Ahoy There

 

I model the Maine Central in the late 1970’s time frame.  As such, I have a small waterfront scene on my L shaped switching layout and for a couple of years now, I wanted to have a fishing boat that would add to the “East Coast” feel of the layout. I looked on line at some various kits and decided on Seaport Model Works kit # H128-1    which is a small 34 foot lobster boat. It comes in a couple of different versions, one with a full hull and one with a waterline hull which is the one that I selected. Seaport Model works is a small company based out of Hampton, New Hampshire and I remember visiting their booth when I attended a Fine Scale Expo back in 2011 in Peabody, Mass. They have an excellent selection of HO Scale ( and other scales) marine items for model railroad use Home - Sea Port Model Works

The kit comes packaged in a sturdy cardboard box with a couple of pictures of the finished product on it. Opening up the kit, I found pieces made of cast Resin, various strip styrene pieces, brass rod, laser cut wood, and a couple of detail packages of metal and etched brass detail parts.  Also included was a multi page instruction booklet – additional hints and tips are available for download on the Seaport Model works home page.

All the pieces were of high quality and the main cast resin hull piece only had a couple of very small “divots” that were easily filled with Squadron modeling putty and sanded smooth. Some other kit pieces needed minor touch ups with a small file to remove some  flash which was very minimal.

I washed all the cast resin pieces with warm water and dish detergent to remove any mold residue that might interfere with the painting process.

 

I didn’t follow the instructions step by step, as they were kind of broken down into sub sections, so you could build different subsections at any time, however I concentrated on building up the boat first to the point where I could get it painted. For most of the construction, I used small amounts of Gorilla gel glue which worked great.

Once the boat was done, I painted it with a couple of light coats of light grey primer and made sure I gave it plenty of time to dry i.e. several days. It was then painted with a rattle can of flat white paint – again a couple of light coats gives better results than trying to make sure you have all the areas covered in the first pass. The trim on the boat was painted with Polly Scale Steam Power black. The window “glass” was installed last after the painting of the boat was completed. In order to not fog up the glass, I used Canopy Glue instead of an ACC type glue.

 

Once the boat was finished, I built and painted all the detail parts. The lobster traps are etched brass and all that is needed to build them is to cut them off the sprue and bend them into shape. I primed them with the same grey primer that I had used on the boat and then used a combination of Vallejo and crafts store paints to dry brush them until I got the desired look. The kit comes with a couple of the lobster traps, but I wanted some more so at the time the boat was purchased, I bought an extra package of the traps (part #PEB-12). The kit comes with a couple of resin barrels. I primed these with the grey primer and again used the aforementioned paints to weather them including using rust colored paint for the barrel straps. One of the barrels is called a “bait barrel” and is hollow inside, so once the painting was done on this, I filled it with 5 minute epoxy to give it a filled with water look.

 

 

This was a fun little kit to put together and provided several hours of enjoyment. It now sits alongside the wharf on my small harbour feature of the layout which still requires some more super detailing to get that East Coast feel just right. Till next time..