HM Armed Cutter Sherbourne 1763 by Nightdive - Vanguard Models - 1:64 - First Build

[Nightdive]

Greetings all!

 

I've had a lifelong interest in the sea, ships and maritime history, and building some sort of a ship model has been in the back of my brain for a decade or more. Late last summer I was given an old and battered model of a full-rigged ship, perhaps from the 1960's or so, and repairing her finally gave me the spark to make my first proper foray into modeling. 

 

While looking for a beginner friendly model I originally decided on Amati's Lady Nelson, but on some level I was bothered by it not being based on a real ship. Fortunately I kept browsing and eventually stumbled on Vanguard Models' Sherbourne, which seemed perfect. 

 

The kit arrived a bit over a month ago now, but I needed to order some basic tools, glues and such to get started. I still need to decide on an airbrush and paints, but that can wait until later, as it is going to continue to be too cold to paint outside for a few months.

 

 

I've taken the time to study the manual - which is very detailed, and various build logs on this forum, not only of the Sherbourne, but also other ships of the time period. If this build goes well and modeling feels like a hobby for me, I'd like to advance on to a bigger kit, maybe Vanguard's HMS Sphinx. I'm also toying with the idea of eventually building PoF models of some of the wrecks that I've been diving in the Baltic Sea. Maybe similar to this model of the Swedish ship Svärdet and the wreck models at the Vasa museum. 

 

  

 

I look forward to starting the build process soon and returning with my first updates!

[Nearshore]

Good luck on your journey. Look forward watching your progress.

 

Nearshore

[Auger]

Welcome to MSW! 

[Knocklouder]

Bob  M..

[Nightdive]

 

 

 

  

 

 

Thank you for the messages everyone, glad to be here. I made good progress on building the bulkhead yesterday, a drum sander made a quick job of beveling the parts. The rest was easy to assemble and almost all of the parts fit toghether perfectly without filing, but I did manage to snap one of the outer pearwood stern frames into three pieces. It turned out to be a tight fit and I had already applied the glue, so I tried to force it in. Bad mistake. 

 

No real harm done though, I was able to salvage the part by gluing it back together and putting it back into the pearwood sheet to cure overnight. A lesson learned about dry fitting everything, especially when I'm using the quick drying Ponal glue.

 

I'm moving onto fitting the false deck, seems that it needs some light filing, especially as it is so thin.

[Nightdive]

 

 

 

The false deck snapped in nicely after I had dealt with all of the problem spots with a file. It just took me a very long time to find all of them, as I didn't want to engage the snapping mechanism until I was completely sure that it was going to be final. 

 

I softened the stern counter a bit over a kettle spout before gluing it on. I also placed some fabric pads underneath the clamp to spread pressure more evenly. Then I filed the counter flush so that I could fit the stern transom. I think I made a little mistake here, it would have been better for the counter to overlap the transom and not the other way around. Now there isn't that much of a curve on the inside where the transom and counter meet. I don't think that it is very noticeable and hopefully will be a very minor flaw in the completed build.