“Planking Techniques for Model Ship Builders” by Donald Dressel$14.95 USD suggested retail
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Although building wooden ships isn’t something I feel likely to
do any time soon, I’ve always enjoyed looking over the shoulder
of other modelers to see how they do things. On that basis, I bought this
book. I wasn’t disappointed in the least.
I realized on the first glance-through that there’s a lot of good technical info in here which I could intentionally mis-apply, when I build other subjects. In fact, I’ve already mis-applied a few lessons I learned here – recently doing something I think of as “plank on tape,” to do radical modifications to airplane fuselages or car bodywork.
Even
if a reader isn’t as interested in technical how-to’s as I
am, I think seeing the variety of different kinds of wooden ships on display
– various ship sizes and time periods: even back to the ancient
Egyptians – could be pretty entertaining stuff in itself.
One of the other cool things this book does is to highlight differences in the way various ship builders do things. I think that way offers more “toe wetting” possibilities for beginners (like me), while also offering advanced info to experienced ship builders. It seems like the book’s overall balance would give many ship builders a better amount of choices and food for thought than just one or two straight-through builds might do? (Although the on-line builds seen over on SubPirates or the Ship Model Forum look like pretty nifty things for fans of nautical subjects to check out, too.)
Definitely recommended. Thanks to my wallet for the review sample.
