Jim Lad

Nils, thanks for that. I had forgotten about the 'Padua', but she is in many ways a similar ship. Jerome, this restoration is a little different to most, as we want the model to accurately represent the ship at a particular period in her history. While we are keeping as much of the original work as possible, some has to go in the interests of accuracy for a museum model. John

Thanks, Roger! John

Good idea, Keith. Thanks for that. John

That roller fairlead it special, Nils! Well done! John

I thought the German would be simply 'Feuer'. John

Looking good! It's interesting that the name on the stern includes 'of' and is not just the bare name and port of registry. John

It's always a good project to build a model of a favourite ship - someday I may even build a model of my all-time favourite ship, the 'Pilar Regidor', but that would be a pretty big model! Good to see that you've decided to build her as you remember her on your epic voyage. You should find quite a lot of photos to support your memory of what the ship looked like at that time. John

Another small update. The first image is an overhead view of the very long poop deck - now cleaned of dust, dirt and general grunge. The second image is of the forecastle, showing the first tentative steps towards correction of some errors on the model. Part of the railing has been removed on each side of the deck, as these sections were removable and had chain, rather than steel bar railings. More thinking and study of photos has brought to light another major problem. The original ship had a beautiful teak capping rails all around the poop rather that the pipe rail shown on the model. The Senior Curator would like to have this changed to conform to the original, so - yet another major alteration. My current thinking is that the simplest way around this will be to file down the tops of the stanchions a little to bring them to the height of the bulwarks forward, and then to run the wooden capping around on top of the current steel piping. A lot of work, but I think easier than ripping out all of the railing and starting again. If anyone has any better ideas, I'd love to hear about them as I'm not looking forward to all that additional work. Another problem is the number holes and gaps in the deck caused by the removal or alteration of items that were no longer on the ship at the time of her last voyage. I need to find some kind of filler to close up all those holes and make them a little less obvious. This model is turning into a real lesson for anyone thinking of taking on a restoration; the number of problems on deck on this model that have come to light since I started serious cleaning operations is amazing!! John

You'll be finished before you know it, Nils! John

She's really coming along very nicely, Keith. John

Very neatly constructed, Chuck. John

That's looking really nice, Colin. John

Hello Max, and a warm welcome to the forum from 'Down Under'. John

Delightful work, Mark. John

Hello Brent, and a warm welcome to the forum from 'Down Under'. John

Nothing like an old table for modelling timber! The spars of all my models to date come from an antique pine table top that had seen better days. John

That's a cunning way to check the alignment, Mark. John

Potholes are never finished Keith - they just get deeper! (sorry) Looking good, Nils. John

An excellent first model, Chris! John

Hello Ralf, and a warm welcome to the forum from 'Down Under'. John

That looks a good, sturdy boat. It will be interesting to watch her grow. John

Thanks, Nils. I think she'll certainly use up all my patience! Phil, the ship was 102 meters long and the model is at a scale of 1:100, so the hull of the model is 1.062 meters. The double spanker rig was quite common on German ships of the period. I think it looks good and adds extra interest on an otherwise fairly bare jigger mast. John

Looks great, Greg. John

Work has finally started on cleaning, restoring and completing our model of the 'Duchess'. Unfortunately, the cleaning process has revealed some damage on the model - it looks like an object has been dropped across the well deck, with the gangway and the boat skids damaged (both removed at the moment) and damage to the topgallant railing on both sides - a bit of extra work I don't really need! Cleaning has also revealed some unfinished areas on the deck - holes where fittings have been removed and the holes left unplugged. I'll simply fill those as I work my way along the model completing it. She also has all four lower masts fixed. I would have preferred them loose, as the lower fore stays of the after three masts secure to the deck right bedside the masts ahead of them, so it will be pretty tight getting the stays secured when i get that far. The images below show the model as she is now, except that by the time I left this afternoon more cleaning had been done. I hope to complete the cleaning next time i'm at the museum and acrually start some work on her. John The model on her work table secured inside her display case - sorry about all the reflections, but there are large picture windows to the right. The 'Duchess' out of her case and ready to work on. Looking down on the decks. At this stage I'd finished cleaning the forecastle; down all but one cleaning run on the well deck and swept the dust off the poop.

A very handsome looking craft, Colin! John