The age of steam is what 1:100 ship model kits bring to the shelf: a pair of thirty-four-foot steam cutters, one in working wooden trim, the other carrying torpedo armament. Small boats with tall funnels, they are quick and undemanding builds that give a case full of capital ships the human scale of everyday service afloat. At around ten centimetres each, the care goes into the wood tones and the drybrushed brass rather than into part counts.
A cutter of this size is a project for one or two evenings, and what repays attention is the painted timber and the drybrushed metal fittings — work that calls for good model paint brushes. Comparable small craft in greater detail, mostly at 1:72, sit among ship model kits, while railings and deck fittings to finish them come from ship model accessories.
