EJ_L

Incredible Johann! Every update continues to amaze me with the level of detail you manage to put into such a small space. Beautiful work!

Sorry to hear about your injury. That has to be frustrating on many levels. Rest up and heal and we will be here ready for your return!

I would plank the bottom deck at least where you could see under the grating. I think in the long run you will be happier knowing that it has been planked even if you can just barely see it. I typically only paint black where the space is completely false. All the decks below the upper gun deck on my Couronne build are completely false decks so any openings in the hull or deck are black. Everywhere else has been planked though very little is actually visible. Also I would use the lighter wood. If you go that route you should be able to see it down through the gratings better than the darker. If you are going to put the effort into doing the extra work you may as well be able to see it and enjoy it.

Looking good! I don't think I could use food as weights as my weights would constantly be getting lighter...

I think I may know what I will be asking for for Christmas....

Thanks for that fascinating article. I feel for those tug boat pilots as that has to be a nerve racking job. The canal has been a tight squeeze for a long time and although this new system will probably be better in the long run, like the article states, there will be a steep learning curve and the first few months there will probably be a lot of "white knuckled" pilots.

Indeed thanks for sharing the pdf Michael. I'm not building the Vasa...yet, however the similarities between her and la Couronne in regards to rigging make this a valuable asset for when I start her rigging. Plus it will be good to have in the files for future use.

It is very unfortunate as this would be a fun kit to build alongside another as the down time between package arrivals would allow for the second ship to be built. One can always hope for change in the future.

Those parts look like they are of decent quality. Joints look clean and it appears that so far you have not had to do much of anything to get them to fit together. Off to a great start! I am like you in that I hate waiting for stuff to show up in the mail. I think though that as you get further into this project you will appreciate the wait times as the difficulty increases. Right now though I am thinking that this would be a fun kit to work on along with another model further on in it;s build. Every few weeks when the next steps show up would be a nice break from endless planking or rigging.

I have been curious about these kits. This looks like it will be an interesting build. I think I will pull up a chair and follow along.

Chris, This is great information and although I find myself chuckling quite a lot while reading it as I used to find myself having to give similar explanations on the value of handcrafted wood work vs mass produced pieces when I was selling my own work at shows. As you have stated often MSW does get a lot of inquiries about the value of random generic ships and many people don't understand the difference between the cheap one from China that was purchased at a store or a well crafted model by a master craftsman. Or the other big misunderstanding that even if it was handcrafted and has been in the family for generations it still may not be of any value other than sentiment as often the quality of the work is no greater than that cheap decoration ship from China. It is good that you are taking the time to educate people. Much like Chuck's thread on banned ship kits and the reasons behind the ban, this kind of message can seem mean, cruel and unfair but if understanding can be achieved then appreciation of the true values can be had and the community becomes richer as a result.

Bill said what I was going to Elijah. You are doing a great job and seem to be finding a comfortable talent in ship modeling. Keep this work ethic up and I predict you will have a very sucessful future both in this hobby and in your daily life.

Ulises, You bring up a good point in saying that the life of a ship was largely dependent upon such a simple thing. It is crazy to think that without this simple item of rope, ships for thousands of years were in a way just floating pile of timber no better than a simple rowboat. I think that from reading through this thread that the enjoyment of rigging isn't always so much in the actual act of rigging but in both the relief of having completed hundreds of hours of hull planking, carving, and furniture building and can now do something else, as well as the awe factor that a ships rigging inspires. Miles of rope that to the average person looks like a confusing tangle that no one could understand is actually what allowed ships to perform. To ship enthusiasts this is comparable to engines in sports cars. This is the power and control of a ship. I think that is why so may of us enjoy rigging. We are building the engines of our ships and bringing them to life.

Sunday has been another very productive day as I now have all of the supports in place and trimmed out. Ended up making 14 of them in total. Time to build a couple of ladders and a capstan to complete the upper gun deck. I will have to build supports for the ships boat but those will wait till I build the actual boat so I can make sure I get the cutouts for the hull correct.

I built one of those a long time ago. I think it is in the collection at my dad's house now. Sometimes it is good to take a break a work on something you are more comfortable with. That when I work on my model railroad. Different materials and subject matter as well as difficulty level can like you have said, restore confidence in your own work as well as just simply provide a break. Good luck to you and I look forward to your return!

Thanks Bob! The planned supports were massive, out of scale arches built into the bulkheads. I have left them in for the primary deck support but only after extensive modifications to make them look a lot better. I'm still not completely happy with them but I moved on. I figure there are more important things to fret over. I have noticed that one of the downfalls to POB kits is that often the manufacturers make the upper deck supports and frames much thicker and out of scale then they should be. I understand how this happens as they are made from a uniform piece of wood and where it will not be seen it is fine. However, on a ship like this one where parts are exposed or they create the top rail, they will not work. I have removed everything that was preformed on the bulkhead above the spar deck and hindsight being what it is, I wish I would have just cut them off at the upper gun deck and built my own framing from there. Oh well, live and learn for the next one.

Just caught up on your build. She is looking good and you definitely have the saw dust flying! Good plan on saving the dust for filler later. It is always nice to have some laying around especially for small areas. I will follow along with your build and look forward to seeing her come together.

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.