Glen McGuire

Thanks, Grant!  I hope she comes through for you!  I'd love to see what somebody with your skills could do with this project.  

On 8/11/2021 at 3:48 AM, bruce d said:

I'm late to the BBQ but ... Welcome to MSW from the UK.

@bruce d Thanks for the welcome, Bruce.  But I gotta tell you, my babies below DO NOT like to hear anyone saying that word BBQ!!!  

On 8/6/2021 at 10:19 PM, Louie da fly said:

Just looked through your build log. Very impressive.

@Louie da fly  Thank you, Steven and thanks for the welcome!

On 8/11/2021 at 1:10 AM, Laggard said:

Go Sooners!  Jk.  Welcome!  😜

@Laggard Not only do we lose to OU every year, now we get to lose to Bama every year too!  I think OU will do a lot better in the SEC than we will and I think I'll be building a lot of ships during football season from now on.  ☹️  Regardless, thanks for the welcome!!

OK.  I may have gone off the deep end here but I blame it on all of y'all in this forum and your amazing build logs.  Rather than leave well enough alone, I decided to add some rope hanks along the inside of the bulwarks.  I'm not sure any of these extras will even be visible once the ship is in the bottle and all the sails are up but what the heck, right? 

Also got the flying jib sail hung.  Wow, this rigging job is tedious! 

@Keith Black Thanks, Keith!  I can't wait to see what you do with the Alabama when you get started.  I'm gonna grab a front row seat for that build!

Finally finished the sails and got them looking like I wanted.  I also tied the yards, gaffs and boom to the masts and then attached the masts to the deck hinges. 

The instructions say to "solder" the ends of the threads instead of tying knots (to avoid an excessive # of knots).  I did not like that idea.  If one of the soldered ends gave way when the ship is in the bottle and I'm raising the masts, adjusting the yards, etc., it would be game over.  So I tied knots and dabbed with a tiny amount of glue.  I actually threaded each junction twice for some added strength.

@BobG Thank you, Bob!

@Louie da fly Hey Steven - Thanks for the comments and the suggestions.  I have not heard of silkspan before.  I will definitely investigate that for future builds.  Appreciate the  education on the rigging as well.  As for that build of the Victoria, OMG, thanks for sending the link.  That is almost beyond my comprehension!

I also took a bit of time and looked thru your log of the Henry Grace rebuild.  What a truly fascinating project (and story).  And some very interesting things you've done like using a 3D printer for custom deadeyes.   Your sails are simply amazing.  I will be checking back in on that one.

I was also looking at some pictures of a few larger, non-SIB models of the Hannah.  I noticed that some of them had a lifeboat stored between the steps going up to the quarterdeck.  So I decided to see if I could carve out a tiny one to add to my Hannah.  I took the wooden base from the kit (since I'm not planning on using it) and made a very primitive looking lifeboat.  But unless you are looking at it with a camera zoom or a big magnifying glass, you don't really see how crude it is!  You can't really tell it from the picture, but the brown matches the color of the bulwarks, so it's got the same color scheme as the ship itself.  OK, back to the sails...

In the meantime, I figured out a couple more things to add to the ship itself.  I've decided my own rule for ship building is that if the model has cannons, it's got to have cannonballs.  The Mamoli Alabama did not have cannonballs, so I added them and I think it turned out ok.  I wanted to do the same for the Hannah SIB.  The 1/300 scale of the Hannah makes that a challenge, but I found some .5mm ball bearings on Amazon and put them in place.  I know they should be black, but the silver stands out more so I left them that way.  I also may have gone overboard on the number but if I'm on that ship fighting the Redcoats, I'd rather have more ammo than less!

I finished the sails but decided I did not like them.  I want the threads to show a little more - not like the dark lines on the kit sails but I think a light brown thread that makes them stand out just a bit will look better.  So I am reworking those. 

Thanks, Grant.  I looked thru your Mamoli Victory build log.  All I can say is WOW.  What an amazing job and what incredible perseverance.  Every time I think I've done something really hard and really cool with this stuff, I look at a build like your Victory and realize that I'm just a boy among men!

Next step is the sails.  I did not like the ones from the kit with the pre-printed lines trying to replicate the seams between the panels.  So more kit bashing.  I cut new sails from muslin, then used fabric glue to attach silk thread for the panel seams and bolt ropes (thank you to @Keith Black for the Gutermann thread tip).  The 3 sails I’ve done so far are still quite flexible, so I think they will be ok when I have to fold them later to squeeze everything into the bottle.

The first pic below shows what the kit sails look like with the pre-printed lines.

And that’s where I’m at for the moment.  Probably a few more days on the sails and then comes what I suspect is the first real challenge – bending the sails to the yards and masts and then figuring out the rigging. 

Here’s where I started to do some kit bashing.  My ambitious plan is to have the boat sitting on fake water inside the bottle.  Since the keel should not show, I filed it off at the bottom to make it easier to fit inside the bottle’s neck and also lie flat in the water.

I’ll fast forward to completion of the hull.  The work up to this point was pretty much following the instructions. However, I did a poor job of laminating the hull pieces and had to use some wood filler to get the proper shape.  Also, I had a little trouble with the cannons.  They were too tall for the barrel to fit through the gun ports so I had to file off fractions of a millimeter from their bases to get them to fit.  Otherwise, no real problems.  The biggest challenge is working at this small scale.  I thought the 1:120 Alabama was tiny but this thing is a whole new ballgame!

One other thing that I did early on was take a piece of 4mm x 4mm leftover timber from the Alabama, carve a slot down the center, and tape it over the bowsprit for protection while I was handling it and the hull.  Landlubber Mike’s log mentions how he broke the fragile thing off several times.  I had bumped it slightly and bent it a couple of times so I figured I’d better do something to protect it or I’d be snapping it off too.  So far it’s worked quite well.

This is my second build after the Mamoli Alabama.  I decided to try something different before taking on another large ship project.  For some reason, a ship in a bottle sounded interesting.  So I dug around and found this kit.  I was not going to post a build log because there are several good ones out there already for the Amati Hannah (I think @Landlubber Mike’s is particularly well done).  However, after I finished the ship’s hull and ornaments, I started deviating from the instructions a bit and thought it might make for a log that’s somewhat different from the others.  So here we go.  Please offer comments and suggestions.  Below is the kit as it looks out of the box.

@GrandpaPhil

Thank you for the comment and thanks for checking out my build log!

@Jim Lad

What a beautiful animal!  Love the coloring. 

One final comment for any new modelers that have happened upon this log.  After 8 months and over 1000 hours spent on my first ever try at wooden ship modeling, I have only 1 piece of advice for you.  Don't give up.  Find your inner mule - get stubborn, get creative, and get through it.  This hobby is time-consuming, tedious, and frustrating beyond belief at times.  It will test you.  But it's also exhilarating, fun, and extremely rewarding.  There's nothing like it. 

A dear friend of mine always asks me the same question after I finish something really difficult, "Was it worth it?"  My answer for this effort is ABSOLUTELY!!!    

6 hours ago, Malcolm Greig said:

Great build, and very interesting subject.  You asked earlier in your log about kit manufactures.  I am of the opinion that anything from Syren Models, Vanguard or Amati Victory line of kits are fantastic quality.  And I have read that many other members agree.

Thank you, Malcolm.  I will look into those 3.

10 hours ago, mtaylor said:

She looks great and from the sound of it, you've learned a lot and had some fun along the way.  

Thank you, Mark.  And you are absolutely right on both counts!

@Backer

@Moab

@mtaylor

@Keith Black

Thank you all for the welcome note!

On 7/20/2021 at 7:35 PM, allanyed said:

Most of us had no such source when we did our first build and the second, and third and on and on but here we are, still going after it but with a lot more knowledge being shared by others.

@allanyed Thanks for the welcome note.  You are so right about the information sharing on this site.  It's incredible.  Wish I'd discovered it when I first got started but I know it's going to be a huge help for my next build.

On 7/20/2021 at 6:02 PM, Eurus said:

We are in the same boat: I also built my first project and only afterwards I am reporting here how it went. I have lots of pictures, though, and have been documenting everything from memory. Thanks to this exercise I realize now that I learned much more than I initially thought. Maybe the same has happened to you. Overall, it was fun to build but turning the experience into a narrative has helped a lot too.

 

On a side note, your build of the Alabama is fantastic. The ship's history is already interesting, and your pictures make me want to build my own. The Kearsarge will be no match for her!

@Eurus Thanks for the welcome note.  I agree with everything you said in the first paragraph above.  It's incredible how much you learn along the way.  And now that I've posted my after-the-fact build log, I'm learning even more from the comments that have come in.

I also agree with you about the history of the Alabama.  I read the book, "Wolf of the Deep" by Stephen Fox to learn about the captain and the ship.  A really fascinating read.