Landlubber Mike

Hi Ian, thanks very much! Your Unicorn was a big reason for why I decided to buy the kit for my next build, so please don't hide it I have been doing a lot of pre-planning for the build, both in terms of colors and modifications. For colors, I think I'm going to stick with three primary colors - pear for the hull, boxwood for the deck and accents, and black (stained/dyed pear and other woods) for the wales, mast tops, and spars. My goal is to not use paint to the extent at all possible, but that means replacing a lot of the strip wood which seems to be of relatively good quality. I'm also thinking about whether to color the bulwark planking, gun carriages, etc. a red color. I found a couple of stains that look promising, but I want to stay as close to a minimum number of colors as possible. This is the general approach taken by Bernard Frolich, echoed in Chris LeBren's build here which I think is absolutely beautiful: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/2085-usf-confederacy-by-chris-b-316-scale-pob-scratch-build/page-2 I'm also thinking about doing a number of modifications. In addition to opening up the waist like you did, I'm probably going to scratch build the stern and stern galleries, add a thicker wale, and angle the quarterdeck so that it matches up a little better with the Chapman plans (where the portholes gradually open up as you move towards the bow). I might even be bold enough to put a mixture of full and furled sails on the build now that I have gone through the experience with the Badger. I don't think that I will attempt to add a stove like you did, because yours would surely put mine to shame

Thanks very much Alistair I bought the Pegasus from a MSW member a couple of years ago and intended it to be my next build, but I thought that maybe starting with a kit that is a little more basic would help me build up my skills a bit more to do the kit justice. So, I ended up getting the Unicorn off of eBay for a very low amount ($130 or so) and figured I would start with that kit. Of course, now that I have been researching the Unicorn kit and seeing the great builds from Ian and ZyXuz, I am planning a lot of changes to the kit -- to the point that maybe I would just be better off going with the Pegasus which is more of a "complete" kit in my opinion All kidding aside, I have the TFFM series, and I think the Unicorn and Morgan will help me advance my skills to build a detailed Swan class per those books. I'm planning on doing the Charles Morgan alongside the Unicorn build. I found with the Badger that there were times I felt stuck or burned out and stepped away from the build for months at a time, so I think having a second build alongside the Unicorn might help me avoid that. The nice thing about the Morgan is that I won't have to rig cannons with 2mm blocks -- bad thing is that there are 7 whaleboats

Hi Peter, thanks very much. I think I'm still very much a landlubber, but I appreciate the vote of confidence I am almost ashamed to say that I didn't actually fabricate the ensign, but these are from BECC Scale Model Miniature Flags, whose website is: http://www.modelflags.com/. They are cloth, and look pretty good in my opinion, or at least better than I could have hoped to make. Model Expo sells flags but they are on the small side and more of a vinyl type of material, unlike the cloth used by BECC which is very easy to work with and manipulate to add folds and creases. They have a very wide selection of flags and sizes, and I would highly recommend them. I happened to come across them when placing an order with Cornwall Model Boats. I think you can buy them directly from BECC, but I bought them from CMB.

Thanks very much everyone, I really appreciate the kind words. It means a lot coming from you guys, as your builds have been a great inspiration to me. Kester, I have a case that I got from Model Expo a couple of years ago when I thought I was close to the finish line - that was before my twins arrived I need to stain and finish the wood framing, and locate a good source for glass or plexiglass (probably the latter). It's in a cabinet at the moment so it won't get too dusty in the meantime

Here are the pictures - sorry they are a little dark, but the lighting in my living room (the only neutral background I could find) is not the best. Thanks!

After 5 years, 3 months and 2 weeks, the Badger is finally finished! I just want to say thank you to all my MSW friends here for all the advice and patience with all my questions, and especially for all the inspiration that your build logs have given me to help push me to do a little better job than I might have otherwise done This has been a very rewarding hobby for me, but even more rewarding are the many friends across the globe that I have met and exchanged ideas with. So thank you all, and thank you MSW for providing such an amazing forum, without which I probably would be still on the hull planking A few words on the Caldercraft kit. I think it's a fantastic "beginners plus" kit that provides a lot of challenge, interesting detail, and options to add personal touches to. I would give it an A for the instructions, and an A+ for the detail parts. I give the pre-cut wood parts a B+, but the wood strips a B-. Unfortunately, the walnut strips were very prone to splintering, and the strips were not very straight in many cases. I have kits from other manufacturers that don't seem to have this problem, but this is of course a beginners kit so maybe I shouldn't expect very much. I actually added a lot of touches beyond just building the kit out of the box - deck was treenailed, and I added furled sails, anchor non-buoys, rudder pendants, and the ensign. The furled sails took a lot of research and delayed the build quite a bit, but I think they came out halfway decent, and so I'm glad I went that route. I have a great appreciation for people that do rigging very well - I feel like that's one aspect of my next builds that I in particular need to improve on. Speaking of my next builds, they will be the Corel Unicorn and the Model Shipways Charles Morgan. I have good friends in Ian and ZyXuz to help me along with the Unicorn, and John has a great Morgan build going that I will be borrowing a lot of ideas from. For these builds I'm going to try to avoid paint as much as possible, but build using pear, boxwood, holly, etc. and stains/dyes and scratching a lot of details (including, perhaps, full sails this go around). Should be a fun ride. So thanks again to all my friends here. If anyone building the Badger has any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm going to take a couple of months away from the hobby to research my next builds and take a mental break. I'll be checking in on the build logs of course for inspiration and to learn ways to better improve my skills. Thanks again! I'll post pictures in the next post.

The blocks seemed a bit oversized, at least relative to the blocks on my Badger kit. I'll probably look into replacement blocks.

Hi ZyXuz, thanks for looking in on my log. I saw on your blog that you are now on the cannons. Have you decided on the number of guns that you will add to the ship overall, and whether you are going to use smaller caliber guns for the quarterdeck? I bought from CMB some smaller Caldercraft guns and carriages for the quarterdeck to see how they would look, but still thinking about what I want to do. Also, how do you like the cannon carriages? They actually don't seem all that bad, and it's nice that they are pre-constructed. It was a bit of a pain to assemble the carriages on my Badger, and there were only 12 guns

Thanks very much Kester - I'll have to remember that for next time. I think that makes sense on the coils. I forget where I saw this technique, as I'm not smart enough to have thought about it on my own For the furled sails, there is a little more bulk in the center of the yard, but perhaps I could have added a little more. Thanks for looking in and the advice, I really appreciate it!

This is how I made the rope coils for the belaying pins. First few pictures show the simple jig from balsa which was set up to handle three coils at once. Slots are cut on one end to hold one end of the thread. I then looped it around the two push pins three or four times, then the line comes under and around the middle of the loop into a simple knot. I bit of diluted PVA was run over the knot and the loops to keep things relatively secure. Once dry, I used a block of balsa to try and get the coils to hang in a somewhat natural fashion. You can see in the next of pictures my high tech jig. By placing the top pin over the corner of the block, it helped get the coil into a better position I thought to hang naturally from the pin. Diluted PVA was added again to freeze them in place. Here are the final results. I think they came out somewhat ok, but if I had to do it over, I probably would have made them longer and probably a bit messier looking. Even pre-shaped, I found it was necessary to use a rigging hook to hold down the bottom of the coil to position it better after liberally applying another dose of diluted PVA.

Hi everyone, here is a quick update of where I am now. The spars and braces are up, and at this stage, all that I have left is some rigging at the bow and stern, the backstays, jib stay, tighten up some other lines, and add the remaining detail items (driver boom, some more coils, the anchors and non buoys, rudder chain and flag). I was originally planning to have the ship completed by the end of last month, but came down with shingles of all things. Thankfully I'm better after about three weeks of excruciating pain, and making some good progress. I'm not in a rush at this point, as I'm not expecting the upgraded wood packages for my next two builds, the Corel Unicorn and MS Charles Morgan, until April or May. So, that gives me time to enjoy the home stretch and finish the display case. Enough rambling, here are some pictures. Again, sorry for the poor quality, but this is the most neutral background I can find in my house Thanks for looking in as always.

Hi Mark, Good luck on version 2. I think this is a good call if you wouldn't be satisfied with version 1, and I'm sure version 2 will come out fantastic. Just think of version 1 as a learning experience Mike

Hi again ZyXuz, hope all is well. My package from CMB arrived, so now I should have enough thread to finish my Badger. I also got a few goodies for my upcoming Unicorn build, which I thought I would share with you (and Ian of course), if you don't mind. For the coat of arms, I ordered A5349, which was listed as 17mm (I think you had ordered A5350, the 27mm one). The 17mm is pretty close as you can see to the coat of arms on the original cast metal stern piece, but much sharper in definition. For the stern galleries, there is crown that sits on top of the cast metal piece. It all looks pretty mediocre, so I bought AMND166 (CD166), which is pretty close in size, but again, much better definition. I also bought a few other items to play around with. One was the stern decoration for another ship (A5338), which I could use the two ends for decoration around the coat of arms or along the sides of the stern. I also bought one of Corel's edging strip (CD110, or AMND110), which I might use as accents along the stern. I probably have more posts on the Unicorn, a ship I haven't even started building, than I do my Badger that I've been building for over five years

Peyton tends to choke in big games, particularly in cold weather

Very nice work ZyXuz, glad to see you back

Congrats on the victory - good luck at the Super Bowl

Am very excited to see a build log for this ship here - a bit jealous too! Gorgeous ship, and the Euromodel kits are really amazing in terms of the quality of plans and components, and the added instructions. I recently picked up the Friedrich Wilhelm zu Pferde, which really has spoiled me when it comes to all other kit manufacturers. Good luck and take lots of pictures!

Jay, thanks very much for sharing - they came out great, and look better than mine Certainly not imposing at all. I like the color of your sails, and the seams in them. Very nice! Happy that you were able to borrow a little from my post to do your fine work.

Good question Robert. Probably thinner than what I used I imagine. I think his Victory was at 1:96 scale, so his cloth is probably a lot thinner. I'm going to have to look into that material for my next builds.

Thought I'd pass along this link of a spectacular model of the Victory that I came across today. Take a look at the furled sails - they are furled very tightly against the yard for a rather thin profile. Amazing work! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219810/Magnificent-model-HMS-Victory-complete-Lord-Nelson-Captain-Hardy-deck-took-pensioner-10-years-complete.html

Hi John, I agree with Augie - you can't really paint in place. What I've done though is use a cotton swab to keep constant contact on brass that was already fitted to the model. I've had mixed results with that, so right now, for minor touch-ups, I just add a little black paint. Good luck!

Hi Ian, Good to know about the windows. I'll have to take that into consideration when scratching the stern and stern galleries. If you look at the Chapman plans, they do indeed show windows with arches at the top. I'm wondering if these arches were decorative, rather than part of the actual windows? It's a bit hard to tell from the Chapman plans whether the arch served as part of the window panes, but take a look at this stern from model SLR0461 of the RMG. The windows here are rectangular, with decorative arches at the top. The ship is from 1741, so fairly close in time to the time of the Unicorn. Here is the link to the RMG site. It's a bit hard to tell whether the stern gallery windows are constructed this way as well, but it looks like it could be the approach taken. It might be a bit odd to have rectangular windows at the stern and arched windows at the gallery. http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/66422.html After seeing this model in the Gardiner book, I was thinking that this would be a nice approach when scratching the stern - particularly since it would be much easier to create rectangular windows without arches Given your research and calculations on the window size, then maybe this approach would not only make more sense, but also be true to the Chapman plans. So, should we contact Corel and tell them to fix their kit? Think we can charge a consulting fee for all our research?

Hi ZyXuz, sorry to hear about the issue with your order. Sounds like you can use the stuff they sent by mistake, so I guess all is not lost. When my package arrives, I'll let you know how the coat of arms works (I'll post a picture so you can see if you need to go with the bigger or the smaller one). My hope is that I can use either of the Amati coats of arms, and reconfigure the stern to look like the Chapman plan. That would take making a curvier design to the top of the stern, and I'll probably sculpt or carve figures on the side of the coat of arms. At least that's the plan For the thread, I just ordered the Caldercraft thread. I didn't want to mix and match threads at this point on my Badger. I'm not super impressed with their thread - it's ok, but can be a bit fuzzy, especially some batches. I might go with Chuck's thread for future builds, but looking at the other kits on my shelf, the Amati thread looks pretty good. For the Unicorn deck, the height is probably correct but the slope is probably off given that the Chapman plans show the portholes opening up as you go forward. I think you're right that all that is needed is to build up the frames of the fore end of the quarterdeck a bit before the planking is added. I am going to try and modify it to match the Chapman plans, but not sure how easy it will be to open them up. CMB sells the Corel portholes in packets of 10, so I placed an order for them (they were sold out the first time I ordered). I had to guess on the size, as CMB sells them in 9mm and 12mm (diameters I assume), and of course when I measured them, they seemed to be 10mm in diameter I had some time this week to do some thinking about the color scheme as well. I think I'm going to go with a thick black wale, and black for the background of the stern and possibly the stern galleries. I have a feeling that I'm going to want to scratch the stern galleries as well, as I'm not all that impressed with the cast parts. I plan to open the waist as well, and I'll probably also add ships boats to that area. Interestingly, the Pandora had four boats of various sizes - three across, and the smallest nested inside one of the other three. If I don't talk to you before then, hope you have a good new year and good luck with your future career plan

Very nice work Pierre, coming along beautifully.

Wow, this is incredible work. I love the sails - very nice touch. Thanks very much for sharing.