Friendship Sloop by gsdpic - BlueJacket Shipcrafters - 1:12

[gsdpic]

Hi all and welcome to my build log for the Bluejacket Friendship Sloop.  Bluejacket has two similar kits in different scales; I am building the larger 1/12th scale (aka 1" = 1').

 

Over the last several years, since I completed my America build, I have been hanging out in the non-ship builds section of the forum, mostly building plastic cars.   But I decided it was time to get back to things made out of wood that float, though I will not be starting immediately as I am finishing up the latest car project.

 

I guess I do not yet have specific plans for this kit and probably should do more research on any possible enhancements that I wish to make.  I will say though that generally I am more concerned about making something attractive than I am about making it perfectly realistic.  My initial thought is to paint the top sides white or possibly off white/ivory and the bottom either dark green or dark red.  I may replace deck planking with nicer wood and leave it bright or stained and varnished.

 

I was a bit surprised that I have not found a finished build log of this kit.  There are about a half dozen logs (both this kit and the smaller 1/2" = 1' kit) that were started, but none that I saw made it to completion.   Several of them were started toward the end of the pandemic and noted that it was a first build.  I guess as we got a bit back to normal, people lost interest in their new hobby.  Most of those builds even got past the planking stage which I expect to be the most difficult part of this build, though perhaps there are some other demons lurking that I am not aware of at this time.

 

Below are pictures of the box and one showing some of the contents.  I did an inventory last night and discovered that the kit was missing some of the strip wood.  I've sent an email to Bluejacket about that.  The missing wood is for the deck so will not hinder me getting started.  According to the sticker on the bottom of the box, the kit was packed up just a few days before Christmas....I guess someone was a bit distracted.  Otherwise the contents of the kit seem to be of good quality, as I have come to expect from Bluejacket.

 

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by ccoyle
corrected log title

[gsdpic]

Well when I opened this build log I thought I was just a few days away from completing that Porsche build.  But I guess by starting this log I was just asking for life to get in the way.  I still think I'll get started soon.   And I heard back from Bluejacket that they are sending the missing strip wood.

 

[JacquesCousteau]

Looking forward to following this build! Depending on how you'd like to make it, there are a lot of options to personalize this as a fishing boat or as a yacht. Either way, I've had some luck in finding old photos of Friendship Sloops via the Penobscot Maritime Museum's digital collections, although the search function is a bit unwieldy. See here, for instance, for photos tagged as Friendship Sloops:

https://penobscotmarinemuseum.historyit.com/search-interfaces/search/digital-collection/0/1/1/1?rq[0]=8639&ip=1

 

[gsdpic]

Thanks @JacquesCousteau for the link.  I've looked through many of those pictures and picked out a few that had interesting details.

 

I've now completed my prior project and cleaned up my work area and made the most basic of starts on this build.   I've organized the strip wood (still waiting on the replacements for the stuff that was missing but the post office says it will be delivered any day now).  I've also cut the bulkheads and keel pieces out of the laser cut sheets and sanded off much of the laser char.