Model Kits

Bassbug · Post by **Bassbug** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 11:57 pm

Has anyone built one of the model kits Bear Mountain sells? I was thinking about the Prospector as a winter project and wanted to know what I was getting into.

Woodchuck · Post by **Woodchuck** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 10:28 am

Yep, I bought 3 of the Peterborough model... One for my son and one for my son-in-law and one for me. It took years for the younger crew to finally complete theirs but I built mine ASAP and truly enjoyed the experience. It is exactly like building a real one right down to the stems and fiberglass. You learn building techinques and terminology, etc. so that when you go back to the forums, you are much more informed. I recommend them and they make great display items for book shelves, etc.

One wink for each of them...

rodishale · Post by **rodishale** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:19 am

I got hooked on building full sized canoes by doing models first. The first model I built was from Gil Gilpatricks book "Building A Strip Canoe". I wanted a square stern canoe but didn't like the chopped off look of the designs avaliable, so I went to Kinco's (sp?) and shrunk the pattern from the back of his book. I made the stations out of display board (the stuff with a sandwish of foam between the paper) and with a little math figured out the spacing. It helps to make a "scale " of several inches on the original to get the sunken pattern right. You can use basswood from a hobby shop for the srips and pins to hold it to the stations. I used a type of super glue, but not the stuff in the small tubes, that hobbists use for wood . I even fiberglassed it on the outside only with the lightest coth and a kit from NAPA auto. Remember, this is onlya model and I'm wondering if for the cloth you could use regular cotton fabric cloth sense you don't need a great amount of strength. My wife even made tiny caned seats for it out of dental floss using Gil's instructions in his book. I got so much enjoyment out of building it that I bought my Dad( 83 years young at the time) a model from wooden boat magizine. He sent it back to me saying it was to hard and was just a pile of small boards! It was a lap sright(sp?) model dory and I agreed with him , it took me two years of and on to get it right, but when it was finished it looked great. The moral being that models aren't the snap together plastic stuff we got as kids, but a real challenge.