I’m pretty sure the black is correct - though I’m not sure how far down it extended. Bjorn Landstrom’s painting of her in his masterpiece The Ship shows the black, if I remember right (questionable) serving as a ground for the gold decorations, with natural wood (probably oiled) from the lowest gold rail downward. But I don’t think anybody can say for certain that the entire hull above the waterline wasn’t black.
That idea of black as a background color for ornamentation seems to have been standard English practice for a long time. Most of the “Board Room models,” if painted at all, seem to have that scheme - though blue sometimes turns up.
You’ve an excellent memory, John. Landstrom on pages 152-153 shows brown below the wale that’s above the middle gun deck, with the wales a darker sort of chocolate color.
That’s as I have always seen models and paintings of her, black background for the gold ornamentation, and natural wood with chocolate brown wales. I have seen models of her with a white hull below the waterline, but I doubt that scheme. Anyway, this is why I asked the question. By the way, I mean no criticism of the excellent job kpnuts is doing.
Bill I have to say the instructions call for gloss white below the waterline, which I have to say I thought a bit odd, I can’t see gloss of any kind staying gloss for long in salt water, but what colour if not white would it have been, as for the chocolate brown below the gun Wales I could see that as being how she would have been and am perfectly happy to change that, by the way my mates call me ken
I should mention, Ken, I’m no expert but was inclined to answer John’s question, and I do like Landstrom. He shows white as either a bootstripe (not likely) or the below the waterline color (likely and flat). It’s a painting of the ship in the water after all. The lower gun port lids are red on the inside, the middle deck lids white with a red cross squarely on them. Very smart.
The instructions say nothing about the inside of the gun ports but I see that as being right as when I built the hms prince that was red inside the gun ports, I have also managed to get the Airfix wasa, which apparently the colours are all wrong on, that is going to need lots of research.
We are now opening another can of worms . . . the white hull below the waterline. As John can testify, the Wasa has been shown to have not been painted below the waterline, that she might have had a pitch coating or that she could have had bare wood. I have seen illustrations showing the Sovereign of the Seas the same way. Other coatings could have been a mixture of tar and horsehair (very dark) to a tallow color (a yellowish-white color). She may have even been painted white. John is more well-versed in this than I, and I hope that he weighs in on this.
Hi all I’ve decided to do something different with this and it involves this
It flickers just like a real candle and the other one is kaput so I developed a cunning plan so, off with the transom
can you guess where this is going
drilled out the windows
then removed the rest of the window
yes thats right I’m going to RC it, only joking, lighting up the state cabins.
the light bulb looks incandescent. LED would be a better choice as they burn cooler. We don’t want to repeat history as the professor has stated. Some dioramas/shadowboxes that created early on, I used bulbs that gave off just a little too much heat and over time made the figures sagged into slightly less than appealing postures.
You don’t want your efforts to end up at the bottom of an aquarium.
Whatever lighting source you use, for heaven’s sake make sure you have a way of getting at it when the model’s finished.
I once built a “grain of wheat” bulb into the captain’s cabin of a Revell 1/96 Constitution, having been assured by the proprietor of the hobby shop that “grain of wheat bulbs don’t burn out.” That one did.
I put 5 grain of rice bulbs in to light the hangar deck of a 1/700 ESSEX, powered it wrong with 6v instead of 3v, burned out one bulb immediately. What a job to replace it. Left the old one in and ran a duplicate in it’s place. Will use led’s or that new sheet lighting next time.
Hi all a small update on this, The transom sticks out past the gallaries on the sides and I didnt like the way Airfix just moulded them flat so I’ve rounded the edges and reguilded them
also the grills on the prow are not moulded all the way through so I drilled all the holes out.
and I’ve hacked the candle apart and reconfigured it
as yet have to figure a way to replace batteries when needed, thinking I may make it a waterline model.
Lindbergh still does make this ship as “Blackbeard Pirate Ship”. It is smaller than the Airfix kit but does have the wood grain molded onto the hull sides. Lindbergh also has the old solid plastic preformed sails molded onto the yards. It’s not a bad kit by any means (at least the gun ports are opened) but the cannon barrels are molded onto strips in rows to project out of the ports. And, of course, the molded shrouds and ratlines are junk.
Other kits include the Wappen von Hamburg as the “Captain Kidd” pirate ship, La Flore and the “Captain Kidd” pirate ship, and the Saint Louis as the Captain Harry Morgan pirate ship. I don’t know if Lindbergh ever released the Gouda as one in this series.
These kits are not bad at all. Some even have the entire gun decks. They can be built into nice representations of the original ships if you scrap the pirate flags and name plates.
