Well, ok... Barbary pirates...
A couple weeks ago, found a modeller who has about 2.5 Gig on his hardrive, containing nothing but plans. Plans he ordered, plans he collected etc.
So after chatting a bit, he sent me me a couple of plans he had found on the internet a while ago and that seemed not too difficult to try something I've had in my mind for a time.
My plan was to built a ship model without purchasing anything, using only thins that I had on my attick (lucky I've got a lot of junk there).
So, after printing the file he had emailed me I had this :
About half an hour later and using some of my sons glue, this was the result :
I know, that with the scarse information on the drawings, this will not qualify as a scale model, but hey it's a model, it's a ship and it's gonna be made of wood.
So, what is it ? It's a Xebec, a type of ship that had evolved from the galley and was used by many (mediterranian) nations, and by the infamous Barbary pirates. Since my little ship isn't going to be a scale model of one of the known ships from that type, I've choosen to built it as a ship that could have been used by pirates.
So, the next step was to collect wood from the attick, and I was lucky, I had plywood in the required thickness : 3mm.
So, I could actually start building my first wooden scratchbuild-job...
On this picture you can get more or less an idea of how small the ship is.
Starting to sand the bulkheads, I realized how flexible the false keel was, being made of only 3mm plywood, so I decided to stuff the spaces between the bulkhead with some scratch balsa I had leftover from my years of rc aviation.
And this next picture brings us, where the project is at the moment. This is the result of only a couple of days (well actually only a couple of hours a day) work.
The next step will be de decks and the whales.