Ship Modelling Literature

Building historic ship models - How to find data about the original ships, ships' plans, materials needed and information on the historical background

Twenty years ago I got my first ship model, a two-master brig, as a Christmas present from my wife. She had bought it in an antiques shop, and it remained a decorative object of art in our living room for many years. Twelve years ago I built the first ship model by myself, the Scottish Maid, an 1840 schooner, from an Artesania Latina kit. I had little literature except for the kit description, and I made some mistakes that could have easily been avoided if I had had the reference books I have today or would have been able to look at some close-up photos of models built by some experienced builders.

Today I get many inquiries via my webpage by people seeking advice or asking for specific information. Many times I have been asked about literature on model ship building and specific plans for some ships. People want to know what companies produce ship model kits and how they are rated in truthfulness of historic details. And there is a high demand of information on ship technology over time and model making techniques. That's why I decided to add a literature and links page to my website. It is based on my experiences of 12 years ship modelling and restaurating plus the suggestions of several very experienced model makers that I got to know over the years.

There are a few outstanding books I would recommend for beginners and for advanced builders as reference works. The page cites, too, many books on maritime museums, contemporary paintings, drawings, and sketches of historic ships, photos of modern and historic sailing ships or their replicas, techniques in building ship models, flags and how to fly them, contemporary books on historic ship building (available reprints), today's books on historic ship building, and other topics like encyclopedias and books on events in naval history, sea battles and navigating the unknown seas in the age of discovery. All the books cited are rated about their strengths and contents in comparison to others and in usefulness for model makers and people who are interested in naval history.

Many of the beautiful decorative ship models one can see in hotels, offices, representative buildings and even in museums are based on kits, whose plans and materials were modified more or less by the model ship builders. It is wrong to wholesale discount the kits as being crude and of little historic detail. If you are a beginner in model ship making you should always start with a kit of a smaller model. It is the fastest way to acquire know how and experience for larger ships with lots of fine details.

On the literature and links page in my website I have included a link list, too, with many references to the web pages of kit makers, modelling associations, magazines and scale model related web sites. And there is one very important feature of my webpage I would like to point out: I have more than 2000 high resolution photographs of ship models of all ages. There is nothing more telling than a view on close-up photographs how other model makers have worked out the details in their finely built historic master pieces.

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