Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

You did a nice job on these paper kits.

I think you are ready to build the Steam Engine and I can’t wait to see the results.

The floating paper boat is really neat.

How long did it take you to build each of the models (Church, House and Boat)?

Thanks for the kind words, I am not a fast builder, I enjoy building and don't really look at the time, but I can estimate:
  The stock build house was by far the easiest, I would say under 2 hours, the church building built stock would have been only a little longer but all the window cut outs and doors and clock and vents have all been what paper modelers call layered. You basically make a photo copy and use it to cut out extra parts to give the model a more 3D effect, the door and clock where sunk in, and the masonry around door and windows was made to stick out, all these tiny improvements can easily double the build time!
  I would say the boat would be about 2.5 hrs but the Varnish waterproofing adds drying time, I put about a teaspoon of Varnish inside the hull and tipped the boat in all directions to spread this around the inside, and let dry, at this stage the boat looked terrible as the Varnish soaks in at different rates in different areas, but after I Varnished the exterior of the hull, the Varnish has completely saturated the paper and the ink artwork once again looks good and even. You can handle the Varnished boat after 12 hrs but I found it continues to cure and after 3 days it now feels like a plastic boat! It's hard to put a build time on the boat as it must be done in stages to account for waterproofing. The German company that makes the kits I have been building actually have some larger boats like a Titanic that modelers put 2 coats of Varnish on inside and out and the waterproofing is so effective that they make the boat radio controlled. The big Titanic is well over 4 feet long but there is more sizes and scales of paper model kits than you can shake a stick at.
  I have been using sewing needles to scribe the folds and those small metal office clips that look like clips to seal a potato chip bag as sort of a sheetmetal brake tool to get crisp folds. I do a little bit of sheetmetal work in my real life trade and have always enjoyed how folding flat sheets can make an impressive stiff 3D structure.
  Needless to say, I enjoy building these low costs kits very much.