It's 1:100, a bit smaller compared to most models. The build took 969 days. The ship was a Corel kit highly bashed (modified) with lots of added and replaced parts and timber. Please read my build log for details. If you want to buy a kit, my first questions are, what type of ship and period are you interested in (what inspires you)? How many ships have you built thus far? How would you describe your skills and experience fabricating things with hand tools? Kits range from basic to intermediate to advanced, and advanced kits often do NOT have detailed instructions, and assume you ALREADY KNOW how to build a wooden ship. The kit I started with (La Couronne by Corel of Italy) has good blueprints and isometric drawings showing each stages of the build, but written instructions are basically nothing.
Whatever you start with, you have to like it enough to have patience to finish it. My first ship was in the advanced category because I had fabrication skills from years on other hobbies like armor and weapon smithing, carpentry, machining, welding, etc. Switch from one medium to another was not a big transition, but there was a hugely steep learning curve in ship construction and rigging that required many books. In fact, over 80% of my time was in research, not working on the model! Your situation may be totally different.
Each step was planned and thought out, and the mistakes were all recoverable. Much of the techniques in building cam from reading other's build logs or watching YouTube videos on wooden ship building. Watch Olha Batchvarov's and Tom Lauren's tutorial videos. I learned sailmaking from Olha and flag shaping from Uwek on this forum.
Things to know up front:
1) All kits are not totally historically accurate and are often simplified in the small details, even in the rigging. You research allow you to add details and correct design errors.
2) Most people who jump into making these types of models never finish them because of lack of patience to learn as they go and lose interest when they realize how long they take. To builders, it's the journey, not the destination (although the final result is awesome).
3) You can add a lot of extra detail by doing research using advice from fellow model ship builders and build logs from forums like this, books specific to the ship you are building and on general topics like planking and rigging... Your library will grow and your wallet will shrink.
4) Many features on the specific ship you build are unknown and cannot be determined from your research sources. Get ready to make features based on educated, or sometimes wild, guesses. The later the ship's time period in history, the more information is available on how it is constructed and how it appears.
5) The total cost of the model, including tools, paint, books for research, custom parts, timbers, and other materials on a ship that is not built straight from a kit and built as the kit instructions say can run rather high, but it's spread out over time. I kept track of all expenditures for construction of La Couronne, and it totaled $3078.96. For a custom model, the cost of the kit was just the beginning.
6) bigger models are easier to work on because you can pack more details into them on a larger scale, and rigging doesn't crowd out your fingers near the end of the build as badly. The downside is you have to build a larger case to display it in, and you might not have enough space.
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