Matrim

K, In my attempts to get a rough idea of sizes at scale and I am looking at masts. Lees gives 1815 values for a 38 but nothing close to the 1798-1818 period for a 32. Therefore I am looking at seeing what other info I can gather and I do have some random scribbles on a ripped out muster sheet. Most of it lists the sails (which is fine) but the bottom bit lists some other information that might relate to a mast/yard/bowsprit or something else. I cant make head not tail of it so am putting it out here in case anyone is fluent in 'bad handwriting related to something on ship' Looks like we have an extension of something and a 'spirit' length to me but if that is the sprit? (bowsprit) or spiritsail /yard/etc Any guesses welcome..

Shifted to traders though the topic does not truly fit here or in books. It may be useful to list the books so people know what they are plus a general idea where you are based as (for example) is you are UK based and a US group wants them then shipping would be horrendous. Note this topic which does exactly that..

That's lucky though it may be more amusing to bet on how long the log lasts before I throw all my toys out of the pram and start again erm again..

After using my vast mod powers to merge together both the plan generation topics and the first build attempt topic (and in the process making the last eight pages utterly unreadable. I shall now wave my magic wand and transfer this to the scratch build section as I am just about ready to make attempt 356 at this build. With due sense of dread and fear. For the next month or so I just plan on deciding on scale, materials and structure (and tidying the workshop) before starting cutting into wood around spring. I will therefore be indecisive about all those decisions to the probable fury of anyone trying to follow along.

Lovely detailed work especially at that scale..

I am probably going to go for 1:48 because it will simplify construction - though I will have to set the yards to reduce space, not have the royals up etc etc. If I was just going for something to fit then the smaller the better but I eventually decided that it is the journey of making the model that is fun so even if I cannot display it then 'so what' - at worse it could stay in the workshop... This decision may change once I have measured it out fully as I am almost ready to start on building.

This is true. Saying that some historians today still try to claim otherwise. No other nation with stronger ships had the same run of victories in single ship actions and that in itself is impressive. I don't subscribe to nationalistic reasons for victories in any war. Man for man all men are equal and it is training, leadership, equipment and logistics that tends to make the difference not 'a ship with 10 brits will easily beat one with 200 french' etc etc versions of history (replace with whatever war you fancy). It doesn't stop such assertions being made mainly to increase confidence and sometimes nationalistic fervour/pride. Therefore the system shock when it sometimes proves to be incorrect can be extreme. It is one reason why incorrect history can and has killed people and will probably continue to do so.

Questo è un sito inglese e i post dovrebbero essere in inglese e non si traducono automaticamente. I traduttori online sono ragionevoli ora, quindi puoi usarne uno. and in english Original post and reply This is an english site and posts are expected to be in English and it does not automatically translate. Online translators are reasonable now so you could use one of those.

This is wonderful to see happen and the parties involved (Chuck/CAF/Kerry and Ancre) all deserve credit for working together to resolve this. It's nice as well as CAF is one of the best quality producers in China so getting new kits will help the hobby.

lol, nice to see other people had the same reaction. Interesting that it appears to be his 'thing' to write in this way..

On the first question there is no tie in between the characters used to tell the story. On the second it is not supposed to be historical fiction. It's trying to provide historical information with a fictional interpreter providing 'color'. It is certainly different to any of the standard approaches ever seen. I doubt you could quote it directly as it is never quite obvious which is which though he does give extensive foot notes so these could be used to track down the original if anyone ever wanted to re-use. As a note of extra caution it uses secondary authors in the main text more than you would expect and direct quotes from secondary authors as opposed to referencing their arguments. In some cases (lists from James) it makes some sense (though I would prefer the list to appear and James to be footnoted) whereas in others the quote is direct. That is only because I prefer history to be the historians view and not regurgitated opinions from others (no matter how 'decent' the other is). Footnotes are Historians friends.. As an aside when I was finding that quote from Rodgers concerning the war of 1812 I also checked Latimer as I remembered one or both of them making an argument of that nature. I found it in both but was surprised that the words used were almost identical. Since Rodgers wrote three years earlier and Latimer references the relevant work in his bibliography I just used Rodgers but did wonder if Latimer realised he was essentially re-using Rodgers comment (without reference). Perhaps he agreed so deeply it was a co-incidence but it looks like the same re-written with slightly different words. Just a curiosity. Perhaps I missed the acknowledgement..

Ooooo I like that Lego idea to get tension with the laccy bands... Innovative clamping methods are great to learn. Even if the idea came from elsewhere....

I take it you like setting yourself planking challenges. I find normal planking hard enough

The Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Age - Senior Service Mark Jessop Pen and Sword Bopoks 2019 180 pages, hardback, U.S $39.95 UK £19.99 Order: https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Royal-Navy-in-the-Napoleonic-Age-Hardback/p/16787 This is an unusual book. The best analogy I can make is that it is like Horrible Histories mainly focusing on the British Navy during the Napoleonic period but without the comedy. If follows the relatively new concept of utilising fictional stories to 'enhance' the history but in this case taking up the entire book coupled with large information dumps. So you get an awful lot of ,' "hey up mate hows it going.", I said as I looked at the papers describing the Nile [big description of the Nile], when finished I told him so but he told me he knew a carpenter who knows a thing about oars and said [big info dump on oars]. I looked over the bay and meditated on this until a frigate appeared which reminded me about an article about Nelson [info dump about Nelson] For the entire book. To a certain degree it works and the information covered is rarely repetitive and in some cases struck some unexpected new ground (which is nice in a historical area I know a reasonable amount about) . I should also note that the author is a much better fictional writer than me so his actual examples are not as bad as my pretend example above. Here is an actual example from the book The book is more intended for a lay reader who does not have a lot of historical knowledge and wants bite sized chunks of easily digestible information. Alternately someone who is not a fan of pure history (and pure history can be extremely dry). Therefore I strongly doubt I am the intended audience also as a historian by training I dislike fiction in history intensely. Simply put to me without evidence it has no place in a history. The potential problems get worse because in fiction the person 'thinking' does not have to know the full picture and that is dangerous. It allows people to potentially lie and hide information in an attempt to almost re-write history as they can ignore normal historical evidence restrictions because the fictional character does not have to understand balance, reliability or truth allowing non-historical spins to be be placed on something that might be used as history. Now there is little evidence of that here though the author does spend an inordinate amount of time (in a book about the Royal Navy, two chapters out of nine) describing US Navy victories and how the US was fighting against the press and strangely neglects to mention the Shannon, or of the actions when the Royal Navy fought successfully back (beyond a single paragraph listing some of the ships captured) or even the fact that the US primary war aim was the land conquest of Canada. Now the fictional characters reporting probably would not know (or perhaps would not care but would care about single ship losses which is another example of my main issue with fiction in history). He has read Mahan, Roosevelt and James so is presumably well aware of the various counter arguments. Personally I tend to follow N.A.M Rodgers view of the single ship actions, 'in the case of 18-pounder frigates in action with 24 pounder ships the disparity of force is a sufficient explanation' and perhaps more interestingly ,'Contemporaries, however, and to a surprising degree subsequent historians, have tended to interpret these actions in moral rather than technical terms, as indicators of national virtue or decline, which is to load them with far more significance than they can possibly bear' [p567 and 568 The Command of the Ocean N.A.M.Rodger]. So 'War of 1812' digression aside if you enjoy fiction to as a way of making History more easy to understand then this is an interesting book that covers several areas of that Navy that are not usually covered in a frankly innovative way.

You have done a really nice job with the planking, it looks very smooth and neat.

It is a gorgeous looking model kit...

Caldercraft do a nice yellow ochre though it does look like you have found an alternate good match. Enjoy the holiday..

If a kit manufacturer produced a visually accurate model to every detail then it would cost so much that the query would be 'why spend four thousand pounds on that when you can get close enough with Manufacturer B and pay a tenth of the cost' Some of it is scale and some of it components and some of it is simplifying to make the process of building easier. As a practical example correctly sized belaying pins are not easy (for me) to belay so I will probably make them even more out of scale in future just to make it easier to tie rigging. I personally dislike kits with obvious large inaccuracies but these are easily avoidable. Small inaccuracies you can kit-bash yourself if there is a specific problem/problems you dislike and if you dont know of the problem well there is nothing further to do.

Everything seems nice and accurate so far so good job 😃

If I wasn't about to start on my scratch of Amphion again then I would be tempted by the Master as well. Better quality wood makes for a better modelling experience and a better resultant kit..usually. I love what you are doing here for the ship modelling community as well and I hope it works out well.

The sanding will clear out a lot of those level deficiencies, it looks like you have very few 'gaps' so that should turn out quite nicely.

Is that deck supplied like that? interesting... With the bulwark color it is up to you. I tend to paint mine red ochre but if you like the color of the wood plain then that is fine as well.

This is a great build.. Question - how fiddly was it to work at 1:80? I attempted 1:60 with my last and found that almost too small so am considering 1:48 for the re-start but (even for a frigate) that is much larger.

Your deck planking looks great! On the gun rigging I find it unsurprising that the kit may have a less than optimal approach, most manufacturers either simplify and sometimes re-use across models to keep costs down. I always find it more satisfying scratch building the correct way so good for you..

Makes a change.. It is always risky wettening and hoping the plank dries in the correct shape as wood can do strange things when drying.. One advantage to shaping off model is that you can apply hair dryers (and the like ) to speeding up the drying and I have managed to curve ebony with this method which is not easy. If you have the time then I strongly recommend looking through one of the pinned planking topics. The one I list below has links to some excellent tutorials where you can probably grab some techniques...