Jared

Your shop looks pretty normal to me Rob. Whatever works is good!

Now that I have completed my build, i thought I would share some truths I have learned about model ship building: 1. Making mistakes comes very easy; fixing or redoing them not so. 2. When you hold difficult tiny pieces in place, glue never dries quick enough. 3. Check your plans again andvl again. Measure twice, cut once. 4. Most small parts that you accidently drop onto the floor will bounce and roll in the direction you will least be able to find them. A vacum dustbug is your best friend for finding them again. 5. Fine rigging lines and chains are designed to snag, kink and entangle on all pertruding parts of a tall ship model. Untangling them requires careful fine movements, lots of patients and a few choice swear words. 6. Glued joints and soldered joints have a tendancy to come undone at the worst moment possible. 7. No matter how careful you are when rigging, count on you hands to accidently bang into the pertruding lower yards and other rigging many times. After a few breaks, you will learn to move you hands very slowly when rigging. 8. Missing something critical in the complex ship's drawings is not hard or infrequent, necessitating unanticipated fixes and more swearing. 9. During the course of a build, the most common comment you will hear from your friends is "I don't know how you have the patience". 10. Once your model is finished and admired, you will begin to forget about all of the above mentioned moments and start a new model. 🤣🤣

Here is a higher resolution photo of my completed Flying Fish (not focus stacked).

Thanks Rick. Much appreciated. Can't wait to see your finished model which will be stellar.

Wow! I never thought I would get to this moment. My Flying Fish has reached completion. Mounting the 2 ships boats was an interesting bit of enjoyable work. There were lots of pieces that had to made and connected. These are shown in the photos below. Next I then spent time tightening some of the chains under the bowsprit. This included cutting out and replacing the rigging between 2 of the hearts. Lastly I cleaned up the model and applied a few spots of touchup paint here and there, and polished up the mahogany base with a fresh coat of tung oil. I have not finalized my decision yet whether or not to add any flags. I think they would be distracting/tacky looking on the model. I can revisut this later before the model is placed in its case. The last photo shows a stbd side view of my completed model. In October I am planning to post much better highly detailed images as a conclusion to this log. Final Thoughts: This model was a real challenge from start to finish, but was a work of considerable satisfaction and enjoyment for me. I learned a lot of new skills and am most grateful to George, Rich, Rob and Rick and others who have offered encouragement and answered my questions throughout the build. I also would like to give a shout out to NRG for hosting this terrific web site and for all they do for our members and hobby. For anyone thinking about building this beautiful model, be advised that it would be an extremely poor choice kit for a beginner. I would rate it as an advanced kit. My impression from looking at other build logs over the years is that many of the modeller's who have bought this kit with good intent sadly were unable to complete it. Thank you all.

You are making great progress with the rigging. The tight working space on the model certainly does not make any of the rigging easy! However this is not stopping you and you are doing a fine job of it. Like the detailed photos.

At this scale, the tiny figures taxes the capabilities of the 3d printer. It had a lot of difficulty making the thin arms. Also the arms and legs were exceptionally fragile and easily were broken when removing the figures from the support plastic. I am not going to do any more on the figures. When you look at them by eye the arms look alright, and certainly won't be noticible once the model is in its case. Under a closeup camera lens, things will look worse than they are.

Focus stacking is a specialized technique that allows you to photograph subjects such that everything in the photo appears tact sharp. When you take a single close up shot of a model, you will notice that only part of the model (a thin slice) is in sharp focus. The term Depth of Field refers to the part of the photo front to back that is in focus. The closer your camera lens is to your model, the narrower will be the depth of field. Choosing a higher aperture number will result in a wider DOF, but the entire image will never be tact sharp. In focus stacking, you take many images of your model, each focused slightly back from that of the previous shot. You then take your 50 or so images and go into a specialized software program (I used Helicon Focus). It loads the 50 or so images and and scans them all to find the sharpest part of each, then it takes these parts and blends them to create a single composite image. If this is done correctly, you will have an image of you subject (model) where everything is tact sharp. The technique is particularly well suited for photographing models and other macro subjects like flowers and bugs. Its best to do this with an advanced camera with built in Focus stacking settings. A tripod and powerful computer is also recommended. I made the image of my Flying Fish model posted below several years ago using focus stacking, as an example of what can be achieved using this technique. It was made from 64 images.

Rich, my second hobby is photography. In October, after a vacation, I plan to make a set of highly detailed, focus stacked images of the finished model, which I will post here to conclude this build log. I will then put her in a case, and drink my celebratory scotch, before moving in to my next build, the USF Essex 1799.

How true. When I first saw how small the 3d printed figures were in relation to the size of the clipper ship I thought I must have miscalculated their size. But I did not. The scale size was correct. The clipper was indeed enormous. What a truly magnificent ship she must have been for her day. A marvel of engineering and craftsmanship by McKay's shipyard.

Finally finished putting the rope coils on the belay pins and added 8 crew members to the boat. Only 1 more task left: securing the 2 ships boats to their davits.

Lovely work.

I started this model in 2006 and worked on it slowly over the next 6 years, finishing off the hull, deck and much of the deck structures. In 2012 my late wife was diagnosed with ALS, which resulted in work stoppage on the model. About a year after she passed away, I woke one morning with significantvvision loss in one eye. With the loss of 3D vision, I did not think I would ever be able to complete the model. However, one finds ways to adapt to handicaps and I picked up the model again around 2019 with no real expectations I would be able to finish it. Two drivers that kept me going were this MSW log which I joined at the time and my joining a local model ship club. The rest is history, all well documented in this build log. As for my next model, I realize that with my vision issue building another highly rigged ship would not be the best choice. When working with thin threads it is very difficult to tie knots and thread blocks without 3d vision. I do enjoy the working with wood part which is not as demanding for 3d, and I have always been fascinated with Admiralty models since first seeing them at the Science museum in London in the late 60's, and at Greenwich UK. So earlier this year, I purchased an admiralty-style kit of the USF Essex 1799 from Model Shipways and am eagerly waiting to start it. I am thinking about modifing the Essex kit to expose a small section of its inner timber construction. Two photos of the model Essex as below, from the manufacturer.

Thanks everyone for your kind words. As I complete the few items I have a question. I had planned to install flag pennant and flags but having now looked at them, I am having second thoughts. They seem to be a bit tacky looking. What do you all think? I noticed George left them off in his beautiful model. Also, what is the likelihood that such ships wold have had their flags flying when in port? Thanks for your suggestions.

Today I finished rigging all of the braces on the fore mast yards. I have also tightened up the other rigging on the model where it was needed. I have also touched up any needed spots on the model requiring this. So little remains to be done before final launch.