kits A very good supplemental book for building a model ship from scratch. It has detailed suggestions that aren't found in many other books or articles. Edw. Leaf knows his stuff and covers all major topics in modeling w/o a kit. He does provide "tips and techniques" as the subtitle says, just not quite enough to start scratch building w/o several other sources that go into more depth in important topics/skills.

Excellent beginners book

I am new to scratch boat building and this is a basic book about it. It has many helpful hints that are very usefull. It is a beginners book. Easy to read and understand. There are a lot of forums on the NET that describe in detail on how to scratch-build, but I was looking for something basic. An excellent book.