ccoyle

I think that was just Russian being written with a Greek accent. 🤫

And well-deserved!

Determination and ingenuity are a modeler's best friends!

Which is good, cuz the designers are Russians, so one would hope that they are familiar with their native tongue! On the flip side, there are plenty of native English speakers who ain't so good at readin' and writin' their Muttersprache! 😬

George, Not trying to shirk your question, but copyright law has been discussed elsewhere on the forum. You can find some of these discussions here. Also, since you are a resident of the UK, I cannot be too dogmatic about the rules, since some of the finer points of copyright law may differ on your side of the pond. You can likely find the answers you're looking for at https://www.gov.uk/copyright. Cheers!

No need. I think the two gentlemen have each made their point as far as this build is concerned.

Well, guess what? I found the brass name plate, so I won't have to make one from scratch. Whew!! BTW, in that same photo you can see one of the kit's PE eyebolts. I do not like them, because they are flat and therefore have a rectangular cross-section instead of round. The drill bits used to make pilot holes are of course round, so that's a problem. I prefer to make my own eyebolts. I also needed to make up a batch of ringbolts, which means I needed to whip up a batch of split rings. Tiny split rings. I went to Hobby Lobby last night and picked up a pair of jeweler's side cutters, which have narrower tips than the usual variety. I wrapped some fine wire around a beading needle (also from Hobby Lobby and a very handy tool), then cut it into rings with the side cutters. I made up 14 ringbolts in almost no time at all. That's all for now!

To be fair, Wyoming would have had a tough time getting in and out of the harbors at Arena Cove, Greenwood, Albion, Little River, Mendocino, Caspar, Noyo, Port Kenyon, etc. 😉

Well done, Jeff! I actually go the opposite route and purposely delaminate most rolled parts. For print-it-yourself kits, you can simply print the parts on 20# bond. For printed kits, which are my preference these days, you can remove most of the layers before rolling. No modeling until at least October, eh? Courage, man!

I think this is about as good as it's gonna get. I also decided that Catherine the Great was likely the kind of sovereign who would've liked her royal monogram gilded.

I tried a different color palette on the left side. I like that side better, and the wife agrees

Playing around with spicing up the stern carvings. What do you think?

It doesn't. As far as I can find so far (unless I overlooked it somewhere), the regular kit had the name as part of the PE stern detailing, but the deluxe kit has nothing. I had already been thinking about how I'm going to tackle that issue. Looking ahead to the possibility of painting the name, I had already used Google Translate to make a copy of the name in Russian, with Cyrillic characters. But thanks for checking! 😉

Nope. Never used the stuff. Wouldn't know what to do with it. So anyways, back to the carvings. I found a color at Hobby Lobby that I think will do. This is the stern piece in a test fit -- the piece still needs work. But lo and behold! This is what the piece is supposed to look like: And these are the quarter badges pictured along with the version shown in the instructions: Now mind you, I think the pieces in the deluxe kit look better than those in the original kit -- but I'm not certain they're a more accurate representation of whatever was on the real Phoenix. It's possible that both are equally speculative. What I do think is certain is that the monogram E on the deluxe piece stands for Ekaterina, i.e., Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796. I don't intend to fret much about the accuracy of the pieces and will just forge ahead and use them.

I got the bits of molding along the outer bulwarks added. I then set about adding some clear semi-gloss polyacrylic to the hull, and things got a little dicey. Most of the first coat went nicely, but then the polyacrylic acted as a solvent on the paint on the wales, leaving several smudges. So first I had to clean that up. Then I sprayed the entire hull with matte clear spray to hopefully seal all the existing paint. While that was drying, I worked on painting some of the hull ornamentation. Moving on to the second coat of polyacrylic, the matte clear had done its job of sealing stuff, but somehow I had managed to get a couple of dabs of the ornaments colors on my freshly painted hull. 😡 So, I had to clean that off before proceeding. Finally got it all done. Now I'm not 100% happy with the tone of the 'orange ochre' paint I had on hand for painting the aft carvings. I made several attempts to mix up a batch -- each ended in abject failure. I will probably dash off to Hobby Lobby to see if I can't find something. BTW, while painting the various carvings, I noticed that they are completely different from the pieces used on the prototype model and shown on the box art. More on that later.

Beautiful! She needs a little fish oil rubbed about on her now. 😉

From our guidelines: "All written work, drawings and photographs are considered copyrighted upon their creation and posting them on MSW does not constitute giving up ownership of the copyright. Again, no need for amateur or real lawyers - these are the rules here." You own whatever original work you share here, but MSW doesn't go after possible IP infringement on your behalf. If someone is using your work on YouTube, you can ask them to take it down. If it's you who is doing the sharing, simply ask for permission first. Most people will likely allow you.

Don't fret too much about it. Kit design was pretty archaic back in 1982. You got the first planking done, and that's the biggest challenge for most beginners.

With respect, gentlemen, this topic is not a discussion of copyright issues. Please limit replies in this thread to questions about how to properly address image licensing when sharing content to MSW.

The internet can be a wonderful place! It is especially wonderful if you are searching for images to add to a post at Model Ship World. You can find thousands of images of ships online! BUT (and this is a big but) you probably don't own those images! And that means you can't simply add them willy-nilly to your content! Many images you find by doing an internet search are licensed, meaning there are rules that govern how the images may be used. If you violate the terms of the licensing agreement, you are breaking the law. If you share those images to MSW, you may even be placing MSW in legal jeopardy. There is a way to determine whether you can share an image you find online, and it's pretty easy to do. I will demonstrate this for you here. Let's start with a Google search for HMS Victory. The search results look like this: In the upper right corner of the results page, look for the "Tools" drop-down menu and click it. This action opens a second toolbar, from which you should next select the "Usage rights" drop-down menu. This brings up a menu with three options: "Not filtered by license" shows all the results of a search. This is the default option. "Commercial & other licenses" typically means you're going to have to pay a fee to use the image. Images from stock image vendors such as Shutterstock and Alamy fall into this category, as do most other results. "Creative Commons licenses" is the option you want. Be prepared to see a greatly diminished set of results! Clicking that option brings up only images that are generally okay for you to use, but with caveats, as I'll show you shortly. Note in this image that TWO of the first three results shown in the "not filtered" set are gone now! At this point, you still have some homework to do -- you need to actually read the licensing terms and see what conditions you need to fulfill in order to use the image. Let's look at the first image on its Wikimedia page. Scrolling down that page brings us to the licensing information, which says that you are free to share the work. Hooray! But wait! Not so fast! Even for this shareable image there are conditions you must fulfill! For this image, you must "give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made." What does that mean? That means you must cite your source, i.e., tell us where you obtained the photo. Here's what that looks like in a kit review I posted: For comparison, let's go back to our search results, set the usage rights option to "Commercial & other licenses", and then click on one of the results from Alamy, a stock image vendor. We'll follow the links until we get to the image at Alamy's website. There are two very important things to take notice of at the Alamy image page. The first is that the image is NOT free to use! If you want to use it, you have to pay $39 for the privilege. The second important thing to take note of is that the image is watermarked. A watermark indicates that someone is claiming ownership of the image. After you pay Alamy the $39 fee, they will send you an unmarked copy of the image. See how that works? If you share a watermarked image to MSW, that's a dead giveaway that you didn't pay the fee! Yes, it takes a bit more work to research usage rights, but you need to do it, because it's the honest and legal thing to do it helps ensure that our beloved forum doesn't end up in legal hot water and, probably most importantly for forum members, the staff will delete photos from your posts that they have determined violate usage rights! Thanks for your cooperation!

Apologies, but I had to remove the photo from your post, since it was a licensed image from a stock photo site. Sorry!

One thing to be aware of with MK kits is that they only mostly fall together by themselves, but not totally. There are instances where parts don't fit as indicated in the instructions, usually as a result of error creep during the build, and some thought has to be given as to how to proceed. The keel veneers are one such instance. In the Step 46 inset, you can see that the bottom veneer, H22, is supposed to sit atop (i.e., directly beneath) the two side pieces, H21. But there are problems with that suggestion. First, it doesn't match the construction sequence of the corresponding veneers on the stem. Second, on my particular build the side veneers overlapped the false keel too much, i.e., they stuck out too far, and laying the bottom piece atop them would have made that piece stand proud of the veneers on the stem. I had to choose between trimming the side pieces to allow the bottom piece to sit flush, or else trim the bottom piece to fit between the two side pieces. I chose the latter option, because it results in the exposed, thin sides of the veneers facing toward the bottom of the keel, where they won't be seen on the finished model. Hope that all made sense. Onward!

Love the 60s-vintage clip art, too!

I never cease to be amazed by the size of Richard's model, even though I know what to expect when I open the log!

Totally up to you. Opinions on sails vs. no sails are usually evenly split.