I want to build Hornblower's HMS Lydia

So. If anyone wants to chime in with the dimensions of a typical gun port, I am waiting.

- Leelan

OK. The 32-pounder is the most common gun on a fifth rate. It would be 9.5 feet long and 1.75 diameter. That is more than I knew before. Now to figure out how big the gun ports were.

Don, thanks for your input. But I don't think I want to go that route. I may. But I know plastic and resin. I can work well with those. I have a huge stash of kits to get through before I die. I don't think I have time for a scratch-built wooden hull.

- Leelan

Fortunately, ship models are some of the most commonly scratch built models.  There are books on building scratch ship models, and several companies sell small parts that are difficult to scratch.  There are a couple of excellent sources of three view scale drawings of many, many warships.  Find a plan for a 32 gun frigate, buy a book on scratch ship building, and have at it.

You have your choice of a planked hull or a carved hull (bread and butter method). I am a big advocate of the later, especially for scratch building.

Loyalhanna Dockyard is a firm that handles the two best sources of scale ship drawings.

BTW I know about Lindberg. Oy. I have their 72 scale WWII Japanese sub kit. HUGE. But so badly done that it is like building from scratch to fix her.

- Leelan

Yes. I have read several threads on this forum about the lack of good plastic ship models and the laziness of the model companies --- how they produce one kit and re-release it under different names with only minor (and incorrect ) changes.

So I should just go with the Ferdinand and do my best?

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The guns seem really small to me. Is this another inaccuracy? Given what I have read about other plastic model ship kits I am not too sure about the scale of this kit. How big was a gun port of this era? If I knew that I could measure the kit and nail down a scale for her instead of taking the manufacture's scale on faith.

- Leelan

I'm afraid there's no plastic kit on the market that really comes close to looking like a British 32-gun frigate of 1808.  (For that matter the one in the old Gregory Peck movie didn't.  And as for the models used in the more recent Hornblower TV seried - forget 'em.)  About the only one that comes close is the old, old Airfix HMS Shannon, which is about six inches long - and I'd have no idea where to find one. 

One other faint possibility:  Pyro used to make a small model of the USS Constellation.  But that kit represents (not very well) the sloop-of-war built in the 1850s - not the frigate of 1797.

Then there's the old Lindberg French frigate La Flore, which has been reissued fairly recently under the nonsensical label "Jolly Roger."  But it's pretty conspicuously French in a lot of ways.

The unfortunate truth is that plastic kit manufacturers have never made a serious effort to cover the subject of sailing ships at all comprehensively.  The number of sailing ships that are represented by plastic kits is, compared to the potential subjects, miniscule.   

Here is the model I bought: http://www.revell.com/germany/ships/80-5413.html

But it has too many guns for a 33 gun British frigate.  " From mid-century, a new fifth-rate type was introduced - the classic frigate, with no gun ports on the lower deck, and the main battery of from 26 to 30 guns disposed solely on the upper deck, although smaller guns were mounted on the quarterdeck and forecastle."  Something like this: http://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=5044

So what I want is on the order of 125 to 150 feet long. But the Ferdinand was 288 ft. Even though she looks a lot like the ship in Gregory Peck's 1951 film.

What do you suggest?

- Leelan