Return to modeling with the 1/96 Constitution

I did a web search and ended up running across my old plastic Constitution thread here, so I thought I'd pop by, even though I'm no longer working on the Revell kit now.  (I'm still using it as a reference, and it's a handy thing to have around.)

In some ways, I regret the decision, and almost wish I had opted to mast the plastic hull in wood and leave it at that.  In other ways, I'm glad I went all in.  I'm a woodworker, and as frustrating and time-consuming as it is, I'm loving this.  It isn't going tremendously well, in part due to problems with the bulkheads in the kit, and in part due to my inexperience, but even though it has problems, it's still really looking like something now that I've framed out and opened a few gun ports.

I'm modeling the ship in 2005, before the current level of restoration, because the MS kit is designed with high bulwarks and a high waist, and she had those features in 2005, but doesn't have them today.  I could lower the bulwarks and open the waist, but then I'd be responsible for too much research, and I have enough to do as it is.  She looked like that for much of her life, and there are early photos going back to about 1910 showing all the same features.  That's historical enough for me.

I was spending too much time preparing photos for web forums, and decided to streamline things.  I do daily photo dumps of my progress on a blog at Wordpress, if anyone is curious to see how it's going:

https://modelshipwright.wordpress.com/

Could be you're experiencing just the sense of the challenge.   Beautiful houses are built with a pile of material, not perfectly matched parts that can be assembled. I built them all my life. Real ships too were built from raw timbers, carefully fitted by the craftsmen builders, not a factory that produced parts. Kits are boxes of material.

Have fun with your build, that's what this hobby is all about.  

EJ

GMorrison

Very well and good, you have it in front of you and I do not. Looking at photos of the kit however, you may have gotten a bad run of laser cutting. In which case you could probably get replacements.

That was my first thought too.  I entered the build very cautiously, documenting these problems to the nearest 64th in detail.  The guys who have gotten some quite beautiful models out of this thing unanimously told me to just get over it and deal with it, because that's Model Shipways.  If I order new parts, I'll get them, and they will be just like these parts.  The problems with bulkhead B were documented all over the archives, and have existed since at least 2009, for example.

It's my fault for not doing my due diligence.  It's an eye opener.

I would love for the laser-cut parts to have been of better quality, but either way that's only maybe 25% of the parts you end up using.  Most of this is scratch built, and I have another eight pounds or so of raw lumber to turn into everything that's left on the build.

It's fantastically good advice to try to talk anyone out of attempting this build.  If you aren't certifiable, and an experienced woodworker, there is little chance of success.

Fortunately, I have 20 years of woodworking under my belt, and I'm a few bricks shy of a full load.

Very well and good, you have it in front of you and I do not. Looking at photos of the kit however, you may have gotten a bad run of laser cutting. In which case you could probably get replacements.

Exactly!  This build has reacquainted me with my long-lost friend, Lee Valley!  I've also dragged out a lot of dusty old friends, and I used a plane that was more than 100 years old to take shavings so thin you could read through them.  That's satisfying.

No, I won't eat my words on it being a lousy kit.  This my first ship, but this is not my first laser-cut wooden kit rodeo.  You want a good kit, buy a clock from Jeff and Marcie Schierenbeck. The holes will be round, and in the right places.  If you buy a plywood kit (though I think all his kits are MDF now), it will be high-quality, multi-ply plywood with a minimum of voids.  If you buy his plans, you can use them to make parts identical to the ones in the kits he sells.  The whole thing will not only assemble correctly and accurately, it will run, and even tell time!

If Model Shipways made the parts for Jeff's clocks, they wouldn't stand a chance.  Bulkhead B is totally different from the plans.  If you try to trace the plans to make a new one, do you use the profile on the starboard side or the port side, because they're different.  Every single one of the bulkheads is cut such that those ribs that protrude upwards from each bulkhead are significantly thinner on one side than the other.  The thin ribs are cut so thin the laser burns all the way through the core from both sides, so you have a fragile matrix of charred mush that breaks if you look at it too hard.  To get the bulkheads to fit into the false keel, I had to chisel out 1/16" or more of material from every single slot, because the plywood they used was obviously a lot thicker than the plywood they designed for.  The little holes that are supposed to align all the double thickness pieces are wallowed out on one side, so the alignment dowels are useless.

It just goes on an on with this kit.  I guarantee you if Jeff put his mind to making a laser-cut ship kit, it wouldn't take you a month to work through the many problems with the basic pre-cut framework!

Maybe Jeff caused me to have unrealistic expectations in model ship world, but if some guy in Wisconsin can do this in his basement.....

I find nearly any excuse to give me a reason to purchase a new tool appropriate.

It doesn't require a band saw.  You can make those cuts a hundred different ways.  I was going to use a scroll saw, which would have just barely worked, with enough patience and care.  I bought the band saw to save at least six hours of pure misery, and it was a beautiful investment toward that end.

Believe me, I'll find dozens of other uses for the band saw.  If I just needed a few cuts one time, I would have called the high school wood shop or something, or made the blocks out of balsa instead of using the basswood supplied in the kit.  I'm not insane, I'm just crazy.

Hey if you've spent $ 1000 for a kit that will take you 1,000 hours, you have no complaints. In the end it comes out right if you stick it out. I can't think of too many places where entertainment is that cheap. Hell, Comcast charges $ 3.99 for a 90 minute movie.

Eat your words on it being a lousy kit.

A lousy kit is one that cannot be made to be right. Not one that you can't make right.

About buying expensive tools, it's ok to outsource. Even Longridge had a shop make his metal gun barrels. Sometimes these kinds of projects take management.

That Model Shipways kit was designed for a particular market: people who have built lots of ship models before, have considerable familiarity with ship construction and nautical terminology, and are prepared to commit something over a thousand hours to a complex, advanced project. The company warns that it's on the "Advanced" level.

I haven't built it, but I frankly have trouble believing that it requires a band saw. At worst, it should be possible to buy pre-milled basswood to make those parts.

It sounds like you picked the wrong kit; we've all done that. But dont you think calling it "lousy" is going overboard?

Now that I'm a month into it, I agree completely the Model Shipways Constitution is NOT the one to start with.  It's completely crazy trying to make something out of this lousy kit, even with help from Bob Hunt.

I talked myself into diving off the high dive, because the money was going to come out about the same in the end, and I would have a better model to show for my work.  A month into it, it's clear the money is not going to come out the same in the end.  I'm into this thing over $1,000 now.  I had to buy a band saw to get through the filler blocks.  I picked up a few new goodies from Lee Valley too.  This project has swallowed my entire desk, and it's slowly turning my whole den into a secondary wood shop.

I made the right decision though.  This is a lot more fun than wrestling with badly molded plastic and nasty solvents.  This is wood, wood glue, shellac, brass, solder...  I speak this language well!  I also own a rope walk now, and have started making scale rope for the future, while I wait for glue to dry.

I'll let this thread I started drift back into limbo with the plastic kit I started, but I wanted to stop back and let everyone know that the crazy train hasn't derailed yet.

Wish you the best on your build, it is fun working out details and modifying a kit to a more correct appearance, I will be posting pic soon as I begin my build of a vintage 1976 Connie. cs.finescale.com/.../164251.aspx

On the subject of "the Sons of LIEberty" I couldn't agree more John, as soon as I saw a half drunk, young, athletic, single Sam Adams doing the rooftop to rooftop ninja thing I knew this series would be a disappointing fallacious joke and promptly turned it off. History as well documented as this should NEVER be glamorized and rewritten for dramatic effect, IMHO to was dramatic just the way it happened. And you are correct on Washington, he did not need to take territory, just keep the British fighting and spending money they did not have.

Dan

Thats the spirit, Arbs.

The thing about plastic is that its often hard to love "other peoples plastic", never know quite what you'll get. But working with good basic stock such as Evergreen, its amazing what can be stuck together in very little time.

Mixing up the years slightly sure makes for a different winter at Valley Forge.  This is what happens when you muddy up the details, instead of getting things right.  I'm sure that's your entire point about "Sons of Historical Inaccuracy" too.  I enjoyed it, but only because I don't know enough about the truth to see the huge holes in the story everywhere.  All I can really say is after reading the Morgan short biography of Franklin over the summer, that show's portrayal of that brilliant polymath doesn't seem very inspired.

Comparing the rebellion of the American colonies to Vietnam is a really interesting perspective, and I see your point.  In both wars, the superior side could take a hill, and it could take a city, but it couldn't break the spirit of the resistance.  The same thing happened to both the USSR and the US in Afghanistan too, don't you think?

It's amazing how the difference between a rebel and a patriot all depends on who wins in the end.

On a tangent, it's also amazing that everything in the heyday of European colonial expansion took place in an age before they had so much as the telegraph.  How difficult it must have been to rule an empire through ship's mail that took weeks to travel in both directions.

Back to the Constitution, the story of the copper bolts Paul Revere reworked really amazes me too.  As hard as it is to find just the right kind of fitting for a ship model surfing the collection of mostly bad 1990s looking web stores, that's utterly nothing compared to the challenge of buying several thousand bolts from England right after the war, by mail order.  For one thing, you'd have to know to whom to write your initial letter of inquiry, and I'd expect the entire negotiation to take upwards of six months.  It is SO much easier being able to click a link, or in those unavoidable cases, pick up a telephone!

Jumping subjects again, for that matter, I really wonder at the Hull model.  Those were a bunch of most likely illiterate sailors floating around on a ship with very limited resources at their disposal.  Where did they come up with the hammock crane irons?  Those parts are quite beautiful on the Hull model, and much better than anything I've seen in brass photo-etch or plastic, though I'm thinking they may be slightly over-scale.

Maybe they cast parts like that out of lead or something.  I wouldn't be surprised.

And anyway, I've continued working on the plastic Connie in spite of myself.  I glued up the major mast and yard components, as though I intended to paint them.  Maybe I will.

I also bought the Lauck Street Shipyard practicum, and got access to Bob's private forum where several modelers have builds in various stages of completion.  Several of them are quite gorgeous, and quite inspiring.  It seems to take people 1.5 to 5 years just to complete the hull, and I will likely be on the longer end of that time scale.  When I take breaks to escape the frustration, I will probably work on the plastic Connie in spite of myself, and I may even mast and rig it as a smaller scale dry run for the major event.

On the one hand, things go together and look like something faster in plastic, and on the other, I don't find plastic at all agreeable to work.  I will probably never do another plastic ship after this; assuming I get the Connie together eventually.

I'm really enjoying myself.  I'm finally pulling myself out of a very major depression, and I'm enjoying the camaraderie around here.  I wish all of you the very best.

We have the temperature records for Philadelphia in the winter of 1777-1778 (the Valley Forge winter). The temperature only dropped below 32 degrees a few times.

That doesn't detract from the Americam Continental Army's tremendous endurance feat in surviving for as long as it did.

Lots of military critics have criticized George Washington. They point out that he only won one real battle (Yorktown, where most of the forces under his command were French).

Others (including me) see Washington as a military genius. He understood, as few if any others did, the unique nature of that war. Fighting battles and capturing geographic objectives didn't matter much in the long run. The British took just about every significant city in the American colonies. But as long as the Continental Army existed, the war would continue - and the longer it continued, the harder it would be for the British to win.

I always tell my students that the predicament the British were in during the Revolution was remarkably similar to what the U.S. confronted in Vietnam.

Statistically, in one important sense the Revolutionary War was the second most expensive war in American history. It wiped out about one percent of the country's population. The Civil War killed about two percent. No other conflict has come close.

I think that vital, moving story deserves to be told a lot better than "Sons of Liberty" told it.

I'm embarrassed to admit that though I live in North Carolina, I've only been to the NC Transportation at Spencer Shops once. It's a great place but it's about four hours from where we live. One of these days, though....

"Sons of Liberty" was junk, but it still put me in the mood to start digging into early American history, so it was a good thing.  I never paid that much attention back in school, and I didn't really appreciate the level of sacrifice that went into that war.  The other night I was unloading gasoline in the snow in -10 F weather with my breath forming ice in my beard, and I was feeling pretty miserable and sorry for myself, and then I remembered that first winter at Valley Forge.  Most of our troops didn't have SHOES, and that was one of the coldest winters in recorded history.  What the hell am I whining about in my thermal over-alls, my thermal underwear, my insulated boots, my heavy socks, my heavy coat?

Plus it put me onto tall ships again.  I always had a thing for tall ships and steam locomotives.  (On other news, Norfolk Southern decided to restore the N&W Class J #611 again, and she's just passed the boiler test after extensive and tedious renovation in Spencer, NC.  It won't be long now before she's under steam again, and I will be able to schedule a suitable vacation and pay some money to see her and ride behind her at last!  I reached a point in life when I had enough money to do this last time around just as they shut the steam program down.)

John,

I completely agree with you about Sons of Liberty.  That said . . .

I lament the disappearance of solid hull kits from Model Shipways.  Many of us don't seem to realize that solid hulls are generally more accurate than plank-on-bulkhead hulls.  The operative word is "bulkhead" not frames.  In POB kits, the bulkheads are spread farther apart than the frames planned into the original ship, causing a certain amount of distortion in the final shape.  That is one of the most egregious problems with the HECEPOB kits from Europe.  In solid hull models, the hull is shaped according to the plans as if the frames were  build in.  There is very little distortion in the final shape of the manufactured hull.  At least Bluejacket continues to manufacture solid hull kits!

Bill

I suspect quite a few retailers have it. I like to buy direct from Model Expo for a couple of reasons. First, the company is up front about whether an item is in stock or not. (Many online retailers aren't.) Second, Model Expo has sales all the time. At the moment it's selling everything at 41% off. That means the Flying Fish, for instance, is $218 cheaper at Model Expo right now than at Freetime Hobbies (a fine retailer that I trust completely).

oldmodelkits.com has a Sultana right now for $85. Not bad. But not as good as the $59 it would cost (41% off of $99.95) at Model Expo - if the kit wasn't out of stock. 

I have a suspicion that Model Shipways is on the verge of abandoning the solid hull.  There are only four solid-hull kits left in its line (the Phantom, the Harriet Lane, the Sultana, and the tugboat Taurus). All of them are out of stock most of the time. (Right now the only one in stock is the Harriet Lane.) I've heard that the problem is finding a supplier that can turn out such hulls to a consistent, high standard - but that's a rumor.

I'm working on a fishing schooner based on the MS Elsie. The machine-carved hull in that kit is beautiful. It's now gone from the Model Expo catalog; I'm glad I bought it when I did.

On another subject - in arborvitiem's biography he brings up the History Channel miniseries "Sons of Liberty." That struck a nerve. I've ranted enough about it in another Forum thread ( http://www.finescale.com/fsm/general_discussion/f/50/t/163939.aspx?sort=ASC&pi240=1 ), so I won't start on it here. I guess a lot of people liked it. I'm sorry, but I thought it was junk - and in some cases even offensive. I don't believe that making history palatable to a general audience requires demonizing historical figures who don't deserve it.

Sultana was my first.  That model can be found regularly on eBay if Model Shipways doesn't have it.

Bill

I agree with every single thing you just said.  That's why I've never built a wooden ship model.

Nevertheless, once I looked at that kit, I just couldn't help myself.  If I achieve this, I will be tripping over my ego everywhere I walk, and if I fail, nobody could have expected otherwise.

If it weren't for morons like me, responsible modelers wouldn't have kits to buy.

Regarding turned wood spars - I just did a post in another thread offering my own opinions (for what they're worth) on the subject:  cs.finescale.com/.../1800045.aspx . It's entirely possible to turn wood spars to 1/96 scale - and considerably smaller - if you use the right kind of wood.

I built several 1/96 Constitutions and Cutty Sarks when I was much younger, and I don't recall having any trouble with the plastic spars. But that was a long time ago. In recent years I've read lots of horror stories about Revell's (and Heller's) quality control when it comes to styrene quality: soft, rubbery plastic, warped parts, etc. I can certainly sympathize with anybody who feels obliged to replace the plastic parts with wood ones

I certainly agree with Bill that any ship modeling project needs to be a labor of love. If you like eighteenth-century ships, take a look at the Model Shipways Pride of Baltimore, or Rattlesnake, or Fair American, or Niagara, or Syren. In all honesty, none of them would be my first recommendation as a starter kit, but they aren't as elaborate as the Constitution.

The kit I like best as a starter for eighteenth-century enthusiasts is the solid-hull Model Shipways Sultana. But it's been marked "out of stock" for months. I think MS is having trouble getting a supplier of good machine-carved hulls.

I would also add to John's "sermon" that you the builder should also be interested in the ship you are modeling.  Many modelers start with something simple for which they have no interest, and end up with a partially started lump of wood or plastic.  Look at your interests; if there is a simpler kit of something you like, learn on that. You will finish it and grow from there.

Bill

Have you ever built a wood ship model before? If not, I have to say in all honesty that the Model Shipways Constitution is NOT the one to start with.

You obviously have high standards. To build that model to those standards would take at least four or five years. We all (or nearly all of us) improve in our modeling skills over time - and newcomers improve faster than veterans. I'll guarantee that by year three of the project, the stuff you did in year one won't look acceptable to you.

It's a well-known fact that almost none of the wood kits of that complexity ever get built. (For that matter, the number of Revell 1/96 kits that get finished is miniscule. And how many people in this Forum have actually laid eyes on a completed Heller Victory? I haven't.)

Incidentally - I'm a big fan of Model Shipways, and I'm sure that kit is an excellent one - IF you're trying to build a model of the ship as she appeared at the time Mr. Langford drew the plans. (That was several years ago; it's a safe bet that some details of her have changed since then. But it has its limits. One that bothers me: the guns on the lower deck are "dummies" - stubs of barrels that plug into holes in pieces of wood behind the ports. I've got real problems with that approach on such a big scale. (You can download the instruction book and parts list from the Model Expo website. Note the thirty "dummy cannon barrels" on the parts list.)

I've said this before in this Forum, to the point that I'm sure longtime members are sick of reading it. If you want to get into wood ship modeling, that's great. But start with something less ambitious. There are quite a few nice kits on the market that can be built very nicely in a few months. It makes so much more sense to start with one of those (and have a nice model to be proud of in a reasonable amount of time) than to dive in the deep end and not come up.

In another thread on a similar subject (I think the newcomer in question was talking about building the world's most detailed model of the Titanic), another experienced member used the well-known modeler's expression KISS - "Keep It Simple, Stupid." I've never quite had the nerve to say that directly to anybody, but the sentiment is a wise one.

That, as I say, is advice I've given many times - and most people ignore it. I don't know how many members of this Forum, in the years I've been taking part in it, have tackled enormously sophisticated and time-consuming projects as their first sailing ship kits. So far as I'm aware, NONE of those models has ever been finished.

End of sermon.

Wow, I am insane!  I bought the kit on a whim more than a plan, spent a goodly number of hours cutting and sorting parts in preparation to begin working in earnest, and then I let my perfectionist demon possess me.  I said something about this in my initial post.  I'll get it built if I don't cripple myself by raising the bar too high, or something to that effect.

While I was researching some bit of something, I had the misfortune to stumble across the Model Shipways kit.  Compare it to the street view walkthrough the Navy put up (or your memories, for those of you lucky enough to have seen her in person), and it compares very favorably.  The transom in its current state isn't very pretty, and there are a lot of issues relative to any historical period for the ship, but the one historical period I can model with a high degree of certainty is the history of her most recent voyage, under the few sails that actually exist for her.  I have reference material up the gazoo, and it's a million times easier than back when I was photographing railroad equipment with a film camera and working from small prints.

Once I saw that, I went to war with myself.  Where do I spend the money?  Where do I spend the time?  Where do I compromise?  The old Revell kit has a lot going for it, but that Model Shipways kit is absolutely gorgeous to my eye, and my eyes are the ones I need to make happy here.

In the end, I think curiosity won out over everything else.  Can I actually turn a 12-pound box of basswood, brass, and Britannia metal into a ship?

Probably not, but what the hell.  Looking at pictures of the kit is like looking into the future.  Until you've gotten your hands on it and tried to build it, what do you really know?  And then, of course, you've spent a large sum of money.

When/if you replace the masts, make sure to eyeball the actual shapes the masts take on--they are seldom simply round.  Significant portions of the masts are square and octagonal.  Topmasts often have a "heel" of sorts where they seat in the crosstrees.  Which means you may need a rectangular bit of stock to cut a given mast from.

One nice thing, though--you can cut the angled slot for the hoisting sheave in the foot of the topmast.  When the topmast was unstepped a tackle was temporarily bent on to heave the mast up to get the fid out.  (A person could model the fid, too--except it's generally buried under model-scale shroud eyes laid over the mast top.

The gunport issue remains a thorny one.  You did not address what I find to be the most vexing issue in the gunport area--the thickness of the hull.  The plastic hull is around .005" maybe 1/16" thick.  The actual hull is 18-20" thick around the gunports; that would be about 3/16" thick, a significant difference.  There's no one way to address that.  Though, we have some painstaking ways to achieve this illustrated in this forum.

Arborvitian,

     I enjoy the research more than the build. Don't forget to search this site for photos of the Isaac Hull Constitution model. Hope that helps.

It looks dramatically better than the last one I built!

You have a very valid point about the attention span issue.  Right now, it's winter, and business is slow, so I have some free time.  In a few months, I will be working 70 hours a week, and I will never touch this thing.  Will I pick it up again next winter?

Maybe.

I found a guy who made a wheel out of wood, and that looks like something I could possibly pull off one better than that guy did.

Shrug.  At this point I'm amusing myself just doing the research and making plans.  It may be all I ever end up doing.  If so, I've spent more money on less entertaining things before.

Arborvitian,

     If you're anything like me, if your project isn't done in a reasonable time (like maybe a year and a half) you'll lose interest in the build and it will never be finished. I've only built one sailing ship and I think it came out great. Many here stressed that the rigging either makes or breaks any build. I took that advice to heart. I don't know, you might have more spare time and concentration/focus than i do but I'd be overwhelmed trying to correct everything you want to do.

    I wish you only success. These are photos of my Constitution I built in '05. Lots of fun but a lot of work. Even at this point I could have worked another year on it, but I had enough.

I'll see what seems like less work, and after I try drilling out a couple of these, scratch building will probably win out.  Even the fife rails aren't that complicated.