NMBROOK

Hi Bill
Welcome to the forum.I agree with a few points you have raised.There are so many factors to take in to consideration as to one's own ability.What you have done in your day job,what you have done as hobbies in the past and above all for this hobby,how much patience you have.Because of this,there really is no golden rule as to what anyone who is taking up the hobby,should start with first.Everyone is the best judge of their own strengths and weaknesses so if you feel confident in yourself to give the Confederacy a go then why not.The most important thing is that you feel passion for what you are building because otherwise you will loose interest part way.The big advantage new starters to this hobby has over a lot of us when we started,is the internet and this great forum.If you are unsure of something there is a wealth of information at your fingertips and if still unsure,don't be afraid to ask,we are only too glad to help.
Kind Regards Nigel

Excellent work Michael on your modification.With regard your drilling dilema,it might be helpful to make a drilling guide that slips over the rail.This only needs to be a scrap piece of wood notched to slide over with a predrilled hole in it to guide the drill.Possibly another piece of scrap to wedge under the rail to offer some support and prevent breakout as the drill goes through.This is of course assuming you are drilling down through the rail.
Kind Regards Nigel

Hi everyone,
 
Here is part 2 of my poop deck railing fixes. Due to errors in the Corel framing, the new cannon openings will "sit" too high. But I wanted to add the stern most cannon port decorative pieces. So you and I will know of this error but it will escape everyone else's attention.
 
Ironically enough even if I had understood this before installing the weather deck, and made height adjustments, it would have thrown off the entire stern and galleries. As it is, the upper galleries sit too high along the hull. But had I incorporated the adjustments then the stern windows as well as the window stranding soldiers would have not had the proper space in which to stand. Corel hello??? Moving on....
 
I also needed to add filler pieces to the upper weather deck stern decorative piece (piece where the flag pole will mount) in order to have it properly align with the deck edges after removing those hull trim pieces from my previous post. These fillers will visually mostly disappear as I add more details during the third and final update of this repair.
 
I also decided to remove all of the wood trim along the entire upper hull railings, and replace them with stained white trim. It will look much more detailed as well as adding a sense of "paint" that the Vasa wore so well for an hour or so.
 
The upper rails will also have this white trim added when the poop deck work is completed as well as the very last third railings. These wont be installed until the very end of this build.
 
Though in the interim I need to drill all of the holes for the vertical uprights. These holes need to be square (no idea how to do this without damaging the already fragile rails). Thanks, as usual, for stopping by.
 
Regards,
 
Michael

Very surprising indeed. A country with such a history to become "American" and cast aside some of its glorious past is, well, shocking. We in the USA are PHD's in destroying our past history by mostly tearing down the old and building something new above the removed rubble. Unless one travels to Boston or Philadelphia we would never know where we started from some 350 years ago.
 
That mobile phone bit is so sad, not for folks our age but for today's children. Such a disconnect. Regarding museums, much is the same here with interactive displays, but there must be places where one just goes just to look in wonder, don't you think? (that was a rhetorical question).
 
Michael

Thank you Brian,yes I have been hankering for one for a long time.I think they must have read my mind.All being well in the new year I shall treat myself.
They do stock the plans as well,but I think it will be nice to do an out of the box build for a change,apart from changing the walnut planking.
Kind Regards Nigel

I use artists acrylics almost exclusively. There are literally thousands of colors and they are cheap and easy to find at any craft store. Most brush and spray very well, but others are a bit more work. It seems the difficulties I have  are more color dependant than manufacturer dependant, so if Folkart's "fire-engine red" (just kidding Brian ;-) doesn't mix or spray well I'll try a similar color from anothe manufacturer.
 
I do totally agree, bright colors on a period ship can make an otherwise great work look "cartoonish". Dull down those bright colors guys!

Nigel,
 
 
Hmmmmm very unfortunate update regarding the Maritime Museum. I remember admiring soooo many beautiful model ships, many of which, of course, were period builds. Whomever are responsible for those decisions should walk the plank.
I will then just remember the wonderful memories of that visit. I imagine that these silly things still take up museum space, see pic (:-)
 
Regards,
 
Michael

As I mentioned earlier,these next few stages are really slow.I have fitted the deck beam shelves and planked the inside of the hull on the starboard side,including lining the gunports.The framework of the entry port is in place,but this will have the carvings added at a later date,probably when I fit the channels as they sit on the middle channel.I had to reverse engineer the gunports to ascertain the deck levels which involved a great deal of headscratching,but it did 'prove' my gunports were correct.The internal planking has had several coats of poly applied in preparation for treenailing.I am using Dafi's(thank you Dafi) idea for drilling the holes inside.I have glued a drill into the end of a bamboo skewer so I can poke it through the gunports to drill the holes on the opposite internal face.I have given it a try and it works great,but it ain't no Dremel so I may be at it some time
Kind Regards Nigel 

I`ve been building model ships and using power tools on them for a very long time now, and I believe if you fill confidant in yourself, you must give it a try, or your skill level stay as they are.
Thanks for the nice comment.
 
mij

Started to build up the frames.
The first picture is the full frame drawn on paper with the floor timber and the top timber tacked to the paper using Copydex.
 

 
This picture shows the 1st futtock glued to the floor timber and the top timber using Titebond and held in position with 1bl weights.
 

 
This picture shows the complete frame, slightly over size for fairing.
 

This is the 1st stage of fairing the outside and inside of the hull using a long neck grinder.
This is a fabulous tool to use, but a word of CAUTION, this tool can ruin your model if your not careful.
 

 

 

 

 
mij

Wonderful work Matti,your skill with colours and shading is outstanding,your build is so life like.
Kind Regards Nigel

you can always put her into my living room, lovely work

Perfect Nigel, just perfect...

Thank you very much indeed Michael.As you know yourself,it is the little details that all add up to the complete picture.Some can be monotonous and very boring(faced with drilling a thousand holes using a drill bit and bamboo skewer,but no pun intended),but I don't think any project so far has got me quite so fired up as this one.Sometimes I look at the model and think'is there any point posting some pictures'as despite maybe 50 hours work it doesn't look any different.Then I think 'yes I will' as this is a journey and whilst some days big differences will occur,then weeks of work can go by with little difference immediately apparent.
  I visited the NMM a couple of years ago and was a little disappointed having seen so many articles in the past.From what I can gather it has changed alot in recent years and my main motivation for going was to view the models,there was maybe 8 on display in a pokey little sideroom.
 Portsmouth historic dockyard was a different matter altogether,Victory,Warrior and particularly Mary Rose left a massive impression.Mary Rose so much so,that my wife has insisted I make a model of her.This will probably be the model that gets a place in the living room.I hope to revisit her now that she is no longer being sprayed with polyethylene glycol and has a new enclosure.
Kind Regards Nigel

Beautifully done once again nigel, its not just the looks, but the work and thought put into it which makes it an amazing build, keep it up!

As I mentioned earlier,these next few stages are really slow.I have fitted the deck beam shelves and planked the inside of the hull on the starboard side,including lining the gunports.The framework of the entry port is in place,but this will have the carvings added at a later date,probably when I fit the channels as they sit on the middle channel.I had to reverse engineer the gunports to ascertain the deck levels which involved a great deal of headscratching,but it did 'prove' my gunports were correct.The internal planking has had several coats of poly applied in preparation for treenailing.I am using Dafi's(thank you Dafi) idea for drilling the holes inside.I have glued a drill into the end of a bamboo skewer so I can poke it through the gunports to drill the holes on the opposite internal face.I have given it a try and it works great,but it ain't no Dremel so I may be at it some time
Kind Regards Nigel 

As I mentioned earlier,these next few stages are really slow.I have fitted the deck beam shelves and planked the inside of the hull on the starboard side,including lining the gunports.The framework of the entry port is in place,but this will have the carvings added at a later date,probably when I fit the channels as they sit on the middle channel.I had to reverse engineer the gunports to ascertain the deck levels which involved a great deal of headscratching,but it did 'prove' my gunports were correct.The internal planking has had several coats of poly applied in preparation for treenailing.I am using Dafi's(thank you Dafi) idea for drilling the holes inside.I have glued a drill into the end of a bamboo skewer so I can poke it through the gunports to drill the holes on the opposite internal face.I have given it a try and it works great,but it ain't no Dremel so I may be at it some time
Kind Regards Nigel 

Cheers guys, Im glad for your interest!
 
After redoing the window area for the towers and reshaping the tritons, I painted the tall sculptures.They are sanded thin to be in scale.
 
I also painted the smaller ones that sits between the tall ones, but shape and sizewise they didnt look right on her so I will not use them.
 
I mounted the tall figures on the top tower also (its not the way BB made it, but its not to far off compaired to the original this way). It also lets me change the way the tower windows looked earlier. I prefer this look much more.
 
This means Im about 20 figures from being finished with the galleries.
 
 
/Matti
 
 

As I mentioned earlier,these next few stages are really slow.I have fitted the deck beam shelves and planked the inside of the hull on the starboard side,including lining the gunports.The framework of the entry port is in place,but this will have the carvings added at a later date,probably when I fit the channels as they sit on the middle channel.I had to reverse engineer the gunports to ascertain the deck levels which involved a great deal of headscratching,but it did 'prove' my gunports were correct.The internal planking has had several coats of poly applied in preparation for treenailing.I am using Dafi's(thank you Dafi) idea for drilling the holes inside.I have glued a drill into the end of a bamboo skewer so I can poke it through the gunports to drill the holes on the opposite internal face.I have given it a try and it works great,but it ain't no Dremel so I may be at it some time
Kind Regards Nigel 

As I mentioned earlier,these next few stages are really slow.I have fitted the deck beam shelves and planked the inside of the hull on the starboard side,including lining the gunports.The framework of the entry port is in place,but this will have the carvings added at a later date,probably when I fit the channels as they sit on the middle channel.I had to reverse engineer the gunports to ascertain the deck levels which involved a great deal of headscratching,but it did 'prove' my gunports were correct.The internal planking has had several coats of poly applied in preparation for treenailing.I am using Dafi's(thank you Dafi) idea for drilling the holes inside.I have glued a drill into the end of a bamboo skewer so I can poke it through the gunports to drill the holes on the opposite internal face.I have given it a try and it works great,but it ain't no Dremel so I may be at it some time
Kind Regards Nigel 

Peleng-i Bahri. finish the lower balcony

more

Good evening everyone
 
the funnel area progress, finding i am spending more time worrying about the weathering than the build it's self so have told my self no more painting until i am much further ahead, i am constantly checking build logs to avoid doing to much that i may rip out , the fitting kit that i dont have at present, replaces so much of the original (or should i say enhances a lot of the original)
there are 3 hangers on the build one of them is a double am hoping to be able to do some work so you can possibly see some of the internals 
 

I'm with the others on this.  I use pva diluted a bit with water and generally go with 2 coats.