First ship building attempt.

Scour these forums for hints and tips and also checkout "modelwarships.com" for specialist ship-building advice. I wouldnt even consider paint without research from other modellers.
Hope this helps

A great choice for a first effort: a small vessel on a large scale. Helpful hint number one: have fun with it. Number two: learn from the experience. Number three: real skipjacks are among the prettiest, and simultaneously among the filthiest, boats afloat.

I used to work at the Mariners' Museum, in Newport News, Virginia. There's a skipjack model there that started out as the Model Shipways kit. It was started by a superb modeler named Marvin Bryant, who worked at the museum for many years but had his activities cut short by a stroke that left his right side paralyzed. He managed to build the hull of that model with his left hand. We ran into deadline trouble toward the end of the project, and I did the sails and rigging. I also did the figurehead and trailboards, on which I made a fool of myself. I spent hours making an elaborate, "realistic" eagle's head (out of Milliput), and meticulously painting the details of the trailboards. At that time I'd never seen a real Skipjack. When I got around to doing so, I realized that such a figurehead (with gold paint on it, no less) was ridiculously out of place on such a vessel.

When the model was almost finished I showed it to Robert Burgess, one of the world's authorities on Chesapeake Bay working craft. He said: "I've only got one question: why isn't there a horseshoe on the bowsprit bitt?" I found such a horseshoe, in the right scale, in a Historex military miniature kit. The open end goes up (so the luck won't run out).

I was happy with how the furled sails came out. The basic material I used was "silkspan" tissue - the kind that hobby shops sell to balsa airplane modelers. My personal trick is to mix up a batch of Polyscale (acrylic) paint in an appropriate, slightly brownish pale grey, and mix it with a roughly equal amount of Elmer's glue. I then brush the resulting concoction, dilluted to a suitable consistency with water, on the tissue paper and let it dry. Then I cut it to the full-size shape of the sail, with about 1/8" around the edges for a hem. I glue a piece of thread (for a "boltrope") around the edge, then fold over the hem to hold the thread in place (sticking everything with Elmer's again). Then I rig the sail to the model. Then comes the remarkable part. When I touch the sail with a water-dampened brush, the glue softens up but the paint doesn't. The sail acquires the consistency of a piece of rubber, so it can be furled up in really convincing, scale-like wrinkles and bundles. And when the water evaporates it will be stiff and surprisingly durable.

The MS instruction book is excellent, and contains some good references. For a few good color pictures (with some ideas on weathering), try the National Geographic. There are pictures of skipjacks in the October, 1980 and August, 1991 issues.

If you get a chance, take a trip to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and see the real thing. There aren't many skipjacks left; if you don't look at them soon, you may be too late. There's also a beautifully preserved skipjack at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, in St. Michael's. But be warned: if you visit that place, you're liable to want to build a bugeye, a log canoe, and a deadrise to go with the skipjack.

ol'roy

jtilley What a fantastic post!

Cheers, Andy!

Excellent post and a great subject to model. The Mariner's Museum is a fantastic place. The Crabtree collection is priceless. The skipjack is indeed a dying breed but their modelers are still going strong. Welcome to FSM oldboyroy, this is the kind of stuff you can expect to find from the forum, good advice from people who know what they are talking about.

Many thanks for the nice responses to my post of yesterday. I like to talk about skipjacks. Better not to get me started on the Crabtree models, which were the bane of my existence for three years. My horror stories range from long-distance arguments with Mrs. Crabtree to the memorable day when we found a colony of termites in one of the Crabtree cases. Like I said - let's not go there.

Incidentally, I heard recently that the Mariners' Museum has discontinued its famous once-every-five-years ship model competition. I have mixed emotions about that. I was a competitor in the first such contest (back in 1980), wrote most of the rules that were used in subsequent ones, and served as a judge in the 1995 one. It was a great stimulus to ship modeling. But I was utterly appalled when the museum started charging an entry fee of $50.00 per model. That was a perversion of the original concept: that it would be a hard competition to win, but an easy one to enter. Various developments at that museum have caused me to quite visiting it in recent years.

I visited it in November for the first time in seven years. It has vastly improved its exhibits and the opportunity to see the turret and engine of USS Monitor is almost a religious experience ( I disobeyed the rules and touched the anchor) . But you are right about charging 50 smackers to enter a model, that killed it I am sure. I am not sure what developments you are referring to, but they must be ones an insider must be in on. Termites in a display case?? That's a good one!

I don't know anything about the discontinuation of the Mariners' Museum model competition other than rumors; I am out of the loop where that institution is concerned. My impression, though, is that the entry fee had nothing to do with what happened. According to the rumor that reached me, the decision originated with a newly-appointed curator who didn't think the competition was consistent with the museum's mission. As I understand it, that individual left shortly afterward; the position is currently vacant. The applicants for it won't include me.

The Great Termite Incident was, indeed, a minor highlight of my time at the Mariners' Museum - exceeded in both spectacle and amusement value, however, by The Day The Polaris Missile Fell Over. That one really belongs in the history books.

The weapon in question was a prototype, with no warhead. It stood in a courtyard of the museum, where it could only be seen through the windows of the director's office. One fateful day the Board of Trustees decided the missile needed to take up residence elsewhere on the grounds, so the courtyard could be landscaped. The problem was that the only way out was through a tunnel through the basement under one wing of the museum.

The Registrar found out (via a phone call to the missile manufacturer) just how much the thing weighed, and further research established that a local crane company had a crane that (a) had just enough capacity to lift the missile, and (b) would, when riding on a lowboy trailer, fit through the tunnel with about three inches to spare. On the missile manufacturer's recommendation, the Registrar (who, to be fair, handled this whole fiasco in the most professional manner imaginable) rigged up a big canvas sling that wrapped around the missile and could be hooked to the crane.

The great day arrived, the crane and the lowboy rolled through the tunnel, and the Registrar's crew hooked up the sling. The crane operator fired up his engine and took the strain. He then gunned the engine to lift the missile off its concrete base. Nothing happened. He revved up the engine to its max and tried again. The missile lifted about a foot off the ground, whereupon it and the crane both started to sway back and forth. The crane operator jumped for his life, the missile and the crane fell over with a crash that could be heard throughout Tidewater Virginia, and about ten tons of rainwater came pouring out of the missile.

I tell my students nowadays that, whatever else may be said about working in a museum, when you get to work in the morning you have no idea what's going to happen before you go home.

Welcome, I'll leave you in these guys knowledgable hands.

Welcome to ship modeling. The best advice is to just have fun and do what comes to your mind. Painting a wood ship is an avanues with a lot of leeway (pun). You can just stain it, which is what I did with my old Skipjack, or you can paint it like you paint a house, with a coat a primer and then your color coat. In fact, I like using latex because it can be custom mixed, is cheap, easy to work with and safe for wood.

Welcome OldRoy!

I agree with the advice already given, you've chosen a sensible model in a good scale. Have fun with it, and please come back with any other questions as well as photos of course.

Regards,
Bruce

Jtilley:
Great tip on furling sails. I like to do that too as in my opinion ships on display bases just don't somehow look right under full sail, or the sails don't look right, or the deck is obscured, or all three! I haven't tried that method but it sounds good. Although I'm working on plastic warships at the moment I'll give this a try for the lifeboat sails that I'll be including.
Regards,
Bruce

RE furled sails - On smaller subjects (e.g., lifeboats), try lens tissue from a photography store. It has a texture similar to silkspan, but is considerably thinner.

The hem with the "bolt rope" inside it isn't authentic, of course, but if you're careful in how you bundle up the sail it won't show. Without the "bolt rope" the edge of the "sail" is extremely vulnerable to tearing.

This material is thin, but not thin enough to be to scale. Many modelers (and marine artists, for that matter) make furled sails into bundles that are far too big. In a real ship, the bundle made by a furled sail is about the same diameter as the yard - or even a bit smaller - and generally slightly fatter in the middle than at the ends (thought that depends to some extent on the configuration of the clewlines). The solution is to make the model scale considerably shallower than the actual scale dimension. Jibs and staysails are trickier, but cutting the after edge in a rather radical curve helps.

Maybe you already knew all this. But a fellow furled sail enthusiast is a rather rare find.

QUOTE: Originally posted by jtilley The solution is to make the model scale considerably shallower than the actual scale dimension.

scale = sail?

QUOTE: But a fellow furled sail enthusiast is a rather rare find.

Too true - I normally leave the #*%@^ things off....

Cheers, Andy!

Yea verily, scale=sail. I don't suffer from Alzheimer's (yet), but Halfzeimer's raises its ugly head now and then. Sorry about that.

Yes, when I furl my sails I usually make them about 1/3 to 1/2 the full height to achieve a proper scale bundle. I also include the boltropes (usually scrap threads because they won't be worked or seen) as well as the running rigging.

For the lifeboats on my corvette I'm planning to leave the tarpaulin cover off one to show the interior, which would include the mast and sail bundled up under the thwarts as well as the other usual baggage.

My tugboat carried a mix of dinghys and Newfoundland dories, but that is not off the drafting board yet.
Regards,
Bruce