Ships In Scale - Jul/Aug 2026

Ships in Scale — July/August 2026 (Vol. 29, No. 4)

From a hand-built Irish workboat to a century-old America's Cup model brought back to life — with a Russian cruiser built entirely from paper along the way.

Traditional scratch building, museum-grade restoration, paper modeling, wargaming-scale rigging, and even AI-generated flags. Issue 4 covers a lot of water.

In this issue:

• Building a 1/32 Scale Galway Hooker, Part 1: From the Connemara Coast to the Workbench — A scratch-built traditional Irish sailing boat takes shape through family history, hard-to-find plans, and plank-on-bulkhead construction with hand-fashioned ribs, a tapered mast, and a simulated cargo of turf. (James Norton)
• At the Limit of the Hands: Building Napoleonic Warships in 1/700 Scale, Part 2 — Brass mast-making, period-accurate hull painting with the Nelson Chequer, and ultra-fine wire rigging for wargaming-scale ships of the line. (Linus Spjutsberg)
• Restoring the Sailing Yacht Puritan (1885) — A nearly five-foot, century-old model of a 19th-century America's Cup defender arrives caked in decades of grime; cleaning, brass polishing, and structural repair bring a forgotten masterpiece back to life. (Ron Neilson)
• The Paper Fleet: Building Russia's Armored Cruiser Rossia at 1:200 — An introduction to paper ship modeling through a Silver Medal–winning build: hull plating, scratch-built guns and masts, and rigging in metal wire. (Giampaolo "JP" Cusati)
• Darwin's Beagle: Building the Mamoli Kit, Part 2: Planking the Deck — Scale plank sizing, staggered joints, simulated caulking and doweling, and a shellac finish for a clean, small-scale deck. (George Athanasiou)
• Tools and Techniques in Scale Modeling — A Modeler's Wife POV — An unconventional fix for waterproofing below-the-waterline windows, borrowed from the world of UV gel nail technology. (Monika Cybulska)
• Cracking the Code: Building the NRG Masting and Rigging Project — A deep dive into the Nautical Research Guild's intermediate-to-advanced learning tool, covering carved masts, silver soldering, and historically accurate rigging. (Dan Cicero)
• Don't Forget Us, We Also Served! The Minor Warships, Part 4: New Classes and New Roles, 1700–1732 — British and French minor warship development in the early 18th century, from single-masted Caribbean sloops to Richard Stacey's influential Cruizer-class design. (Ian McLaughlan)
• How to Create a Model Ship Diorama — Building a complete HO-scale (1:87) working waterfront scene, from foam terrain and cast-resin water to ship framing and weathered structures. (Bob Hunt)

Plus departments:

• Shipwright's Apprentice — Using AI image tools to generate worn, wrinkled flag graphics that read far more convincingly at scale than a crisp printed logo (Chuck Passaro)
• Silver Soldering, Part One — Tools, materials, and step-by-step technique for a stronger alternative to soft soldering, from pickling to paillons to a finished joint (David Antscherl)
• On the Water — Transmitter trickery: elevon and V-tail mixing functions for rudderless motor steering, plus a combined "TOM" control method (Glynn Guest)
• Ships of the Frozen Trade — The maritime story of Hudson Bay, from Henry Hudson's doomed 1610 voyage to the Nonsuch and a 1697 naval battle in Arctic waters (Michael Ellison)
• Around the Horn — The launch of Dry Dock Modeler, a new free forum from Chuck Passaro and Jim Hatch focused on community and mentorship
• Reader's Showcase — A gallery of finished builds, featuring work shared by our friends at ShipsofScale.com

80 pages | Print + Digital | Published by SeaWatch Books