Ship Modeling Simplified: Tips and Techniques for Model Construction from Kits

In Ship Modeling Simplified, master model builder Frank Mastini puts to paper the methods he's developed over 30 years at the workbench to help novices take their first steps in an exciting pastime. You don't need the deftness of a surgeon or the vocabulary of an old salt to build a model. What you need is an understanding coach. Mastini leads readers from the mysteries of choosing a kit and setting up a workshop through deciphering complicated instructions and on to painting, decorating, and displaying finished models--with patience and clarity, not condescension. He reveals dozens of shortcuts: How to plank a hull "egg-shell tight"; how to build and rig complicated mast assmeblies without profanity; how to create sails that look like sails. . . . And along the way he points out things that beginners usually do wrong--beforehand, not after they've taken hammers to their projects.

Ship Modeling Simplified even includes an Italian-English dictionary of nautical terms, the key to assembling the many high-quality Italian kits on the American market.

Model building is fun, and not nearly as difficult as some experts would have you believe. Here is everything you'll ever need to get started in a hobby that will last a lifetime.

Frank Mastini acquired a lifelong curiosity about the sea and its historic sailing vessels as a younster in Italy. A graduate of the Italian Naval Academy, Mastini honed his seamanship skills aboard the 270-foot, square-rigged training vessel, Amerigo Vespucci.

He began his professional model building career in 1961, developing a clientele of collectors for whom he still builds on commission. Mastini recently finished a scratch-built model of the Mary and John, a ship that carried a group of Pilgrims from England to Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1630. He is the author of a series of articles for Ships in Scale magazine and is in frequent demand as a coach for beginning modelers.

When not on the telephone discussing modeling problems, Mastini can be found at his Hartsdale, New York, workbench, enjoying retirement.