USS Constitution by Model Shipways. - First Build Log

[11320 Titanic]

Your boats are good, building houses we used to say, "Paint hides a lot of sins!" So does sanding.

 

[rturcic72]

Just started the rigging portion of the build with building the masts. First off, I had made a near fatal mistake when I realized I used the wrong size dowel for the Fore and Main masts. Thank God I had enough wooden dowels to fix this. This wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be either. The pictures show just the masts built up and not glue into the deck as there is more prep work to be done before that happens, so I tried my best to prop them up in the pictures so they don't look too lopsided. The lower,main, and top gallant masts are glued together. I also realized after the fact that I had painted the masts white top to bottom except black for the fids to simulate iron. In the practicum Bob painted only certain sections white and the rest in natural wood. I think I'm going to keep them as is. They look good either way, unless this is really what they look like and have some historical value to them. Shaving the dowels down to different sizes and section along the mast by hand was a little tough. I also snapped a few dowels as well and often. I knew they were delicate to work with, but they were a lot more delicate than I expected. Now, drilling a #75 hole in the tressletrees in the top gallant baffles me. According to the practicum, they are rigging points. How the hell am I supposed to fit thread in such a tiny, and I mean tiny hole like that? There's just no way...if the lines we're rigging are supposed to be taught, than I curious as to how many more pieces I can break along the way just rigging lines that look nice and tight??? Well, I guess we'll see how the spanker mast and bowsprit turns out, especially the bowsprit which looked somewhat complicated to build...I'll be relieved when I finally finish this ship. The fact that you get a box of wood with some laser cut parts to save time that you essentially have to build, cut, and carve by hand is not what I expected because that would be considered a combination of bashing and scratch building. I don't regret doing any of that, but I had no idea how much of it is really made by hand.

 

[AllanKP69]

The boats took me about 3 days.

Building four ship's boats as you have done is going the extra mile! She carried a longboat, cutters, whaleboats, and a gig from what I could find. Which boats are these? I ask because it looks like they have flat bottoms and no keel so seemed unusual. There are detailed drawings on the Connie website of many things, including some of the boats that you and other folks might find useful. An example in pdf is below.

Modeler Resources - USS Constitution Museum

ussconstitutionmuseum.org

Allan

 

[rturcic72]

Allan you are correct. I have both rounded and flat. I kept some of the extra flatness for the small boats because I kept sanding holes into them and having to fill them back up. It still has the gigs, whaleboats, etc.