EJ_L

So far my weekend of ship building is off to a great start. Got a lot of planking done on the inside bulkheads on the spar deck. Also started to set in place the gunwales which is finally adding a nice finished look. I will add those pictures probably tomorrow. Today though is mostly to showcase the first of many columns and supports that I am making to support the spar deck. These I am hand shaping out of walnut as the kit does not indicate anything to support the deck and I guess assumes it just floats in space defying physics. I am estimating I will need 12-14 of these columns but now that my first one has been a success I can make them a little faster so it shouldn't take too long. In any case, this is one of the things that I am glad I am adding as it will make a much nicer ship than if there were nothing there.

Wayne, that sounds like a great idea and one I would highly use. I constantly have many different websites, magazines, journals, plans and books open on my table at home that I am going back and forth through piecing together information. Having much of that in one place would be great. I think that having a searchable data base would be the best way as I think there may be to many topics to list out but the layout Marcus has suggested would be a good start. I hope this can become a success to the benefit of all of us.

I think I will pull up a chair and watch your build. I've caught a couple S.o.t.S. builds midway through or almost complerte but not from the start. I look forward to seeing yours come together.

I got the spar deck planked this week. Still have a lot of work to do on this deck but with the deck planks in place the trim boards can go on. First though I will clean up the bulkheads and plank them in the inside to make a nice, clean finish on this deck as most of the inner bulkheads are exposed at this level. The other good part of this is that I will be able to do the final trim and shape to the upper portion of the ship. I have what is looking like a productive ship building weekend on schedule so we shall see what I can come up with next.

Jerry, sorry to hear about your wife but good to hear she is doing well. Sounds like you have been very busy and sometimes that is a good thing for ship building. Gives a nice break then you can return with fresh motivation to continue on. Plus, I would give up a few weeks of model building to go scuba diving without any hesitation.

Congratulations! That is great news to hear and it sounds like you are going to be able to return to the hobby a great source for ship kits and make them even better. I look forward to seeing their return and being able to contribute by picking up a couple.

I'm a big fan of the 17th and early 18th century ships of the line. Fortunately, a lot of the ships I am interested in are already in kit form but, a couple things I would like to see to improve what is out there. The first would be a less of the decorative parts being molded in metal. They rarely look good and are often replaced anyway. I know that to have them already carved in wood would make the kits extremely expensive but could the kits instead come with high quality images of what the decorations look like and then a supply of blank carving blocks to carve them out of. This would obviously be on advanced kits and not beginners but I think that would be a nice change. The other which may be harder to do is to try to uniform scale between the ships. I like to display my models side by side to compare but that can be hard to do when the scales are different. I do not know how hard it would be to try to make series of kits in the same scale so that all my 17th century French ships are all 1:100 scale for example. I know I wish my Constitution and Victory models were the same but at 1:96 and 1:200 respectively, they look odd next to each other. I guess this is more of a pet peeve of mine coming from model railroading where an entire layout is to scale and anything I build fits right in. With my ships, I don't have that luxury. As to other suggestions, like I already said, I like the large man of war ships. Would love to see more of them though I would have to research for name/country suggestions. Price is always a concern but as I am currently saving up the last couple of hundred I need to buy the Sergal Le Soleil Royal which is a $1200 kit, it doesn't worry me. If the quality is good, I will pay for it. I'm a fan of the longer builds as I like to be able to settle in and take my time but it is nice to have a faster build sometimes. Finally I would like to see more cross section kits. I would love to have one to match both my current build of La Couronne and my next of Le Soleil Royal. I think being able to display a cross section of a ship next to it's whole would be a great addition to any display as well as enriching our community in our education about ships. Cross sections give an extreme level of detail and information about the interior of a ship that a lot of us lack due to primarily modeling the outsides. Thanks, I hope this helps and I look forward to seeing what you all come up with next!

Your framing is looking great! I look forward to seeing your canon barrels that you have turned also.

Great work Tim. She is really looking beautiful!

Bob, Elijah and Michael than you for the compliments and the likes from everyone else as well. As we all know it is always nice to see our work appreciated by others. I'm hard at work planking the spar deck now and the interior bulkheads. Once that is done I have lots of work to do building columns and arches to support the deck. I've been looking forward to building those and having them installed as to me they are the first of the interior decorative pieces.

Fantastic! This has been a joy to see come together. You have a ship to be proud of. Best of luck to you on your next adventure.

All canons have been installed on the upper gun deck. Most are on a simple carriage without rigging as details will not be seen once the remaining decks are in place. The four canons on either side of the cargo hatches are the only ones on this deck to receive full rigging since those will be the only ones visible from above. Granted even they will not be easy to see once the spar deck and ships boat are in place. There was a lot of learning and trial procedures that took place with these guns. Trying to find the best ways to rig the guns so the ones on the spar deck that will be completely visible will look awesome. Now that the canons are installed I will finish cleaning up a couple details and then I will be installing the spar deck and up another level I will go. It is an exciting step as this next deck is when I really start installing the heavy details. Support columns, arches, interior bulkhead planking, ladders and railings and many more items will be getting installed.

I really enjoy rigging my ships. It is very difficult and frustrating at times but the challenge is a welcome one. Every line I get installed I find myself sitting back and enjoying the new addition. Each ship I have built I try to do a better job with my rigging in making sure they are seized correctly, ran to the correct belaying pins or cleats, rigged through the blocks or that the blocks are the right ones. Each build I have learned something new and each has become better for it. Like any aspect of ship building where there is a lot of repetition it can become monotonous and I am ready to see the end of it after a while but that is no different then planking or any other phase really.

Wow! She really turned out looking great! Excellent job on the sails. Of course with all the fine work and effort you have been putting into her over the months I expected nothing less. Great job! I don't know what your grading criteria is but that is first class work to this community. So now that I am guessing school will be ending, are you planning on taking on a new project?

Mark, Thank you very much! Yes, the kit did contain blocks and rigging line as well as everything that a person would need to complete the kit. It was short some of the canons and I plan to order more soon though the ship could be completed with some of the gun ports closed. That being said I am using parts I have in my extras from past builds as well as custom built parts and some newly ordered parts. I don't think I have built a model, be it a car, train, building or ship in many long years that only used parts from the kit.

I stand corrected on the morhball ships. I knew that the Navy did return some ships with upgrades to service and that many museum ships are maintained in a "battle readiness" state and yes it is far less expensive than new ship construction. I was misinformed to the extent these upgrades were taken to. I was under te impression that they were upgraded with modern electronics and related systems as well as structural but, and I may be wrong again, are not the upgrades limited to what the ship can support? I would think that the ships structure would limit what can be done in terms of modernizing them. This is not an arguement but curiosity and looking for the correct information.

Ship museums are definitely more for people who have never been on a ship then us former sailors. That being said I'm glad there are some around and although I do not feel every ship needs to be preserved, I am glad some are. In the present we rarely think about what the future might want. The Constitution and Victory during their prime and even towards the end of their active service were probably not planned on becoming museums. It is largely due to luck that they survived long enough for someone to say that it would be a good idea to preserve them. Thankfully they did save them and many more for those of us interested in history. This is the same way we think now with modern ships. We don't need or want a museum as we can see them now. It is thinking 50-100 years from now that decides on if they should be a museum. Will future generations want to know what our battleships, carriers and subs look like? When we are exploring space will those people care how we explored the oceans? For the sake of our society as a whole I hope so but today if I'm given the choice between setting money aside to preserve a carrier or funding education for example, education will win and I will hope and pray that private money will become available for the museum. As for mothballing a ship, we have that. I have seen the Navy's mothball fleet. if we had to rely on that fleet to fight with we will be done. The time and money it would take to get them up and going and compatible with modern technology is unimaginable. I guess if we needed ships that didn't need to rely on modern technology we would be in good shape. Otherwise... I say pick a ship that has meaning be it the first of a revolutionary type or one that was instrumental in history and preserve those as a museum. Otherwise I almost hate to say it but either scrap them or sink them for reefs. Things should be preserved for history and education. I'm a firm believer but we can only save so much. Be smart and choose well. Put money where it it does the most good and will benefit the future generations the most.

She is looking real nice. Your framing is great. Clean and neat and once you finish fairing everything up she should be good to go for planking. I would agree with holding off on the rail till much later. If you are worried about stability you can always tack a temporary batten across the extensions. A lot of instructions say to put this on early but after breaking a few of them off on my first models and realizing that you gain nothing by doing it early other than rework later, I now skip that step. I have learned that building ships is much more than following directions. It is instead more of learning to read blue prints and schematics which typically tell you what needs to be there but it is up to you to know in what order this needs to happen. Experience is really the only way to learn this. Yes, read practicums, and build logs though keep in mind many things will be different based on the builder's experience and level of detail used. Combine that with the knowledge of the ship available at the time the information was written and you will find yourself with many different ways of achieving a great ship though rarely will any two look alike. With a more popular ship such as the one you are building that information is much more readily available but, the variances between sources will be greater. With a rarer ship, typically there is less information but what exists usually stays closer to each other unless something new is discovered. As a new ship builder, (and I count myself one) this can be very frustrating as you want to build a great ship but don't always know all the tricks and secrets and the order they need to happen. This is where you are succeeding in great strides. You are thinking things through, staying steps ahead and asking questions of those with more experience. Read, research, read and read some more. See what others have done and decide if that is what you want/need to do. Take full advantage of sites like this one where the wealth of the world of model ship building can teach and guide you on your journey. Above all though have fun. Enjoy your build for the fun it is and the knowledge will come.

Thanks. I don't know why they say to twist wire around the blocks. Its really not any easier to do that than to seize the block and its far from accurate.

More pieces being made ready for assembly. Should be able to start rigging the canons in place this weekend.

Very nice Bob. I too like the Walnut look better than the white wood. Very nice and clean again. Looking forward to seeing you move forward with not just one but two fantastic builds.

I too will be relying heavily on Anderson's book for my Couronne build as it seems to be the most thorough book for 17th century rigging that I have found so far. Of course there were always subtle changes in rigging from ship to ship and country to country so it is hard say if what is in there is 100% accurate to the ship being built. Thanks to everyone who helped to clear this up. I just hope that how I read that book and interpret the drawings I have that it does not offend to many people.

She sure is turning out nice. A ship to be proud of for sure. Looks real good on that base as well. Good choice going with the white top.

Elijah, your adjustments look great. The spacing is much more even now. As for writing on tape, you can write on clear scotch tape with a pen. They make very fine pens, .5mm instead of the more common .7mm. They are easy to find in any office supply store just pay attention to the size on the packaging. Just be careful to not smear the ink once you have drawn on the tape. Another option I have seen is just to use the edge of a piece of card stock to transfer your marks with. The card stock is flexible enough to follow the shape of the hull and since it is paper you can write on it easily. Just make your tick marks on the edge of it as you would the tape then you can slide it along your template to get your sizes.

Every time you update I am again just amazed with what you have done. Fantastic work Michael. I should keep a log of how many hours I spend looking at your photos for inspiration and guidance for my own build.