Period Ship Kit Builder's Manual

I like the book. The photos are somewhat fuzzy and not as helpful as they could be. The information is helpful and I enjoy reading it.

The illustrations for this volume are poorly reproduced. The color plates are quite of low resolution and blurry. The black-and-white are marginal at best. I would not recommend this book at the price that it is being sold.

Excellent how to for building quality ship models from kits. Lots of tricks and advice how to avoid pitfalls and mistakes.

Nice pictures but contains little useful information on actual building methods. Would be much more useful if it contained some actual detail on building and problem solving. To give one example it passes off building ladders as not a problem. I can testify that building small scale ladders is really a headache.

Well written, easy to understand, even for the beginner. Would recommend this book to those looking to learn more about the ship

I like this book. This book is excellent in explaining all the construction phases of building model sailing ships from kits. I like all the nice photos and drawings illustrating the author's discription of the various stages of model ship construction. Excellent for the beginner.

Very helpful and easy to use

I will give this 5 star even though, like others had mentioned, the photos were not that brilliant. I am currently building, and nearly finished, my first period ship from a kit, Black Pearl from the Hatchette part works. I made numerous errors along the way and the solutions to those have been found in this book. As I am starting a new project, HMS Victory from a part woks series, I am sure that the new build will have fewer errors thanks to this book.

The book was written about 15 years ago and it shows it. Anything that is not time dependant, such as technique, is very good. However, there are references to tools and use of library to find out more which might have been relevant post 2000 but no longer. As mentioned in other posts, photos are black and white, low contrast and often poorly focussed.If you accept these limitations the rest of the book is helpful for a beginner.

The book was written about 10 years ago and all the pictures are in black & White.Unfortunately the figures are not on the same page as the descriptions so it is difficult to read.It is mainly a written description of the methods advised without sufficient pictures to assist.I gave up and decided that it is better to use the internet as that gave me a far better idea of the best procedures.

I bought this book as a confidence builder - and that it has proved to be. I haven't built a model boat for around 40 years and I wanted something to remind me of what tools are essential, of the best ways to tackle things, pitfalls to watch out for and so on and so on.The initial chapter (with regards to which kit to buy - you pays your money and you takes your choice) was a little disappointing but after that the book is full of little hints and tips many of which do make life easier or which cause you to rethink how to approach the construction of some aspect of your model.The book was obviously written some time ago but nonetheless it is still valid. As some other reviews have said, the photographs are not of the highest quality but I have found them perfectly acceptable and I have found that they do illustrate the various points made by the author quite well.All in all, for me, a worthwhile purchase.

I have purchased several books before embarking on my first ship kit. This one stands out for its logical no nonsense approach. In particular it tells you what to do in order and when to check things to avoid problems later in the build. As some reviewers have said the quality of the pictures is not great, almost like they are out of focus, but on the whole they are OK to see what the author is explaining. The text is so good it gets a 5 rating from me despite the poor picture reproduction. I'm getting to understand there is no single book that will explain everything about this hobby, but if it is wooden period ship kits that appeal you will not want to be without a copy of this book.