Yabuta Junk and Five-Planks Houseboat from Barrage Miniatures

Yabuta Junka, Five-Planks houseboat and two River Boats

The Soerabaja Harbour project is nearing its end and I’m finishing the last boats and starting on a couple of piers. In a couple of weeks time it will all see action in our Pulp Alley campaign at the club.

These two new boats comes from Barrage Miniatures just like the two river boats I’ve just finished.

The Vietnam Five-Planks Houseboat is a one-piece kit that sets you back €12. Excellent casting and a very useful boat. Larger than the river boats.

The Vietnam Yabuta Junk is a two-piece model for €15. Hull is ordinary resin and the cabin is 3D-printed.

The models looked just great, but… they were a bit warped so they didn’t sit flat. Maybe not a great problem, but I wanted to fix it. Also, the cabin for the junk didn’t sit very well in the hull.

No problem, I thought. I dipped the boats in hot water and carefully bent them so they sat flat and the cabin for the junk fit much better.

They cooled and everything looked great, but slowly they warped back. I noticed that when I had started to paint them so it was too late to do another dip in boiling water.

So now they are a bit warped but not too bad actually. And the cabin doesn’t fit perfectly as there is a rather large gap between cabin and junk-floor. Nothing that I can’t hide with a couple of boxes and other stuff that I’m going to stuff the boats with.

All in all two nice additions to my growing fleet.

Edit - I've had contact with Barrage Miniatures since this blog-post and they have informed me that they have changed resin since I bought my boats. The new resin shouldn't warp and you shouln't see these problems any more.