U.S.S. Constitution revell 1:96 RETRY

I'm not going to be doing an extremely detailed log here. There's plenty of awesome ideas for this model on the internet, which I'll be copying. I'll mostly put up stuff I feel differs from what's out there.

Let's see..  As you can see, I've gone with the green bulk thingies and the white stripe. Everything else I'll pretty much follow off the model.

The bottom deck turned out like crap (pic soon). The way you sand though one color to bring out the detail make's it hard to fill the gaps on the deck and have it look decent. I've seen people just slap a big piece of wood in there, and maybe use a marker to draw planks on it.

I found some sheets of really thin (1/32"), balsa, that I'm cutting into 3/32" strips to look like little planks. I made a homemade cutting center for this, as I'm going to need to do a lot (pics soon)

Nice start, and nice tool stand.  Looks like it was pretty cheap, and easily-replaced when necessary.  :-)

I built that kit as a kid.  I was probably in 4th or 5th grade then.  I finished it without the sails, I believe.  I didn't like the plastic sails that came with the kit.  The center upper deck was badly-warped on my kit, and it got worse after I set it in the oven to soften so I could flatten it out.  Luckily, the kit instructions were on 1:1 scale with the model, so I whipped out my balsa wood and recreated the deck piece, which came out so nicely, I was tempted to to the other two pieces.  I don't remember if i did.  

I have that kit in my stash, having 'inherited' it from my in-laws when they relocated to London.

Good luck with this.  It's a nice model when finished, as you know.

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas

Jake,

Great start!

Have you looked at Glued-Up Decking from BlueJacket Shipcrafters?

www.bluejacketinc.com/.../wood3.htm

That might be a more convenient option for your decking needs.

TK

DON'T USE BALSA! It is way to soft, won't hold an edge, etc, etc. Softess wood you want to use is basswood.

This is a good project to try some new things. I'll give you a couple of tips that you might consider.

First, as was said above, balsa is not your best choice for modeling wood. It's way too fuzzy and if you stain it it will really lift the grain. The better choice is bass wood. Or another hardwood veneer, if you have a little table saw. I would also say that it's only worth planking the gun deck under the open boat beams, and enough fore and aft to give the effect. The center plank is wider than the others, and there's a pattern to the placement. I'm not familiar with the Constitution, but the info should be easy to find. There's a tip I haven't tried, to rub all the edges of your planks with a pencil to simulate the caulking.

You will need to cut off the bottoms of the gun carriage trucks, or better yet not plank where the guns go, in order to get them level all the way fore and aft.

One other thing well worth doing is to build up the thickness of the hull at the gun ports. The top of the opening isn't important, but the sides and bottom should have a square piece of styrene or wood, say 1/16" thick, glued flush around the inside edge. If it's even visible down through the boat beams as an add on, it'll be dark in there, and everywhere else it will add a great deal to the look of the boat.

Wow, some awesome ideas. Thanks for the Basswood tip Bushman and Bondoman. That would have been a lot of work for nothing.

I knew I'd have to compensate for the higher deck, but didn't even think about the cannons. This is stuff I wouldn't have anticipated. I was wondering why people on previous threads put all that extra plastic around the gun ports. I want to do that now! I want to save money and use the 1/32 balsa that I was going to use for the decks, but I bet styrene would be easier to gap and work with..

Thanks for the link Tim. I should have bought my eye pins from there as well (the ones I got to replace the plastic eye bolts, are pretty big).

Looks like I need to rethink this a little, and reread some threads. Thanks for the tips guys

I will be watching your build with interest as I am also building the Constitution. Mine will not be historically correct with colours, but it will look the part nevertheless. My inner gunwales are a sandy yellow colour with the masts in the same shade and I will be sewing light cotton sails and ditching the ugly plastic things.

Good luck with yours...it looks great.

Errol.

Thanks Elroy. I was thinking of making some cotton or canvas sales as well. Here's some more picks.

The bottom deck is trashed as you can see. The wood grating melted when I tried to straighten the bow in  the deck. After, I put on too much black base, so when I sanded down the details were distorted. I've looked at different planking solutions, and they may be too expensive for me. On the bottom deck I'll probably just try to simulate wood grains with oil paints. Then the top deck I will try to do as instructed, but more carefully this time, or maybe I'll think of something else.

I haven't tried this myself but, I think a good way to reproduce a ships deck would be to print it on bond paper.  My idea would be to photograph a piece of unvarnished teak or copy a photo of a sailing ships deck, scale it appropriately and print pages of sections of planking.  Using a new #11 blade and a metal straight edge, the pieces could be cut so as to "splice" together.  It could be glued down over the styrene deck using a spray-on contact cement such as 3M "77".

That's funny because I've been searching the internet for fake wood stickers, but I hadn't thought to do that. What about, instead of doing physical cutting of the planks. Use photoshop or paint dot net to layout a big sticker with the planking already sized and colored how you want. You wouldn't have to do the whole deck in one piece, but maybe in sections.

I never looked at it carefully, but saw a preview from a uss constitution book, that showed all the planking in detail. You could maybe scan the book and use that somehow.

Alright, no pics now, but an update. I picked up some styrene to make the cannon ports thicker. I got an airbrush set up, and painted the bottom deck cannon carriages. I'm finishing up the barrels and getting ready to paint them gun metal. I cleaned up the bottom melted deck, and am seriously needing to decide now which way to go with my decks. Detail painting on outside of ship is coming along.. pics soon

Check the craft stores in both the bird house making and doll house departments.  They have in-expensive stick on simulated wood flooring.  Also look in department stores or home stores for wood simulated shelf paper.