I missed an interesting Lindberg 1/138 Constellation 38 gun frigate on ebay the other day and I’ve been curious about the kit.
The more I check around, the more confusing it has became.
The kit on ebay was a 1979/1980 kit # 899. OOP of course.
I’ve been checking on ebay & the net & have come up with a few kits. The one I found on ebay (kit# 70863, 1996) is bagged and the seller says the hull is only 6" long so that can’t possibly be 1/138 scale. If I’m right wouldn’t that ship be closer to 1/250 or so?
My Lindberg Jolly Roger / La Flore is 1/130 scale and the hull measures out to 13" for the 30 gun frigate.
With both kits being produced by Lindberg (?) and the scales very close 1/130 vs. 1/138 and the JR/La Flore being a 30 gun & the Connie being a 38 gun - shouldn’t the size be close also?
One of the reasons I’m asking is that I have found a number of the Lindberg 1/138 Constellation kits (kit # 70895) for sale on the net but the pictures show what, to me, appears to be the 6" kit similar to the ebay sellers kit. Virtually no rigging and badly oversized ratlines suggests to me those kits CAN’T be 1/138 scale.
I would love to get my hands on the kit if it’s a true (or close) 1/138 scale but I’ve got some serious doubts if that’s the case with the pricing being only 12 bucks or so for a new kit.
So, does an actual 1/138 scale Lindberg Constellation 38 gun frigate exist or is it an issue with scale confusion ?
You might try looking for Pyro kits of the same name as this was a reissue of an old Pyro kit. Scale with Lindberg is always an issue but it is highly unlikely that it is 1/138. According to the Rajens Kit list this is a model of the 1850 rebuild and not of the original 1797 Constellation. WS
Actually, the 1850 “rebuild” was not really a rebuild of the 1797 frigate. The frigate was decommissioned and broken up. The new Sloop-of-War USS Constellation of 1850 was built on a nearby slip, although there is some question whether some of the materials from the old frigate were used in the new ship. The Sloop-of-War was the last sailing warship built for the U.S. Navy.
After WWII, the hulk of the Sloop-of-War was taken over by the new museum and was modified to include a spar deck and presented to the public as the original frigate. She has since been restored to her original configuration.
The Lindberg model was indeed a Pyro kit originally, but it is in no way 1/138 scale. The hull measures close to 8 inches in length.
It represents the ship as modified by the museum to present the ship as the original frigate. Therefore, it does not show the ship at any point of her service life.
Warshipguy presented a great summary. I believe there are some other threads here that go into the controversy in more detail. There is a book by Howard Chapelle, “The Constellation Question” that fully details the arguments. I have a model database compiled by one of the members here(I’m embarrassed I don’t remember his name) lists the model as 1/250 which seems more realistic.
Sorry for bumping this one up, but was just looking up something else and stumbled across this. After looking at the pictures very closely, it looks to me that the Lindberg 1/138 USS Constellation is the old Pyro kit, which scales out closer to 1/384, and actually represents the horrible mish-mash Constellation (wherein they tried to make it look like a frigate instead of a corvette). Small kit, not that great, lots of work.
If this has been answered elsewhere, my apologies!
I am a firm believer in plastic kits simply as “fodder”, that is to say that they are boxes of material that contain pieces that are shaped but are not necessarily the end result. That said, the Lindberg/LifeLike/Pyro Constellation can be made into a decent model of the sloop if you are willing to put the work into it.
One of the first things I would recommend to anyone pursuing the sloop idea should beto look for a copy of “Fouled Anchors : The Constellation Question Answered” by Dana Wegner. Make no mistake; this is quite scholarly, but it does give one the unexpected background behind the old Pyro kit and why it, and many subsequent Constellation kits, look the way they do; they were manufactured to look like the ship that sits in Baltimore Harbor. Once the true origin of the Constellation was determined (a sloop from the 1850’s, not the frigate from 1797), the ship underwent a major rebuild to address all of the “frigate” modifications. The real frigate Constellation looked more like the Constitution.
But that’s not to say that this model is bad. In essence, it is what it is. As for a way to learn sailing ship construction, it is perfectly fine.