What will be the next one?

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

As I stated, my build of the Revell pirate ship is coming to a close, I have to wait for some putty and a new set of brushes to finish detailing the ship, so in another week or two I hope for it to be completed.

So what is next? Could the more experience modelers could give me some advice as to what I should try next, I would prefer a sailing ship, the rigging of those ship fascinates me.

My CFO, ( The wife ) has giving me a budget of $200. Should I get a more advance plastic ship, like one of those Hellers that has instructions in French? ( I do not speak french )? How about one of those fancy wooden models?

Any advice will be most appreciated.

Thanks

PD: Spelling was checked using my version of Word

Joe

2

LoL!

You’ll blow the $200 budget in just getting the reference material together to actually undo the the Heller rigging instructions [:)]

3

If you want to stick with sailing ships, get a Golden Hind, a Mayflower, or, best yet, a Yacht America/USS America.

The America kit has only the two masts, is i a reasonable scale (like 1/66 or so) and offers plenty of opportunities to improve the kit.

If you feel like it, that is. It will build right out of the box fairly well.

Golden Hind (Revell makes the larges scale oe, IIRC) does have three masts, but Elizabethian rigging is somewhat simplfied, too.

Now, in more modern vessels, the Roger Taney revenue cutter is not bad.

Pretty much all the 1/350 destroyers are good kits to put your hand to. And, out of box, you can probably get four for $200. Now, if you get all the P/E and after-market things, you are going to whittle down that double c-note pretty quick.

Just not as quickly as just about any carrier kit.

Doing a pre-war Rodney or Nelson with all the trimmings is pretty much the whole $200, what with wood decks, metal gun barrels and PE (and you might have to fudge the numbers some, too) (Note, you can save a few bucks with war-time builds, as Royal Navy painted right over their wooden decks; but you need more paint colors, and a bit more research.)

4

This is a great kit. You could finish it by July 4th!

5

The Heller kits are both fun and frustrating but the end result is more than worth the pain. If you get the Soleil Royal I have a copy of the English instructions from when the kit first came out in the early 70’s and would be happy top send them to you. The illustratoions are also somewhat better than the current version but the rigging still isn’t always accurate. Rather than spending your money on reference material I’d suggest a good bottle of single malt and let your imagination run wild.

6

I am working on the Heller Soleil Royal myself- it is a long term build- it is taking years. There is so much rigging. I finished the hull and lower masts in less than a year, but the upper masts and rigging are taking years, but I don’t want to rush it.

I don’t believe you have to spend much money on references. If you are a master of the google search engine (including how to search the images collection) you can find and download a lot of stuff from there.

While the kits are expensive, the cost per building hour is actually pretty low. If you want to build something just a little more complex than the pirate ship, but in a cheaper price range, Heller has a beautiful 18th century 74- I think it was called Superbe. I forget the scale but I think it was about a 1 in 200 or so.

By the way, every Heller ship kit I have bought from US vendors had the plans in English. Some had both French and English texts. It may depend on the vendor you use.

7

I have the Heller Victory instructions in Japanese from the Imai version, and they are much clearer than the French ones.

Really though, I have to say it’s a very long term project and at times you’ll want to throw the whole thing at the wall.

8

Throw it at the wall? Like they did on Battlestar Galactica? Big waste of time and money.

How many sailing ships have you done? I wish I coiuld build them again, but I can’t.

9

I know that feeling… Have the big Victory. Looked in the box and closed it right back up. Probably going to die before I get the urge to open it again. Put the rigging book in with it.

Have told the lady who to send it to so he can swear at me for the rest of his life

10

I decided to build the Soleil Royal, I ordered it from Internet Hobbies out of Pennsylvania, yesterday, after my CFO ( The wife ) approved the budget. I hope that I am not getting above my head with this model. I am planing to take my sweet time with it, mainly because I want it to be as close to museum quality as I am able to produce.

Time will tell, if you read of someone that went crazy building a ship model in Miami, most like that would be me.! LOL

11

I thank you for your advise, the USS Constitution is my dream ship, but, I would like to build the wooden version that is almost 4 feet long and cost about $500.

Besides being difficult to justify the cost to my CFO ( The wife ), I know, that at this time, I do not have the skill set to be able to properly build it. Hopeful I will gain sufficient experience soon to attempt such build, will see.

12

Many of us think the European wooden models are very overpriced. In my opinion, a good plastic kit will come out looking better than a wooden one. Learning to plank will take several kits. If you do decide to try a plank on bulkhead kit buy a couple of smaller cheaper ones to start. You don’t want to mess up the planking on a five hundred buck kit. It is not as easy as it sounds.

People used to say they are great because they are made from wood like real ships. Then one of those firms came out with a very expensive Titanic kit that was wood with wood planking!

13

If you mean the Bluejacket (1/96) kit, or the Model Shipways (1/76) kit, those would be worth buying, you’d get a reasonable scale replica that way. Unlike virtually all of the European offerings.

You get more “stuff” with the Bluejacket kit, but you have to do more woodwork, too. The MS kit uses laser-cut bulkheads.

And, very much as Bill suggests, getting into wood kits wants simle and large scale, say, no more than one mast, and no smaller than about 1/48 scale.

14

The reason I mentioned building a wood model is because I am under the impression that only wood models can be build to museum standards and are the only one the are fairly big in size.

Do they make large plastic model ships that can be build to close to museum standards? Can someone tell me the brands names? Thanks

While we are in the subject to purchasing, I purchased my Royal Solei from an outfit called Internet Hobbies out of Pennsylvania , they look very professional, Is this outfit reputable? I know, I should have asked before ordering, but some times I rush to much.

15

Well, museums have lots of “standards,” there’s not a single unform list you can go by.

“Big” is relative, too.

The OOP Container ship is a huge vessel, and a pretty big model as well.

Merit’s 1/200 series of ships are certainly huge enough (USS Missouri is near 4.5’ long)

And, there’s no arguing over the Tumpy 1/48 U-Boot, which is about 4’ long.

Revel’s USS Constitution is 1/96, and builds to more than three feet (you’d need a case about 4’ x 2’ x 3’ to put it in, and that would be a hair tight). There are a couple 1/100 versions of HMS Victory that are bigger than the 1/96 Constitution.

One of the issue in plastic wood sailing vessels is the factor of hull thickness. The Revel Constitution has a hull that’s around 0.085" thick. The actual hull is closer to about 24" thick, 0.25" on the kit. Several of the plastic kit makers make similar “shortcuts” so that the outside is (reasonably) correct, but, you wind up making some significant changes to get results that match your research. (There are some excellent builds of Victory, Constitution, and SR here, sadly, the Search function does not make it easy to find them.)

A similar situation erupts with European kit makers. They give you parts, you are left to manipulate them into completion. What they seldom are, is to scale. And, out-of-scale does not exactly scream “museum” to me.

If you need a peak down the rabbit hole, sign up over at Model Ship World, where they take their scale modeling pretty seriously. Which is why so many of the builds over there are 100% scratch-built. (Many of the builds from kits will have high scratch content as well.) And, that level of commitment to accuracy is a powerful thing. C.Nepan Longridge decided to make a scale replica of Victory. At 1/48 scale. So, a hull in the 5’ long range. If memory serves, it sits in a 7’ or 8’ long case. He hand-cut each of the “anchor stock” planks of the wales indiviually. Also each and every frame in the real ship wa replicated.

Lots of folks building to that level of quality, not all their product winds up in museums. Or spend a couple decades on a build (if somewaht reasonably delayed by WWII).

16

Thank you, CapnMac82, for your very good explanation, maybe I was, due to my inexperience, using the wrong words for what I am trying to archive. When I said that I wanted to be build “museum quality” I was primarily referring to build as perfect and realistic as I could. I tent to be a perfectionist by nature, so, I wanted to produce the best product that my skill set would allow.

Since I do not want to go to effort of researching a vessel and attempt to build such vessel from scratch into a something that could be shown in a museum, I guess I will have to be content with a good commercial available model and build it as good as I can.

For what the more experience modelers in this blog have indicated, I may have to stay with plastic models, I do not think I have the patient to expend several months build a ship from scratch.

Joe

17

Even a plastic kit such as the 1/100 Victory on the 1/96 Constitution will be a several month project. The rigging will take as long as the hull build.

And you will probably take a break on it to keep the frustration level somewhat manageable.

18

10 years and counting.

19

Really the best way to have a high quality ship is to scratchbuild it using a variety of materials that work best. The big European ship kits give you laser cut frames (bulkheads), a number of castings, line of very variable quality, blocks that are most likely just OK, and a lot of pieces of stripwood.

Certainly a Model Shipways or Blue Jacket kit gives you a little more to work with, and much better instructions.

But I digress because even the most experienced modeler is going to spend a lot of time modeling it.

The Revell biggest Constitution is manageable. I would bet that most sold never were finished, but it goes together well and the finished product is attractive. You should put the Heller kit aside for a while, you’ll hate it if you plunge into it now with your current skills.

20

I’ll agree with GM on that…jumping into the SR now will end up as an exercise in frustration.

I looked at the Victory kit and closed it back up. Just not ready to take on something that complex. My last sail ship was decades ago, one of the Revell Constitutions. No way do I have the skills to do justice to the Victory now, and probably well into the future.

Get some more experience under your belt, later on you will realize a way better build and enjoyment in doing it.