Theodosius

I think I should give this O'Brian books a go. Long time lover of the Hornblower epos. Dunno, how often I read this :-). Like it very much, that you bring one of the vessels of the books to life and also in such a good manner! Beeing proud to be referenced here, even though I can't full agree with you. Not, that you don't go with my color scheme, but that I followed the colours of the prototype build and you don't. Well, you differ in TWO points from the instructions: you don't have painted the inlays in the hair brackets and the vertical bow rails (or frames). My build differ in FOUR points from the instructions: I paint inlays on the bow main rails, I have the bow cheeks(?) in wood not black, I have the hawse bolsters in wood not black, and I don't have painted the stem under the hair brackest to the waterline black. In the end I would say, that you are much more in line with the colours of the prototype build than I am :-). But that is all fine, would be realy boring, if we all would do the same with our models :-). Hope it is ok for you, to point this out, in the end it does nothing to both our builds, and I like your bow-colour cheme also! 🙂

I was thinking the whole time, what is it, that makes this build so good? For me, I think it's this: you make it look so easy, where we all know that it is not easy at all, but that is a quality in intself! I like!

"Upper and Middle Stern Counter Inner Patterns This is key aspect of the build " - to quote you! This! I can't agree more! Especialy also the quarter galleries! If they not fell into the lines of the hull, it votes the whole ship down, even if the rest is top notch! And you did a great job there!

Thank you all for the likes! 🙂 @mugje, thanks dude, but there is still a lot of room for improvement 😉 I was not sold on the white oars: So I repainted them, even if it was not so easy as the first time, when they were still on the sprue. Nevertheless, like the brown a little bit more, fit out the rest and but it on the boat for a photo shooting: Because I did'nt paint the hull, I could not use the photetchparts for the rudder. Instead I faked the hinges with paper strips. Only the macro shows the shrotcommings of this: Some final views before the launch will be get stored to prevent damage during the rigging: Perhaps the both securing-lines are too thick (0-6mm). If there are more lines on board from the rigging, eventually I will use some thinner one here. And its very possible, that I will tune down the bright yellow, if I look closer at the photos...

Thank's for all the likes! 🙂 The wonderful transition a sanding does: I had my problems to remove the bulkheads. Because of my CA-mess and the switch back to wood glue I managed to loosen the sheerline-plank. Glued it back on, but now I don't had the currage to remove the most forward bulkhead. I was afraid of, to completly open it up again. So it stayed inside. Perhaps some lines will cover it later. We'll see. Forgot to take a pikture, but I had so much excess glue inside, was not fun to try to remove the bulk of it. All the rest was without any problems: And a test fit on the ship: Next is then to fit out the launch with all the pe parts and the rudder is also left to do.

This is the most impressive Alert I have seen so far!

Good progress! Fairing looks fine to me, but I have it only done once till now, and messed it up, so this is not from a pro 🙂

Just wow!

This became a pice of art!

Run out of superlatives, so just a thumbs up! 🙂

The copper is great! It points out your very good base - wood work on the hull end they're lines!

The great cabin looks gorgeous!

IMO, good choice with the full armament! Who cares, if the real thing had some less guns!

Very impressive work!

I like your detailed explanations of your rigging-process!

What chemicals do you use for the blackening process? With my, I got healthy problems and switched back emidiatly to paint 😕

Wow! I never thought that different sizes of ringbolds would add so much to a modell! Great idear and great execution! I like! 🙂

Congrats for your fine model!

Impressive build! And btw: I once had a cocker spaniel too! A red-white girl! When it will be possible again, we will also get another for ourselves :-).

your painting is incredible! Love it!

love your selfmade deck!

Great start on this elegant model!

Thank you all so much for your thumbs up and the 'wow's. Much appreciated! 🙂 @Thukydides: thank's a lot! Just used your painting advises on the guns :-). And: the paintig on your cutter is top notch! @TBlack: thank you too for your encurregement! Well, I wonce realy had steady hands, now I have a little tremor. It all depends on the point of view :-). But I will not argue. At least I can build again on my model, and this is a victory in itself! 🙂 @Katsumoto: thank you, this from such a highly skilled modell builder and carver(!) means a lot to me! Ok, back to topic: launch is next! Run out of 3mm strips, but I had a larger pice of wood in my stock and sawed some 3mm strips for the launch. Was the first time I did this, and this requires some skill to developp! I was not able to cut these strips with a consistent with. No problem here, because the launch only need rel. short strips. 'can't work with CA, after the first strake I switched back to my normal white wood glue: I managed to break the transom in two, so I will get a little bit of a roundet butt: The garboard requires some fancy shaping: Quite some gaps, have to wait how it looks after sanding. In the worstcase, I will just use filler and paint it, it's ok for the launch, IMO. Not 100% satisfiyed, but it will work one way or the other (to paint or not to paint and fill, *g). It was quite challenging to plank. I did'nt taper enough, take not enough time, so I needet some very pointy gap fillers. Next one will be better, I'm sure of :-). Well, thats all for it for now!

A lot of dust around here, lol :-). Well, what can I say? Life with massive healthy problems, always low on energy and power, but I managed to do some wokr on this build lastly :-). @BenD the red tips of the guns was an idear from Siggis famous Tiger scratch build and not from me :-). Guns. Full rig or not, the usual question. Well, I found out quite quickly, that I would not have much fun doin more than the the wire for the recoil. As usual, build a small jig, and rig em all up. I was inspired by the great wor of @DavidEN's Diana :-). The hull is now finished, bar the tender. The boomkins are removable at this point, as was suggested by James. I realy like the lines of this small vessel :-).

Hello! I think about my post for every day now, since I posted it here, and thought about to add a comment or not. Perhaps I will regret this, but here it is :-). Please let me point out some explanations first: I'm not a native speaker, so it is very possible, that I don't hit the the tone I want to hit, or that the meaning of my writing is not in the way I intendet to write it. Please keep that in mind! My intention is never to offence someone or someones work here on the forum, but if a post of mine sounds like this, than I'm very sorry! @James H: your review is great, very detailed, and I'm sure was a ton of work to do! My first comment was not intendet as a critique of your work. I write this, because you get a lot of thumbs up for your comment on my post, in which you pointed out, that you have allready written about the low-quality-deck. Yes you did, but it is not ok to point out a bad point again? Then sorry for that! For me, this 'feels' like it is not wanted to write about the things in the kit I don't like, or my comment is seen as a criticism of your review, but it is not! Well, lesson learned, I will not do that anymore, this will be my last posting under a kit review! But then again: when nobody tells the industry what is not ok, if we only ever praise the kits, then they will never improve them. Why would they, if everbody is fine with them? It would just cost em money. I mean, one could see a criticisym(?) also as a help for the manufacturer to improve his kits! But they only can, when they will see that there are things that could be done better. So I don't understand why it is wrong to point out something again, that you allready have talked about? OcCre can say, "look at this, only one see the deck as a small point to improve, every other comment on the review is full of praise, we did all things the right way" My second point, the bow: I know, I'm not a good modell builder, so perhaps I have not enough experience to call this a no go, even if I pointed out twice, that this is only my personal oppinion. Well, I have read the instructions(*), and I'm not sure that everybody how says, "it's so easy to correct this", read them too, because, The bow is NOT formed with a wooden planking method, it is formed by two relativly massive metal cast parts. And inbetween the wooden keel. In the middle part of the bow you would have to sand almost all of the metal away. Have fun. You need templates/plans to find the correct lines. Because with the provided material of the kit you can not know at what point you have to start to correct the lines of the ship(**). (*) & (**): To mee, this looked very much like the a long time ago provided subscription kit where you buyed small amounts of the kit on a monthly base. At least I could not see any differences, but I have to say that I did not collect this one, so I can not be 100% sure of that. At least, the bow- and deck was disscussed at the time of the collectibel PE kit, becaus it looked just like this one. Even if the bow parts were made out of plastic instead of metal. It is possible, that during construction the PE was not a success as Bismarck was, so they needet to make more compromises and had to save money. The Bismarck partwork was a success, and that brings me to: @TeckB: go for Bismarck. The partwork Bismarck (I kollected this one) is the base for the now available Amati kit, James H wrote this in his kit review of Bismarck. My point here is: the Hachette Bismarck (the partwork one) was developed together with Josef Kaiser. I mean: Josef Kaiser!!!! Well, some 15 jears ago that thrilled me and a lot of other modell builders at that time :-). I sold the kit later, because I still want to build a big BB when I can sort out my storage problems, but it will not be Bismarck, I'm in (and have tons of plans) a different ship. So again: sorry, if my message was seen as a criticism of James H's great review, it was not! He's done a phantastic job there! My personal meanings of the kit are still my personal ones, but, as allready told, I will not criticize a kit anymore :-). I wishes everybody building this PE-model a lot of fun! Happy modell building! 🙂