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u.s.s. constitution rigging

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  • Member since
    December 2006
u.s.s. constitution rigging
Posted by mosiercar on Sunday, December 31, 2006 6:29 PM

the u.s.s. constitution is my first ship build ever, it's a 1:96 scale and i am not looking forward to the rigging, but i am determined to do it right, so if their are any pointers anyone could give me to make it any easier i would be in your debt.

  • Member since
    December 2005
Posted by MagicSteve on Monday, January 1, 2007 10:31 AM

The big revell constitution is not a good choice for first ships.  I know because it was my first sail ship.  There is just so much of everything, so much rigging it is not funny.  If you can I definitly would recommend trying a couple smaller ships first so you can learn rigging before attempting the constitution.  So you know, It took me about a year to rig mine.  OK here is my advice.

Get some good drawings and references of how the rigging goes on a real ship.  this will make it much easier to know how things should look and how things should go together.

Ditch the shrouds , deadeyes and lanyards.  Use some aftermarket stuff and scratch build.

Put together some sort of rope walk to make your ropes.  thread and embrodery yarn leave a lot to be desired.

Pay particular attention to the channels belaying pins fife rails etc.  these will have to be strong and if you can figure out a way to attache the ropes to them and maintain good tension is very important.  some people drill a very small hole behind the belaying pin and tie off to the rail instead of the pins.

Install the gun trucks without the cannon.  The cannon can be installed after the rigging is done and this will avoid the difficulty of having a cannon, truck and all rattling arround the gun deck.

Down the forum is a guy requsting to be stuck with a fork.  His rigging work looks excellent.  It is definitly worth a look. 

Good luck and patience.  You are in for a big challenge attempting this kit as a first sail ship.

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Monday, January 1, 2007 9:41 PM
I'll second all of MagicSteve's points - especially the first one.

Two factors make this a bad choice for a newcomer to sailing ship modeling. First, as MagicSteve pointed out, it's a large, extremely elaborate subject whose rigging involves a great deal of repetition. Second, though it is in most respects an excellent kit, it's also an extremely old one. (It was originally released in 1965.)Some of the details on it (the carvings on the bow and stern, for instance) can stand comparison with any kit on the market. But there are big fit problems with the major deck components, and the manufacturer's insistance on making everything out of plastic brings some potential headaches. (Styrene is wonderful stuff, but it has its limits. It's a wretched material for such things as belaying pins, eyebolts, and hammock netting stanchions). This Forum is also full of complaints that recent issues of the kit are marred by warped parts, flash, and all sorts of other evidence that the molds are more than forty years old.

My usual first suggestion to newcomers who buy this kit (a suggestion that usually gets ignored, of course) is: practice first on something less elaborate. Pick a vessel with one or two masts, and less rigging. Get a feel for what rigging is like. Learn the vocabulary, and the characteristics of the various materials. Ship model rigging is full of fairly steep, but fairly short, learning curves. So use a smaller ship to learn to tie the necessary knots, seizings, and other rope work; learn how to set up a row of deadeyes on a ship with two or three shrouds per mast per side, rather than eight. Spend a few weeks building a relatively small ship in a relatively large scale, considering that project an investment in the model you really want to build.

Here's a link to a Forum thread that, in my opinion, demonstrates an excellent way to break into this phase of the hobby: /forums/1/582090/ShowPost.aspx#582090 The kit in question is the old Pyro fishing schooner Gertrude L. Thebaud, currently being sold under the Lindberg label with the deceptive name "American Cup Defender." The gentleman who built it spent quite a few months on it - presumably because his schedule wouldn't let him work on it many hours per week. If he'd been putting in time on it every evening, I suspect he could have finished it in three or four weeks. As is obvious from the photos in that thread, the finished product is an outstanding model - despite the fact that the builder was a newcomer (or nearly so). Consider all the skills he picked up in the course of that project. Now he knows how to do rigging - and, as a by-product, he has a first-rate model of a beautiful and important ship to display in his living room. (I do hope he's gotten a case for it by now!)

The plastic sailing ship kit market, unfortunately, is in terrible condition at the moment, and the number of good, widely-available kits for newcomers is depressingly small. In addition to the Thebaud (aka "American Cup Racer"), some that I can recommend are the Pyro/Lindberg "Independence War Schooner" (actually a Morris-class American revenue cutter from the 1830s), the Pyro/Lindberg "Civil War Blockade Runner" (actually the steam revenue cutter Harriet Lane), the Academy (ex-Aurora) fishing schooner Bluenose, and the much more recent medieval cog from the Russian manufacturer Zvezda. I haven't seen the last-named one in the flesh, but on the basis of photos it looks like a near-ideal starter for somebody breaking into sailing ship modeling - and a potentially beautiful one as well.

I suspect somebody will add a post to this thread saying something like "ignore those old phogies and dive into your Constitution with both feet. Don't worry about what the experts think of your model; all that matters is that you're happy with it." In several ways I agree; I am firmly of the opinion that the most important - and, indeed, only important - critic of a hobbiest's ship model is the modeler him/herself. But I've seen too many people get discouraged, and give up on the hobby, because they picked one of those big, elaborate kits to start. I used to work in a hobby shop, and anybody who's done that will tell you that the vast majority of big sailing ship kits - plastic or wood - never get finished. It makes far more sense to invest a few hours in a nice model of a less elaborate subject first.

Good luck.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

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