HI , I bought the bouy tender from an out of business auction at a defunct boatyard . She had been in their possession for about six months before they went under . You are right though . Except for the outside neglect at the yard she was pristine inside and the engines only showed 160 hours after last refit . I was fortunate to have the funds to cruise her and carry aboard two , YES , TWO restored SKI -NAUTIQUE ski boats. I played with the real thing until I ran out of cash paying doctors after insurance capped my wifes policy. It was great and if I was thirty years younger I would do it again! The idea of filling the tanks would be frightening now as I had removed one of the water tanks and increased the fuel capacity to allow longer cruising. She wasn,t fast , but when done to my taste she had it all. Yep ! hot tub , fireplace, air conditioning throughout , gourmet galley and walk-ins . AH , those were the days . Now I play with plastic because I did so to while away the off-bridge hours working for an oil company (foreign) as a tanker captain . Then I built for some attorneys , the rest is history . I love models for the fact that they help me to remember the really “Good Times” and LINDBERG was cheap enough to take along in case I left it behind somewhere. tankerbuilder
OK beginnings…maybe a good “learning project”, with optional extra detailing/rigging.
In 1/87 scale,one “North Atlantic Fishing Trawler” became a coastal freighter, one is being built as a Collier,
One “Fishing Schooner Elsie” is now a 62’ Ketch, and another built as a cutter rig ( plastic hulls only, the rest scratch built ),
The 1812 Privateer hull is being used to build a two mast schooner,
The “Brig of War” hull is being used for a 34’ lobster sloop,
The “coast Guard Tug” was backdated to an older Steam Tug,
In other scales, The “Jolly Roger Pirate Ship” is becoming HMS Surprise, from the movie “Master and Commander…” and the "Bobtail Cruiser " is being built as USS Carronade IFS-1, the only ship of that design that the U.S. Navy had…
Come to think of it, I haven’t built a single Lindberg kit as what it was meant to be.
I’d like to get my hands on that one again—one of the few things they ever moulded that was worthwhile, IMO…
I am glad to see there is another brave sole out there! I am working on the Lindberg Minesweeper kit and have to agree with most of the other posts out there about the quality of the kit. To put it simply the parts seem “clunky” however, there are some positives about the kit. I am looking to improve my skills as a modeler in weathering techniques and converting static models to RC and I figured that this little Linberg kit would make a good guinea pig to practice on! I rather practice on a clunky $20 kit than screwing up a $40 + kit. Hope this helps a bit.
The Trawler, like many of the Lindberg kits, come and go, and come back again. Best advice?, keep an eye on your local Hobby Shop…or, if you have the patience, order one and wait for it to arrive. [2cnts]
PHILLIP , hey , I appreciate the input.I have to say though I have never seen a radio controllable boat or ship model for $40.00. The cheapest one I founrd is a supposed SEARAY and it was $129.00 . That said you will have fun with you choice and if you aren,t worried about power or range ,well you can stuff gear from a radioshack four wheel drive pickup . It will all fit . Then enjoy , study , think about the way she handles and plan to do something bigger that you can use FUTABA radio gear and servos and gell cell motorcycle batteries . I use them in tugs because they not only give you a lot of running time , but , they make good ballast too ! I use motors you can find at electronics hobby stores that sell salvaged electronic drive motors by the bucket . oldcarguy
I have only had one Lindberg ship kit La Flore French Frigate. Never got around to building it but seem to remember that it looked quite a nice kit of an unusual subject.
I one of the earlier posts in this section converting a hull to make a pirate ship waq mentioned.One of the first ship kits I ever made was the Black Falcon pirate ship made by Merit in England in the 1950’s. The moulds have gone to an East European manufacturer and it was re released some time ago. it was a bit crude and from memory looked as though it was a 2 masted Brig. If you can get one this could depict a pirate ship quite well I should imagine with some work
I snagged the smallish Henry Morgan whaler in a Lindberg boxing. You can’t fail to detect it was once a Pyro kit from the 60’s, that you could buy at any drugstore. It is a nice little kit and basically a fun nostalgia build. Which is why I wanted to kow what their small USS Constitution was all about.
I also snagged their “Jolly Roger” kit - box photos of the built kit make it lok pretty sharp. Note that HobbyLobby has a 40% off coupon on their website and HobLobs almost ALWAYS have Lindy “pirate ships” on their shelves; the source of my JRoger.
I happened to think ,after I posted the last time .I didn,t tell you which LINDBERG boat kit I rc,d . It was the LCVP . Why ?, well the RADIO SHACK 4 wheel drive p/u gear fit in there without much trouble AND the batteries were UNDER the cargo in the welldeck ! The COAST GUARD CUTTER IS a good candidate for small RC and it would work as well or better than the LCVP. Many RC clubs don,t like the smaller stuff running when they do so , if you have a place to run without a club GO FOR IT !!! tankerbuilder
“We Won’t Get Fooled Again” also known as**, “We Won’t Pre-Order Again”**
We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our I-20’s under our feet
And the model that we worshiped will be gone
It was Lindberg who spurred us on
We sat in judgment of all its wrongs
But they turned a deaf ear and released it anyway
I’ll tip my hat to the new Hasegawa
Take a bow for the new Tamiya-WOW-A
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my air-brush and spray
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my bench and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
Change it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the sub and that was all
But the mold looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
'Cause the box-art and ads, they’re all lame
I’ll tip my hat to the new Hasegawa
Take a bow for the new Tamiya-WOW-A
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Get my toy sub and play
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my bench and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!
I’ll move my hopes and my anticipation to the side
If we happen to be left to decide
I’ll get all my refs and smile at the sky
For I know that the manufacturers never lie
Do they?
There’s nothing on the shelves
Looks any different to me
And the re-boxings are placed, by-the-bye
And the hull its too wide
And now the hatches are too high
And the lines waiting for a decent sub have grown longer overnight
I’ll tip my hat to the new Hasegawa
Take a bow for the new Tamiya-WOW-A
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Sit in the bathtub and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my bench and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Meet the new kit
Same as the old kit
Brilliant! Late in my reply (but can you really be late since the web is perpetual?) to this post but I could not refrain from singing this song with the new lyrics! I am a current fan of Lindberg but only of the older tried and true vessels. I can easily recommend and concur with others who speak well of:
US Navy Minesweeper
US Coast Guard Patrol Boat
Shrimp Boat
North Atlantic Fishing Trawler
Diesel Tug
Tuna Clipper…perhaps more of the modern vessel lineup. All these are great right out of the box with minimal improvement/superdetailing/scratchbuilding. There’s some fine detailing and delicate parts on the Shrimp Boat and and CG PB for one. I like these very much. FWIW.
I have said many times that Lindberg makes reasonably good sailing ships. I wish that they would get rid of the silly “pirate ship” marketing and market them under their real names and flags. I also wish that Lindberg would expand their sailing ship range since they really do a nice job of them. But, they will not listen to reason!
Bill Morrison
Maybe they are listening to the market place more than reason?
Here’s my lindburg Sovereign of the seas that I got from a yard sale. 
I just re-purchased the North Atlantic Fishing Trawler…Maybe one day I will convert it to a 1/72nd Japanese light freighter for a dio where it is being straffed by a B-25…
Tracy,
With sincere respect, I have always doubted the argument that there is no market for sailing ship kits. I maintain that the manufacturers simply do not know whether there is a market for them. As far as I know, there is no real research showing one way or the other.
Revell of Germany is making tentative headway in this area by periodically releasing new kits (I can’t wait for their new WASA!), but no other manufacturer has done so. If the manufacturers keep releasing their tired old kits, few will buy them, making the market seem scanty at best. But, if we look at the success of what John Tilley referred to as the HECEPOB (Hideously Expensive Plank on Bulkhead) market, there is an obvious interest in sailing ships. I’ll wager that, if the manufacturers offered real choices in a common scale, there would be a market for them. But, that is my opinion.
Bill
I wasn’t saying there was no market, just comment on how they were marketing them. It seems that with the popularity of Pirates and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchies that people will “identify” with “Pirate ship” maybe more than “Black Pearl” or even “Queen Anne’s Revenge.”
When I broached this subject with Lindberg a year ago, I was politely informed that they are marketing these kits for a children’s market, not to the serious modeler’s market. I repeated my position that their marketing approach was a shame because these are really nice kits and that we older modelers have the money with which to buy many kits. However, I got no further response. Oh well, perhaps the real answer to the sailing ship enthusiast’s dilemma is to start a new company.
Bill
Sometimes modelers have interesting motives
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRtCEdUMDVc
I bult this kit beautifully, perfectly, but completely stock. It was the way I always wished I could, when I was nine years old and made a sloppy mess of it.
Most things you can’t go back and change, but this was one that I could…
Coming in a bit late to this, I have built the old Aoshima or Imex Spanish Galleon and it is, imho, one of the best researched and best produced models (plastic or wood) of this elusive subject. I built it about 15 years ago before my eyesight and hands went south due to advancing age. I think Revell did a good job with their Golden Hind of a a couple of decades or more ago.but fell down with their alleged Spanish, then re-packaged as English galleon. That was the 29-inch fiasco apparently based on a Hollywood movie set. In fact, I had thought that even the 60-year-old plus Shipyard ships-in-miniature series in a standard waterline five inch format were better than the tubby Lindberg series now being re-issued: Golden Hind, Bon Homme Richard, etc.—I think based on the Heller “Cadet” series. Heller has done some good work on sailing vessels of the 17th century, usually French men-of-war, and the Airfix kits of the 1970s or 1980s are pretty decent. But what seems to sell and drive the market is the pirate craze, thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. Look on ebay as to what is being sold and you’ll see various efforts at modeling the fictional “Black Pearl” or even more spurious Flying Dutchman. These are Disney-fied children’s toy type models, in the same vein as the Revell “Pirates of the Caribbean” ship based on the ship-shaped restaurant at Disneyland, which is in turn a version of the Captain Hook ship from Peter Pan.