ccoyle

Here's my progress to date. All the shrouds are set up, and I have the first back stay set up. You can also see that my work area tends to be very untidy while I work -- I just leave out all the tools I need at the moment, and it seems like I always need a lot! One tiny, tiny complaint I must file with Dmitriy and Evgeney: Guys, please please replace the rigging line in your kits! The line in this kit is as bad as the rest of the kit is good. I don't know what material it is made of, but it does not hold glue well, does not maintain a point when cut, frays easily, and is inclined to unravel at the slightest provocation. It has been very, very frustrating to work with. In fact, I stopped a little bit early tonight because I was about to lose my cool with the thread and knew I needed to step away before someone got hurt! Thanks for listening! Cheers!

I am strongly leaning toward Wütender Hund as my next ship project, but will probably take a short break between ships to knock out a card plane.

Very nice overview of the kit -- should be a great help to those wondering what the Dusek makeovers have to offer. Cheers!

Ooh, ooh! I know! Cuz I asked the same question not so long ago. 😉 He uses a self timer.

Forgive me for jumping late into the discussion, but this has been good reading! Actually, historian Stephen Bungay made a very compelling argument in his book The Most Dangerous Enemy that Germany effectively lost the war with the conclusion of the Battle of Britain. Having failed to eliminate Britain from the conflict and afterwards turning eastward, Germany was left with a two-front war with an enemy whose industrial and economic advantages Hitler could not hope to match. I love the discussions about relative capabilities of aircraft. I think most of us would agree that the early prevailing narratives about P-40s vs Zeros, etc., were based on early combat results, which in turn, as others have pointed out, were in large part the result of not using the equipment at hand to its best advantages, e.g. skilled pilots in P-40s and F4Fs were more than capable of holding their own against the Zero when using zoom-and-climb tactics. The P-40 also performed very capably against the Luftwaffe in North Africa (where low altitude performance was at a premium), and the RAF mostly maintained air superiority in that theater thanks in no small measure to the P-40's capabilities in the ground attack role. It's also very interesting to see how aircraft that are denigrated by many historians, of both the professional and armchair varieties, performed in the service of foreign nations. Soviet pilots (again in another theater where combat operations were mostly at low altitude and thus where superchargers were less critical) loved the P-39. Likewise, Finnish pilots loved the Brewster B-239, the export version of the Buffalo, and ran up fantastic kill records against Soviet types. Admittedly, their Soviet counterparts were flying mostly second-tier stuff, but the Japanese were still flying some A5Ms and Ki-27s in SE Asia early in the Pacific war, along with a variety of not particularly overwhelming light and medium bombers, so one suspects that if the British and Dutch had employed zoom-and-climb against the Japanese instead of trying to turn with them (which, after all, had worked against the Germans), they might have had more success with the Buff. As I think Lou pointed out earlier, the Zero's range and maneuverability were purchased at the expense of survivability and high-speed performance; the Japanese put all of their eggs into one style of air combat basket, with disastrous (for them) results. Once their initial corps of highly skilled airmen was depleted, they had no chance of competing with the manpower and production capacities of the Allies, no matter how good some of their late-war designs turned out to be. Speaking of highly-skilled airmen (I can't resist tossing this last tidbit out there), there's a reason why 303 (Polish) Squadron of the RAF scored the most kills during the Battle of Britain. Our fondness for Polish jokes in the West has perhaps obscured for many the fact that pre-war Poland had a very rigorous pilot training program -- one of the most demanding in all of Europe. Few also remember that Poland had one of the most advanced indigenous aircraft design industries of the 1930s. Rigorous evaluation of the records has put paid to the notion that the Luftwaffe rolled the Poles up on the first day or two of the war. Poland's most advanced fighter then in service, the P.11c, had a better than 1:1 kill ratio versus the Luftwaffe, despite being slower and less heavily armed than its German counterparts (the Luftwaffe fared even worse against the Curtiss Hawk in the Battle of France). These are facts that tend to be more generally known among card modelers because of the foremost position of Polish publishers in the card portion of the modeling world. Okay, enough fun and games (and thread hijacking)!

"Apprentice" is not perhaps the right term -- gave me some good tips though and got me past the fear of spiling. MSW was originally created by James Hatch, but its roots go back to a now-defunct forum called Dry Dock Models (DDM). DDM's focus was on wooden sailing ships, but Jim wanted to create a forum that was open to ship modelers of every variety, though some of us are still struggling to boost the profiles of plastic, card stock, steel navy subjects, etc. 😉

Don made an amazing model of the Sovereign of the Seas that started life as the 1/78 scale Sergal kit, from which he used only the hull formers, the rest being scratch-built based on a lot of research. It took him 10 years to complete. All of the hull ornamentation is gold-leafed. I wish we had some pictures of it here. In fact, I often wish that more of the SMA guys would join up here and share their work -- there were some great modelers in that group.

Don is a member of the Ship Modelers Association in Southern California, where I was a member some years back. He helped me get through my first hull planking job.

Sorry to admit it, but I missed the finish on this one. Congratulations are in order -- very nicely done, and a great set of photos, too!

Ouch! With a backstory like that, completing her will be more than the usual accomplishment!

Wow, those are really poor quality guns! Which is a knock against the kit, not you of course. If you want to upgrade, you can get replacement barrels and carriages from a number of suppliers (not taking vagaries of current shipping situation into account). Given the size of the ship, something like either 4 or 6 pounders is probably appropriate, or perhaps even carronades.

Great job, and love the side-by-side comparison!

Can't answer your questions, but that is a lovely carved hull! These were very interesting boats, especially considering that they were already long in the tooth when WWII broke out.

That might not be as bad as you think. Many years ago, in a club I belonged to, a very talented modeler by the name of Sid Segal (if memory serves; he has since passed) built some wonderful models of Dutch sailing vessels; he referred to them as "impressions" of the actual ships rather than scale models, but that didn't diminish their value as testaments to Sid's skill. Cheers!

I wish you well on this project. Dancing Feather makes a beautiful model. And just in case anyone might be wondering, AJ Fisher is still in business, even though we don't hear much about them. There website is here.

Hey, Tom. I checked out the link and now see what the issue is. The method shown in the video will certainly get the job done, even though it does not follow historical practice. On a well-prepped and painted hull, such as is seen on the Amati prototype model, the particular planking method used may not even be noticeable on the finished product. Either method will suffice -- have a look at the tutorials and decide which method best suits your aims. Cheers!

Hello, Tom, nice to see you back at your model. Forgive me for asking, but have you done any spiling on your second layer of planks? Typically what one will see when planks aren't spiled is the tendency of the plank ends to run up at the bow and stern; spiling ensures that the bands of planking will have the same number of strakes from bow to stern. This is covered in our on-site planking tutorials, which you can read here. Cheers!

Boy, that's the cat's pajamas -- she's totally darb, a real hotsy-totsy!

Wow! Very impressive finished product, EJ -- congratulations!

Billing Boats is one of the few kit manufacturers whose kits are intended to be single planked, which, to be fair, is closer to actual ship building practice. Most kits are designed to be double-planked; the first planking's sole purpose is to provide a smooth, solid underlayment for the second planking. So the answer to your question is: almost everyone other than Billing Boats.

Hullo, all. The shrouds on my current project are set up with thimbles instead of deadeyes. In the plans, along with other resources I have on hand, the thimbles are shown lashed together -- but no indication is given of how the lashing is secured. I'm pretty sure that I can start the lashing with a glued overhand knot (it will not be visible), but how is the tag end dealt with? Thanks!

Congratulations, Eric!

Welcome! Sounds like an ambitious project -- should be interesting to watch your progress. Cheers!

Fixed it for you.

Welcome aboard and thanks for sharing your backstory. Never done it myself, but I find RC combat interesting (same as for any nautical buff, I suppose). From what I've read, it's quite popular in the Antipodes, but less so in the Northern Hemisphere. If I recall the rules correctly, your 1-gun ship would have been entitled to having fewer of the shot-susceptible panels in her hull? Looking forward to seeing your progress on Lady Nelson. Cheers!