There was a time when modelers,mostly amateur seamen and crews who were either captured and put to prison or who were bored with the long voyages,built model ships and boats from scratch with pieces of wood and bones.  Subsequently, the art evolved into a full time profession for many and they started using rare woods and ivory for building exquisite models of ships and boats mostly displaying historical events.

But a major objective of building model ships and boats was to provide gaming materials to kids who love fun and adventure. Since kids are seldom interested in ready built objects and mostly have a probing and innovative mind, manufacturers and modelers started searching for some avenue to satisfy their needs.  Commercially too this was important because kids formed the largest target group for miniature model ships and model boats.

Thus the builders came up with the idea of providing building kits instead of readily built objects for such probing and innovative kids. Originally such kits were made of wood.  Gradually they replaced them with plastic, metals and finally fibers since wood was found to be hard and therefore fragile and more prone to damages by rough handling. Thus to day when the kids build up model boats from a kit, they just bring up the readily built parts provided in it like the mast, the hull, the wheels and so on and simply assemble them to put up a completed model.

These kits are not only used by kids but engineers and innovators often use the kits to find out how interchanges could be affected among the parts of different boats and ships to build up even a better vessel.