EJ_L

Good to see you back and wow! Amazing work on Sovereign! The cleanliness of your work has always impressed me. The lines are always sharp and smooth. Beautiful work once more.

Still picking my jaw up off the floor. Amazing. All these long months of modifications, design and creation are coming together. Can't wait to see the rest of the bulkheads up clear to the stern.

Wow! Simply incredible.

Last few weeks I have been working on the figurehead. Here are the progress photos carving it out of a block of basswood.

Best of luck!

More work on the bow. Added the decorative rails to either side and the thickened planking around the hawse holes.

Unfortunately for beginning ship model builders, many of the available kits have instructions that are more like reading blueprints than traditional instructions. I think that the plastic kits by Revel and Heller etc., do a better job of providing more step-by-step instructions than wooden kits. Finding those easier kits is good as they will give you the basics needed to make the harder ones easier to understand. Most kits at their base levels are the same. A plank on bulkhead goes together in much the same way regardless of scale or size. The main differences come in the amount of details, guns carvings and rigging. Use the community as well. Most of the common models available have logs, lots of pictures and people that can offer advice and guidance when something is unclear.

Three of the railings are complete. On to the next assembly.

First set of rail decorative carvings are ready for paint. Will have to repeat these three more times for the other rails. Not sure if I am going to paint them gold as the kit shows or a yellow ochre. Thinking that I may reserve the gold for the forecastle for country showmanship, and the quarterdeck for flag status and do the midship rails in the ochre.

Marc, OC, thank you both very much for the kind words. And thank you as always to all the likes and those following along. Another update as I have had a productive weekend. Rails are up around the bow and now I have started a in-filling the decorative pieces in the rails. These are being carved out of polystyrene sheets as I did for the other carvings.

Been working on the bow. Added the gratings under the bowsprit and built the catheads. Will install the forecastle railings next and some details on the beakhead.

Indeed! Please continue the build! You were working on something truly incredible. I have loved watching the framing come together as a fully framed ship is something I greatly want to do myself but have not yet worked up the courage to go for it. There are always those who would rather criticize than support, but something that I have loved about MSW is how wholesome the community here is towards each other. It is comforting to have such warm place of welcome in the cold landscape of the internet, especially social media platforms. You have many friends here waiting to see you continue!

Beautiful! Are you thinking to paint the inside of the bulkheads a red? I know the paint scheme on the insides has been contested over what color or even if all ships were painted on the insides. I have seen whites, greens, reds and natural wood colors used on models with seemingly no consistency so I am curious on which direction you plan to go or if you have learned something that gives a more solid explanation.

Welcome aboard all! I do plan on carving the decorations again. With the larger scale I am hopeful that I can get better results. I also plan on using a mixture of mediums to carve from. I have been getting nice results from polystyrene on Royal Louis as it is more forgiving than wood. I will likely use wood though for the large carvings such as the figure head as the larger surface is easier to handle and work with. I am thinking about giving modeling clay a try on this one as well. After seeing Doris' masterpieces and watching her videos of how she made many of her decorations, I feel that may be a good route to try. I was always better at carving in clay than wood and am always in favor of using the materials that work best for the modeler. I have a ways to go and time to think on that however. I'm working steadily through the frame modifications and will begin fairing the hull next. This is what I call the "dirty work" of ship building as it flings saw dust everywhere, but once it is done and the hull is ready for planking, I intend to go back to Royal Louis for a while to continue working on her. She is about ready for another series of decorations to be carved and added on the bow and deck railings.

Frame modification is well underway. Before modding I did square up and secure all the bulkheads that were not being altered and I nailed down the scribed decking that came with the kit. This will be covered by a second layer of planking so I am using it as an underlayment. I started the modifications by cutting away the bulkhead in the center cabin and extending the deck aft one more bulkhead. This will provide the space for the center cabin and stair wells to the aft cabin and hold. Next I moved to the aft cabin where the majority of the work takes place. I began by cutting down the stiffening board provided in the kit as well as the 2nd to last bulkhead and the false keel to create a new deck. Now the main deck runs evenly the length of the ship. However, this is still not accurate. The stair well area is raised above the middle and aft cabins and the aft cabin is sunk lower in the ship than the rest of the main deck. So, I layered some wood to make a raised area for the stairs. Nothing will be visible below this area so the elevated deck can be false here. The notches are where descending stairs will eventually go. Though it is hard to see in the photos, the aft cabin subfloor was lowered again both to achieve proper elevation and to provide room for a new full sized deck underlayment. Moving further aft, it was time to start cutting out for the stern lights and bench seating. This has been the trickiest as the arched supports for the counter were never designed to be exposed and as such, were far overbuilt. Many hours have been spent slowly and gradually cutting them down and coming up with new supports that will not impede the interior space. A lot of the concerns with the new design also impact the deck above. To determine elevations, I had to start to reshape the upper deck beams to more appropriate thicknesses. I also cut out the stern lights. These are oversized right now to allow for better shape and fit of the actual window panels later. This bulkhead we become largely reduced in thickness also. The reason is to allow for better contour of the stern decorations without making the windows appear to be tunnels in an overly thick bulkhead. This thickness reduction will also take place on the sides as well where windows will be placed. Still lots of modifications and redesign to do. Once I am satisfied with the new cabin areas, frame fairing will take place to get the hull in final shape. there will likely be a lot of added reinforcement that will need to be faired with the frames to accommodate the changes as many weaken the original frame design.

To see what I am working with, I dry fit the bulkheads and decks together and this was the result. I'm going to have a lot to do. I have been working on this for a week now and I will show the modifications that I started on the next post.

Hello all! I have discovered a long time ago that I cannot simply build one ship at a time. As I am only working on Royal Louis right now, and am nearing the halfway point, I found myself with the itch to start a new build. I do enjoy doing things this way as it allows me to switch back and forth between builds when I get to a point where I need more research or am simply bored with what I am currently doing. I was originally going to build Sovereign of the Seas, but every store I checked was currently sold out with no expected date of restock due to global shipping conditions. The one I found was priced far higher than normal and so I passed. Thanks particularly to Doris' breathtaking build of Royal Caroline, this beautiful yacht had been at the top of my wish list for some time and so I decided to go for it. As usual for me, I intend to heavily bash this kit, particularly to build out the interior cabins and provide lighting to illuminate those details. Working with a far larger scale than I am usually accustomed to, 1:48 compared to my other current build of 1:90, means that I will have ample opportunity for showing those details with clarity, and far less excuses for shoddy work... 😬 So please, pull up a chair and join me if you like. I build slow, so get a big bucket of popcorn and settle in. I hope you enjoy the journey. First off, the unboxing. I will not go into too much detail here as these are all largely the same. What is inside is typical for a Mantua brand kit. Decent laser cut parts, clean wood and fair castings, fittings and some line for rigging. Nothing spectacular but the components will make a fine model out of the box. Some stuff I use, some I do not and will be explained as the build goes on.

Steve, beautiful work! Something to be proud of for sure. I am just starting a kit bash build of this very model kit and I can see that I will be taking some inspirations from your build. I hope your troubles resolve themselves well for you and life gives you some peace again. I look forward to your return!

John, beautiful progress so far on the ship! I'm looking forward to seeing your interpretation of this majestic ship. Each build offers new perspectives that make each unique and worth looking at.

Today felt like Christmas in the shipyard. New scotch whiskey and a new ship kit. Royal Caroline. I will be building this alongside RL as I like having a couple of projects going at the same time to allow switching back and forth to clear the mind. Will start an actual build log soon.

The guns in the exposed waist area are rigged in place and the stairs to the forecastle and quarterdecks are in place. Work on the railings and ladders will continue next along with the additional deck furnishings that are still needed. Q.D. and forecastle guns will follow once railings are in installed.

From my own experiences, especially those on S.R., there is a certain satisfaction that comes with carving your own pieces despite the end result. I know I am nowhere near the best carver and many of my pieces are rough, especially faces, but regardless of artistic quality, I am immensely proud that I took the time to do it. Being able to say that all those pieces are hand carved is something that in my opinion, raises a model a step above the rest. I also think that, at least for myself, the bigger challenge is not always the actual carving, but having a clear picture of what it is that is supposed to be carved. Too often the molded kit carvings are muddled and unclear and finding paintings that clearly show what was depicted is rare. There are some books that do a good job of providing drawings or close ups of other models, yet as luck would have it, rarely are they of the vessel needed. Well done thus far and I wish you continuing success as you go along!

Good job with those gratings. I completely missed that you had set them flush with the decking originally rather than raised. Good catch before getting too deep in the build. The grates themselves look beautiful, crisp and clean. I struggle with them on every build, still working on a replacement for the ones of R.L..

I've got my chair pulled up and ready to watch. This is a ship that is moving up my next in line projects and to have two excellent builders, yourself and Michael working on them currently will likely cause that urge to increase.

A huge congratulations on a well built model! I've enjoyed following along on this build and indeed it has been very inspirational to my own RL build. Display her proudly, (once you get that help to mover her to a case) and I look forward to watching your next build!