EJ_L

Looking good. The Constitution was the first ship I built when I decided to try modeling ships. Before that my only experience with watercraft was a model of a Bass Tracker. I went all out and picked the Revell 1:96 scale version though. You probably went smarter with the smaller scale and simp,er version as it does allow for additional details but won't overwhelm you in the overall scope. The sheer size and time required to build a ship can become overwhelming. I hope you find it very enjoyable and I look forward to seeing it progress.

Thank you and yes it is. The picture on the box lid hardly does her justice. I have been collecting pictures of her for some time now in hopes that I will be able to capture the detail better.

So my Christmas gift to myself finally showed up today. As my wife has gone back to school for her Masters degree, this is my keep out of trouble project for the next couple of years. I have been waiting to build this ship for a while now. This will be my most challenging build to date and I'm looking forward to it. I love the beauty in the ships of the 17th century and hope I can do this ship justice. I have not found many build logs for this ship so I am also hoping that I can create a nice log for others to enjoy as well. I am always looking for ways to improve my skills and as this project progresses please feel free to give me any tips you may have. I want to give her my best. So without further ado, I'm going to get started. In theses first few pictures I am just unpacking the kit. There is a very nice build log for this ship on this site but it is the Mantua kit where this is the Corel. So far I can see a lot of similarities between these two kits as well as a few differences. There is an instruction book and several sets of drawings but I have a feeling after skimming through them that I will be doing a lot of research and figuring it out on my own. In my experiences, this is more of the rule than exception which I actually enjoy. This adds the challenge to building model ships that puts this hobby above standard model building. It creates the feel of really building the ship and not just following a series of steps. As I'm looking through the bags of pieces I can already see that although everything is usable as is, I will be trying to scratch build many of the pre-made parts. The canon bodies and gun port lids jump out at me as examples of this.

I'm getting ready to start building the la Couronne so I may give this a try and attempt to make some of my own details. That part is still a long way out but I will post pictures when I get around to trying it. Thanks for the idea!

What you had started already looked amazing that I'm sure the second time around will be even better. I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures as this ship comes along.

I agree that the best power tools are the ones you will use. I have many full sized tools in my shop that I am working on building modifiers to allow me to use them to work with smaller pieces. I am going to try this way first before buying minitures. Personally I would recommend power sanders, disc sander especially. With the small thin woods that are used for ship building a few quick passes on a sander can do a lot of good. This combined with a small hand held sander such as a dremmel or similar tools are the primary power tools I use. Most of my cutting I still try to do by hand although with my next build, I want to try for greater detail and so that will probably change.

Michael, Beautiful ship! I'm going to be starting my own La Couronne build after the first of the new year and have been greatly inspired by your work. Very clean and great attention to detail. Makes me excited to start my build. Thank you for sharing.