Building Sankei's Miniatuart Paper Kits

Here we'll introduce Sankei's Miniatuart laser-cut prepainted paper assembly kits.

Compared to normal papercraft models, these are made of a sturdier stock and build into replicas that are hard to imagine are made of paper. With simple tools like a hobby knife, tweezers, and glue, almost anyone can easily assemble these kits.

With Sankei's permission, here's a look at how to build these kits, using their "Watermill House" kit as an example. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

	Here's the kit contents. Contains four laser-cut sheets and one roof sheet. These sheets are quite small, so you won't need a lot of work space. Like other items in their Nostalgic Diorama series, this kit is in 1/150 scale. Read the instructions before beginning. If you understand the flow of assembly beforehand, it goes together a lot easier.
	Here are seven handy tools you'll need to build a Miniatuart kit: Cutting mat: to cut parts on. If you don't use one, your desk will suffer many cuts! Hobby knife: for cutting parts. White glue, paste: for gluing parts together. Ruler: for cutting the roof tile sheet or plastic sheet, a metal ruler is recommended. Tweezers (narrow tip type): recommended for handling small detail parts. Toothpicks: for applying glue to small parts. Gray and brown marker pens: for touching up the roof tiles and other parts.
	Here's a laser-cut sheet. It's very easy to see where the cuts are made, but if it's not evident, just backlight the sheet to see the cuts more clearly.
	The key to building these kits (or any kits!) is to stay calm, be cautious, and be accurate. Sometimes it's hard to follow those rules...it's easy to get flustered since the glue sometimes dries more quickly than expected! Let's start by gluing the frame parts together.
	This wall is a two-tone brown and beige. The parts fit together as shown here.
	Try as I might, I couldn't get these parts aligned properly. Happens to me all the time! But even if you make a mistake like this, don't try to peel it off, as you may rip the paper parts, rendering them unusable. First-time alignment is probably the toughest part of building a paper kit!
	In cases like this, just trim off the offending areas with your hobby knife, a tiny bit at a time. It's OK if the alignment is off only by a little bit.
	Next up is the biggest challenge of building this kit: the water wheel. You'll definitely want to use tweezers here. First, glue the flat paddle parts to one wheel side part. Once all the paddles are glued to one side, glue on the other wheel side part. This is difficult. Don't forget to make sure the square axle holes are in alignment, too!
	Use your tweezers to pull each paddle into place, as shown here. This "pulling" requires special care. If you completely insert the tabs of one paddle into the slots of the wheel, you won't be able to get the other paddles' tabs into their slots...so you have to try to get all the paddles' tabs to fit into all the slots in one go!
	I finally got the water wheel together. For this assembly, "staying calm," "being cautious," and "being accurate" were very important things!
	Here, I'm assembling the house's base. The parts feature folding lines, so fold the part inward to make a box-like shape. If you don't fold sharply, gluing the four corners will be difficult.
	Before the glue dries, place the base on a flat surface to make sure it's square and even. Gently push it into shape, confirming that the corners are still glued.
	Next, I'll assemble the water wheel axle and pass it through the wall. To keep the axle from falling out, small parts are attached, as shown here. Be careful not to glue the axle itself, or the wheel won't turn. The axle stands are then glued to the base, and the axle is sandwiched between the stands and the wall. (The wall is glued in place.)
	With the water wheel glued to the base, it's starting to look like a mill house. I'll put on the roof next.
	Now I'll build the roof, cutting out the roof sheet and gluing the parts together. Things to watch out for: Apply glue quickly Assemble parts quickly before the glue dries Do not misalign the parts (impossible to fix--you have to get it right the FIRST time!) To do this correctly, first cut out the roof parts, then dry-fit the parts repeatedly to get a firm understanding of how the parts fit together...then proceed with the gluing.
	More roof assembly. Only a small amount of glue is necessary, as shown here. Use your tweezers to attach small parts.
	You can smoothly and quickly add the detail parts using a toothpick to apply glue and tweezers to attach the parts.
	Finally, I'll touch up the roof parts where they were cut. I used acrylic paints mixed in a yogurt lid, applied with a fine-point brush. You can mix in a bit of white, too.
	I applied the touch-up paint carefully to the cut areas. Beware of "shaky hand syndrome" here! You can put the ladder, thresher machine, and fence wherever you like.
	It's finished! (Model and text by Kusaka-san)

CLICK HERE for HLJ's Sankei Product List

Sankei's wide lineup of paper kits includes houses and castles, plus household items, trains, aircraft, and more!
Try your hand at building these wonderful kits!

1/150 Nostalgic Diorama series

1/150 Diorama Option Kit series

1/150 Western Style Building series

1/150 Nostalgic Train series

1/87 HO Scene series

Japanese Castle series

Miniatuart Petite series