Heller, Thornier Amor

[Viking]

Most recent completion is the old Heller kit of the tuna fishing boat (Thornier) "Armor". These boats sailed out of Brittany until the 1950's. they used 2 large fishing rigs spread either side of the mail mast to troll for tuna.

These Heller kits are so seldom seen built up over here that its a real shame, but they are starting to reissue them so maybe more builds will see the light of day. this one builds very nicely into a 1/150th scale model. these ships were working boats so i have tried to make it not too clean, the sail is tissue paper as is the furled mail sail. the rigging is representative rather than complete as the fishing rods had a fairly complex rig.

A most attractive model of an unusual and interesting boat.

[martin hale]

Excellent build from a great little kit! I built one of these myself a few years back and had a real blast with it.

Martin

[IvanV22]

Excellent build!!

[PaulBradley]

Oh, very nice! I have this kit too, though I've found a lack of references to be an issue - did you find anything?

[Sissel]

Absolutely great!
You've done a top job at making it have that wooden look. I like the tissue paper sail and the rigging looks to be enough.

[JamesPerrin]

It does look like it could be a wooden kit. Great model.

[DHDrover]

One small point. The gaff on the mast would come down with the sail.

These boats, or similar, used to come into Newhaven Sussex when I lived the late 40s early 50s.

Yes I am that old

Dai

[Viking]

thanks for the comments guys.

Paul: i struggled with references and worked from the few google images i could find. there may be better references in french if you read it sufficiently well.

Dai: thanks, i know i had intended to use the supplied preformed sails so had set the spars accordingly, then realised that they were terrible and looked very unrealistic so just made a jib and a furled mainsail out of tissue paper. i didnt want to pull the spars off at that point as they were all rigged. i reckoned that maybe 1 person in 10 would actually know what was wrong

Alan

[DH-Drover]

There's always one

Dai

[splash]

Billings Boats do a wooden kit called the Marie Jeanne, I built one in the 80's here is an imaged from their website http://www.billingboats.com/advanced-beginner.html

[ShaunW]

That's excellent Viking, a top build.

[jssel]

Very nice work. I have the Corsair and some good references from a guy's build off Fine Scale Modeler as a guide. I need to do this.