Photos by the author
First I must state that card modeling is new to me. I have not built a lot of models in this medium yet. This particular model is my fourth one so far. I do enjoy this though, and so I will be building more.
The difficult part of this model, for me, was the center section of the hull. A 3-D or isometeric view of the hull would have been helpful. Anyway, I got it figured out. The mating of the outboard gun casings to the hull was tricky. The rest is pretty straight forward.
The model was printed in a very light grey. To me it seems that ships from this era were darker than the printed color. Additionally, I do not like the appearance of all the black fold lines on an assembled model. So�..I painted it�..with my wife's tole paints (which is blasphemy for the paper model purist). These are acrylic, come in a million and one colors and work beautifully. Only the main deck was left in its printed color. As you can see on the photos, there are several vertical supports for the upper decks/superstructure in three locations. I found that these were somewhat frail so I soaked them in superglue which gave them lots of stiffness. This was OK since I was painting the model anyway, otherwise, it darkens the print a bit. I made the rails from thin wire for the stanchions and lifelines with nylon tread superglued to them. Rigging is a combination of the same thin wire and nylon thread. This too was painted after being installed. I made the flag because I found that the printed one was too thick and the colors were not true.
I like the appearance of the finished model. It was fun to build and I was looking for something that was not a mainstream subject. In fact, a real strong point about card models is that the subject matter is wide. There are not many modelers building from card in my neck of the woods, so when I brought it out for display at the model show here, many were impressed.
Summary:
| Model: | D'Entrecasteaux |
| Publisher: | JSC |
| Designer: | Andrzej Samek, Adam Werka, Marian Mazur |
| Scale: | 1:400 |
| Difficulty: | Medium |
| Number of Parts: | Approx 160-170 |
| Instructions: | Written instructions in Polish. |
| Diagrams: | Diagrams of top and side view onl |
| Fit: | Good |
| Coloring and Artwork: | Good |
| Printing: | Good |
