Midwestern Model Ships & Boats Contest - May 2025

I attended the 2025 Midwestern Model Ships & Boats Contest, held at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc. I gave a 45-minute workshop on paper scale model ships. It was well-attended and well-received.

Two and a half years ago, I convinced the contest organizers to include contest categories for paper models. They created two: for kitbuilt and for scratchbuilt.

This year, I entered three kit-built paper models in the contest:

— David Bushnell's "Turtle" from Heinkel Models

— CSS "Pioneer" from Heinkel Models (more than 600 individual rivet heads!!)

— "Molch German Midget Submarine from GPM

I took home three Gold Awards.

US Army Water Trailer -- 1:25-scale paper model

 This is a 1:25-scale paper model from a printed kit published by Orlik (Poland). I'm waiting for the 1:25-scale Dodge WWII ambulance paper mode kit from WAK (Poland). That kit has British markings. I will scan it and change it to an American ambulance. I want a trailer to haul behind it, so I went looking through my stash of paper model kits.

I found the Orik kit of a Zis-5 water truck and trailer. I scanned the trailer into Photoshop and added LAR ("looks about right") U.S. Army markings. Then I built the kit according to instructions . . . mostly. It's a Russian prototype, but it's what I had in 1/25 scale, and LAR.

I scratchbuilt the jackstand to hold up the trailer until I can hang it on the back of the ambulance. Construction of the trailer was fussy but only moderately difficult. I made some substitutions for some parts and ignored the ridiculously small stuff. You'd need a magnifying glass and an attitude to know they are missing. The build took about 18 hours.

"Clyde Puffer" - 1:87-Scale Paper Model from Scalescenes.com

I reduced Scalescenes' "Clyde Puffer" from 1:76 to 1:87 scale and added four figures. I rate the difficulty of the model as "moderate," although the rigging was "difficult." Overall, it builds into a very nice model. At 1:87 scale, the ship is9-3/4 inches long at the waterline.

Waterfall & Rapids for the Model RR Club

 

The rockwork, track, & bridges were already in place. Working around the tall viaduct was a challenge. 

Before installing the falls, I painted some of the rockface with clear gloss medium to simulate moisture, and I added foliage and moss around the drop. The waterfall is clear silicone calk. I followed a well-established process:  I laid it out in strips of calk on freezer paper (the plastic side), then used a piece of stripwood to randomly tease the strips together. I let it cure for 24 hours, dry brushed it with gloss white craft paint, and peeled it off the paper in one long piece. I glued it to the rock at the top using matte medium gel with T-pins to hold it in place. I added a few T-pins on the rockface where the falls hit a ledge.

The rapids were built with gloss medium gel applied and stippled with a flat 1-inch brush and then painted with gloss white craft paint. Since the photo was taken, I've added dense foliage and a bear to the areas closest to the layout edge and added trees and foliage to the cliff top.

The drop from cliff top to rapids is about 20 inches. The track in this section is one of the two scenicked helixes that connect the upper and lower levels of the layout to create a 400-foot continuous main line.