newsletter

It's asking for trouble saying this, but although phone and website problems seem to have been cured, as always, please let me know ASAP if you run into any communication difficulties. I'm often away or too tied up to answer the phone, so if possible, e-mail is always best for enquiries. You'll almost always get a response the same day, within 24 hours at worst.

If anyone has trouble with the info@kingstonmouldings.com e-mail link on my home page, or you've sent a message and haven't had a response within 24 hours or so, please try again using my kingston.rw@ntlworld.com address instead, that's the e-mail address that any website stuff is forwarded to. I've had one or two reports of problems printing out the website Order Form, though it works perfectly for me every time I try. If anyone does have a problem printing the form, just send all the info that the form should contain to me by e-mail to the kingston.rw@ntlworld.com address, or by ordinary mail if you prefer. As always with anything of this kind, I blame Microsoft. I suspect that changes they have made to IE8 could be the cause, as it used to work perfectly in IE7, and it has always worked OK for me in Firefox.

The latest - Falmouth River Boat/Oyster Dredger. (pics & details added 22.11.11)

Although I've tried competitive sailing myself, both with IOM one metres and a Laser, I've decided that it's not really for me, so I lean more towards the scale side. A recent request from a trade customer, The National Maritime Museum in Falmouth no less, was for a small semi-scale gaff-rigged design, and they wanted quite a lot of these. The result is a FALMOUTH WORKBOAT, which is more or less the same as a FALMOUTH OYSTER DREDGER, several of which are still working in the Fal estuary in Cornwall today. It had to be a handy size, so the moulded hull itself is fairly small at 540 x 180mm about 22" x 7", it has an enlarged keel, so that all necessary lead ballast can be contained within the hull. It's just entering production, and first deliveries have already gone to the NNM and a couple of trade customers, and it sails beautifully. I'll be adding it to the range once I've done a drawing and sailplan etc to accompany the hull, the fully rigged completed model measures about 910mm x 910mm, or 36" x 36", so it will sit quite happily on the back seat of most cars. Watch this page for updated details. I've tried to keep this design as simple as possible, and the model pictured here is the one I built myself. It was quite quick and easy to make, and they can be made as simple or detailed as the mood takes you. I'm hoping to have the final plans finished quite soon, but if anyone who thinks they're expert enough with scale sailing craft like this to build a model without one, these hulls are available right now.

A newish model from the Kingston Mouldings workshop as yet un-named, but all mine and most definitely not for sale. If enough people tell me they're interested, then I'll add the hull and plan to the range. The basis for this new creation is a modified version of my 1904 Windermere open launch hull, but moulded with bulwarks, and everything else is wood built up the old fashioned way, I like ‘traditional’ modelling methods. The steam plant is an SVS unit, all quite extensively re-built and modified by retired engineer friend the now sadly late Ted Hodson, who also helped by doing a fair amount of painting and finishing work on the model to speed things up, he was getting rather impatient with my slow rate of progress.

And now, African Queen. (added 27.08.08)

It's been a while since anything new has been added to the range, but at long last, the one that many have been waiting for is here, the ever popular open steam launch AFRICAN QUEEN. I've done it at one tenth scale, which makes it around 930mm x 270mm, or 36½" x 10½". With those distinctive hull strakes, it hasn't been an easy one to make, and research has proved especially difficult. I've lost count of the number of times I've sat through the film DVD to try to gain fresh info on the boat, and I know almost all the dialogue for both Humphrey and Katherine off by heart. As all who have seen the film will know, the boat that they used was pretty rough and battered in appearance. I haven’t reproduced this effect on my hull, no dents but not a polished high gloss finish either, so you could also use this hull for a model of several other period launches if you want to. I first thought that it would be a relatively simple matter of scaling up the little Billings kit design, but not at all, the original boat from the film still survives, but some time after filming, the boat was altered substantially, also the dummy steam plant used for filming was replaced by a completely different functioning one, all of which means that the Billings version doesn't represent the film boat at all. Naturally, no useful drawings of the original exist, but I think I've managed to do justice to the true AFRICAN QUEEN design in the end. Of course, a detailed scale drawing is supplied, and some pics of an excellent finished AFRICAN QUEEN have just been added to the AQ page on this site.

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Some not very good news for most customers outside the UK and Europe. I can still send any hull in the current range to any European address, but it has become more expensive to send anything over one metre long to most countries farther afield because of postal size limits, and that includes the USA and Australia. The only way that I can send big hulls to most non-European counties now is by an airfreight service like UPS. These charge by volume rather than weight, so shipping costs to an address in the US and most other places are higher than airmail prices, though the service is both fast and reliable. E-mail your requirements, and I can usually get back to you with a firm quote within a day or two. Ordering more than one hull at the same time makes the cost per hull much cheaper of course, and everyone so far has been very happy with the service.

I hope you've enjoyed the latest edition of the website. A lot of work has gone into it, and after you’ve had a good look, it would be helpful if you could drop me a line to say what you think. Did you find it interesting and easy to use? Any useful bits of information on the models that you think I’ve left out? Would you like to see more practical info on any aspects of model boat construction? Let me know if you think of any additions or changes that you think would improve the site, and I'll see what I can do.

05 - 12 - 11 - New PRICE LIST - first general increase for almost three years, but it had to come eventually didn't it?

22 - 11 - 11 - Details and pic of new FALMOUTH WORKBOAT added to Newsletter page.

02 - 06 - 10 - Yet another update on ORDERING & PAYMENT information for customers outside the UK.

21 - 09 - 09 - Updated ORDERING & PAYMENT information for customers outside the UK.

28 - 01 - 09 - Latest German Type 142 Schnellboot hull added to the BARGAIN BUYS page.

04 - 03 - 08 - New page added for open steam launch AFRICAN QUEEN, also featured on price list and Newsletter pages.

08 - 03 - 08 - Updated text added to the SPIRIT IOM one metre yacht page.