Coca by Clark Griswold - Amati - 1:60 - first wooden ship model

[Clark Griswold]

One little detail I forgot to mention is I did my own little mast stepping ceremony.  I came across a package of sterling silver beads at the craft store for $5 and decided why not.  I now have enough silver beads to step every ship model mast I'll ever build.  I simply put the bead in my jewelers vise with the hole on the jaw face and crushed it to about .25mm.  Keeping the orientation the hole correct made it quite easy to pin it to the mast base.

 

[Clark Griswold]

Ladders, how I loathe thee.

 

I started off with the intent of making a rope ladder, placing knots every .5" (only to realize later they should have been placed every .25")

 

 

Here is .5" spacing

 

Here is .25" spacing.  I was very unhappy with how loose the rungs were.

 

Frustrated, I decided to go with wooden slats.  I used some left over wood from the kit and slotted the ends to tightly grip the ropes.  Once the ladder was complete and I was happy with the spacing, I coated the unstained rungs in shellac to seal them and "lock" them to the ropes.

 

 

I am not pleased with how the sail turned out and will likely cut it off and replace it with finer cloth eventually.  The fabric Amati included was heavily starched making the sagging sausage more difficult.  I'm assuming they used the same fabric from kits with unfurled sails where the starch would be a boon.

[Rodolfo Bigoni]

Hi Clark, 

I solved the problem of the sail using a little, cut piece of the material of AMATI:

 

At the end it seems to me quite acceptable...

 

Rodolfo

[Louie da fly]

Nicely done. Furled sails are always a problem - it's impossible to duplicate to scale the thinness of real sails, so a furled sail always looks too thick and stiff. Your solution is a good one. I'm just about to do a furled sail and I'll be using the same technique.

 

Steven