My 5.5 year old son wants to make a model ship. I made something with my dad when I was about same age, from plywood, and he wants to have his own. I do not want to get into "show quality" esoteric stuff. I want to have a project where he can participate meaningfully. Any suggestions as to the choice of materials etc.
Ideally, I am hoping to be able to find some sort of "dense cardboard" type material that is easy to work with, etc. In the end I would epoxy it.
Ignoramus8098 wrote in news:pN- dnT25qYOhMlHYnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
Craft supplier, or first rate art supply store, or a stationer. Lots of options available. Architects and designers model with such stuff pretty regularly. Avoid foamcore.
I suggest you weld it! Even better, your son welds it. Then you can claim how much better your welds got. When you are finished -don't forget to start at least 5 new new threads titled "finished"- and it sinks, you can tell that you wanted to build an U-boat from beginning on.
This way, you can have an on-topic post. Ain't that great? And I'll have even more to laugh.
You might try some "mat board" from an art supply store or a picture framing shop. It's a little thicker than 1 mm, maybe 2 mm or so. Pretty hard to cut it cleanly with scissors; best to use an x-acto knife or utility knife or a razor blade.
How about sheet styrene? It's nice stuff for modelling, available in many thicknesses, strips, shapes, tube, you name it... It's easily joined with liquid plastic cement, cut and shaped with XActo blades and files, waterproof, and takes paint well.
Evergreen is a name sold by hobby and model shops.
On Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:28:28 -0600, Ignoramus8098 wrote: ...
Styrene or ABS plastic sheet would be a better material for model boat building - see
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about halfway down, and try to find a hobby shop or sign shop that carries some materials like those. Sign shops will also carry LDPE sheet. Also see
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advice (which unfortunately says, "recommended for the use of adult scale modellers only")
Styrene sheet for models is perhaps half-mm thick, and can be cut with scissors, razor knife, or nibbler. If you get to a hobby shop, also look for a "razor saw", a small thin backsaw that would be safe for a kid to use, as would be a little Dremel-like tool too. For thin cardboard or thick paper, look for a local paper goods store.
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has some paper model construction ideas and links to design software. It might be reasonable to start with a kit or two, like at
Thanks for this post and your longer post with your thoughts re: age appropriate aspects of model ship building.
My ideas are crystallizing around the following.
Make a wooden member that would be placed in the middle of the ship, whose purpose is mainly to provide rigidity to the ship as it is being built. It would be placed lengthwise.
Make plywood bulkheads with holes that match the wooden member, soi that they would slide along the member, spaced about equally and provide ribbing for the hull. My son can participate in this, by using my scroll saw under my supervision.
Glue bulkheads in position.
Use whatever material is available from hobby store to make the hull. Make a heavy keel so that the ship can possibly float.
Let him paint the hull.
Provide some top side details, but not too many. I think that I would prefer a sailing ship model since masts, etc are easy conceptually to make.
The above plan in scalable to pretty much any model size.
I do, actually, want this to be a little more DIY and a little more multisession.
I bought plastic models. They are very much NOT what I am looking for. Way too detailed and impossible for little fingers to assemble. What ends up happening is that I waste hours truing to glue pieces of plastic together, and my son can do nothing. I was livid by the time I finished a Titanic model (though I did not show it).
I want the opposite of that: to build something that resembles a ship, with maximum of hands on effort on his part and some real world engineering.
I kind of agree with TMT in that it should be kept in a spirit of junkyard wars. Build something nice (meaning that something that performs a useful function) from scrap.
He recently made a "rocket" from a Pringles can and paper. We launch it with my compressor. He is very happy about it. He even painted it gold.
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