By the time this film was being made plastic model kits were already available from Airfix and the like , but that didn't mean the traditional methods instantly went by the wayside. I love kits myself, but more and more I just build models fron scratch. Scrap wood is cheap, kits are expensive.
They were quite incorrect at 2:10 when they said he 'did nothing else' - he actually wrote over 50 books on the world's shipping (especially merchant fleets, which tend to be overlooked). He only died two years ago, and I believe his wife is still living in Gosport.