Glen McGuire
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Everything posted by Glen McGuire
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hello from Texas Longhorn Country
Glen McGuire replied to Glen McGuire's topic in New member Introductions
@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!!!
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Hello from Texas Longhorn Country
Glen McGuire replied to Glen McGuire's topic in New member Introductions
@Backer @Moab @mtaylor @Keith Black Thank you all for the welcome note! -
Hello from Texas Longhorn Country
Glen McGuire replied to Glen McGuire's topic in New member Introductions
@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. -
Hello from Texas Longhorn Country
Glen McGuire replied to Glen McGuire's topic in New member Introductions
@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. -
Hello from Texas Longhorn Country
Glen McGuire replied to Glen McGuire's topic in New member Introductions
@Jim Lad Thanks for the welcome note. I had no idea y'all had longhorns down under. How cool is that! You can see one of my longhorn babies (named Sweet Eileen) in my profile picture. She doesn't have much "cutlery" yet but she's working on it! -
When the Captain of the Alabama, Raphael Semmes, got his first glimpse of his new ship he commented: "Her model was of the most perfect symmetry, and she sat upon the water with the lightness and grace of a swan. And when her awnings were snugly spread, her yards squared, and her riggings hauled taut, she looked like a bride ready to be led to the alter." My model here is probably more appropriate for a shotgun wedding, but I'm very happy with how it all turned out. What an amazing journey it's been!
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And now, the final product... I will post these to the gallery of completed kit builds.
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OMG!!! After an incredible 8 months and 1000+ hours I was done with the ship! OMG again!!! But there was still one last thing to do. And of course it would require more kit-bashing (love that new term that I've learned from this community). The display base that came with the kit was pretty pathetic and certainly did not do justice to all the hours of work, so I decided to build my own base. As I was working on the ship, I bought the book "Wolf of the Deep" by Stephen Fox to learn the history of the ship and its captain, Raphael Semmes. It's a great read. The book mentioned that some of the wood used to build the Alabama was English Elm. I just happened to have some pieces of English Elm (that actually came from a tree that was cut down on the south lawn of the Texas capital years ago), so I thought it would be pretty cool to make a base out of the same type of wood that was used for part of the ship's original construction. I ordered the silver nameplate online.
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And FINALLY it was time for the last step, hanging the 5 life boats - 2 on each side and a small one on the stern. Piece of cake, right? Actually, it was more challenging than I thought. The instructions didn't help much in the way of how to hang them and I struggled with figuring out a way to keep them secure AND level. I finally came up with the criss-cross rope work which was quite secure and I thought it looked kind of cool. The lashing of the paddles to the bench seats was also a tiny bit of kit-bashing I added at the last minute.
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@Keith Black That is cool to hear! Actually, the steam aspect of this ship is what caught my eye when I was thumbing thru the Micro Mark catalog trying to figure out what ship to try. I knew very little about the history of sailing ships but I was fascinated by the picture of the Alabama because it had sails AND a prop. I had no idea why you would need both. I started doing some research and found the whole history of the Alabama really fascinating. So that's why I chose it. I hope you decide to give the Alabama a try. I would LOVE to see what you could do with it. Would you do it from scratch?
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Getting close! I was pretty excited at this point as I was pretty sure all of the really hard stuff was behind me. The rope coils were next and were not too difficult. Tedious? Of course! And at the start of this project would have seemed near impossible to me. But by now they were fairly easy.
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After much debate (and trying to figure out exactly how I could pull it off) I decided to add futtock shrouds and a tiny little sheer pole, neither of which were in the kit instructions. Second pic shows the addition of the last 3 sails - jib, flying jib, and fore stay.
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@mtaylor Thanks for the comment on the sails! And I will definitely be picking your brain when I begin work on the Constellation. I glanced thru your build log which was quite impressive! It kind of irks me that the AL kit is misleading but the thought of making the kit more historically accurate is intriguing.
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