bonhomme richard

Nice start 

yes thats what i was thinking,strip plastic,also using the testors contour putty on the way out of scale wood grain.

Try to find Gunze Sangyo "Mr. Surfacer", the thicker stuff is "500". It's almost a liquid putty. Wonderful stuff that aircraft modelers swear by to smooth things over.

      No one really knows what the actual BON HOMME RICHARD looked like, but after exhaustive studies of mid-18th century French East Indianman, the BON HOMME RICHARD  probably looked like the above drawing and model.

          Hope this helps you on your project.

                        Montani semper liberi !   Happy modeling to all and every one of you.

                                                Crackers                        

I am another who will be following your progress. I'm another old fogey returning to the hobby. I have the BHR in my pile, though will try to get an OOB or two out of the way before I tackle it. Any info or especially pictures will be appreciated.

got the gunports cut out,addedthe shelves for the guns and almost ready to takle the frames for the windows,thinking ahead i have an biography of john paul jones and according to it he had the ship painted black to hide its gunports,is this correct? do they mean the entire hull above the waterline,?

I will also be reading how you are doing as I have the same ship. Might be a little much for my frist one in 30 year's. But what I have been seeing on this form there is a lot of help here.

       Here's more pictures that might help you for your modeling construction.

            Montani semper liberi !     Happy modeling to all and every one of you.

                           Crackers                

Thanks, they will help a lot.

Anybody happen to know if the Revell release has the thick, injection molded sails that the Aurora kit had?  Those things molded directly to the yards are terrible!

It does. But the time it takes to make new yards will be more than saved by the time saved by using the precast shroud/ ratline assemblies.

personally.i have no problem with the injected sails, i thinned the edges down and i think they look fine,i know some people will have a problem with that but thats ok everyone is entitled to thier opinion,the shrouds are unusable i already threw them out,will make my own.

just finished scratchbuilding the gallery and transom,found frames in the parts box from a heller victory, sheet plastic,rod and strip, ill have the hull painted soon, sorry no pictures i dont have acsess to a camera, i think ill be able to get a picture taken when its totally finished.

im wondering what coler the open hatches on the inside of the gunports should be?  red?

That would be my vote - the gun ports should be red on the inside just like the gundeck bulwarks.  I'm guessing that red pigments in the 1700's had a healthy dose of iron oxide in them, so would go for an "Oxide red" color (dark reddish-orange).

i have painted everything above the waterline black,gunport doors red on the inside,im thinking of doing the window frames in white unless someone knows a more accurate coler?

Interested in this kit. Is it based on French East Indiaman?

Felix C.

Interested in this kit. Is it based on French East Indiaman?

Not really.  I'm not sure what it's based on - if anything.  By most definitions it doesn't qualify as a "scale model" - without a great deal of work.

We had a fairly lengthy discussion of this kit here in the Forum a couple of months ago.  For some reason or other that thread's been deleted.  (My senile memory doesn't remember exactly why; I do remember thinking the moderators were probably right in deleting it.  I have a vague recollection that the thread wandered off track and got personal.)  The general consensus was that the kit (which is, in fact, a reissue of an old Aurora one from the 1960s) was based on an old, poorly-researched set of plans that probably originated in the 1930s or thereabouts.  In terms of detail and accuracy it's one of the weakest kits Aurora ever did - and Aurora was never known as a serious ship specialist.

Anybody who tackles this old fossil and tries to turn it into a serious model has my respect and best wishes.  But it most definitely does not represent the current state of the art in plastic sailing ship models - and it didn't represent the state of the art forty years ago.  I can't recommend it.

Thanks. I searched and could not find the thread. I wondered what is was based on. I have the Jean Boudriot book on the BHR and it does not appear as the kit.

There is indeed scarcely any resemblance between the Aurora/Revell kit and M. Boudriot's plans.  (The drawing and model photos that Crackers posted earlier, incidentally, are from, and based on, that set.)

Two points do need to be made in Aurora's defense, I guess.  One - M. Boudriot is the reigning expert on scholarship of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French navy, but he would be the first to emphasize that his reconstruction of the Bonhomme Richard is a reconstruction.  Nobody knows what she actually looked like.  Two - Mr. Boudriot's book and plans were published long after the original release of the Aurora kit.

since you guys brought the thread up, i thought i would bring thoses interested up to date, decks painted and installed, all thats left are the,masts, sails, riggin, yes im still goin with the injected sails! gasps of horror! theres no way i could repeat this model, way much parts box and plastic stok used.

Can you post some pics?

Folks:

My LHS had a couple of the kits in stock, so despite all of it's limitations, I bought one.  I did feel a bit like Charlie Brown carrying home the sparse, unwanted Christmas Tree.

Some good news though.  In looking at the kit in person and comparing the kit to the Swedish reconsruction of the East Indiaman Gotheborg, the kit does have the general proportions right even if it probably does not really represent a French East Indiaman of 1760 vintage.  After looking at the Gotheborg, I felt a lot better about the general proportions of the kit.

By the way, at books.google.com you can download a PDF of the "Old East Indiamen" which is pretty interesting account of the operations and ships of the East India Company.

I'm going to build the BHR as a generic East Indiaman - I'm working up a build plan now but thinking that mods to the kit will include opening up the waist hatch (presently covered by a soild grating), mounting a small deck below and mounting some beams across the waist to mount ships boats, and planking in a good stretch of the quarterdeck (I have a bunch of parts from an old Airfix Victory kit that I picked up a few years ago that had everything except the hull).

Will post details and pictures as I proceed.  Work is interfering with my hobbies again, so it may take a bit.

Mike 

Hi Mike,

having looked at the model from the Revell box photos (https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10119063 ) I think you could make a massive single improvement to this rather toy-like model by removing the hideous carbuncle the manufacturer attached to the stern- undoubtedly the weakest area of the kit in my opinion. A stern more in keeping with the scale of the hull (and alluding in it's style to your intended nationality of the ship) should make a big difference with minimal effort.

Will

      The U.S. and French navies are to join in an expedition to search for the BONHOMME RICHARD which sank off Filey Bay in 1779.

     The American based Ocean Technology Foundation believes it could be the best chance for the two navies to provide state-of-the-art sonar systems on an oceanographic survey ship carrying underwater research vehicles and divers.

   Previous expeditions have eliminated a 400 square mile area where the BONHOMME RICHARD was thought to be.  Additional historical data have been refined  to surmise where the ship drifted before it sank.

    The search for the historic vessel, which engaged the H.M.S. SERAPIS, have been conducted for more than 30 years without much success. It is hoped this expedition, with its array of more technical equipment , will have better results than in the past.

      Montani semper liberi !      Happy modeling to all and every one of you.

                                   Crackers                   

I read that the interior bulkhead of the gun deck was painted dark red. Historical reasoning: crew wouldn't be unnerved by the bloodshed stains from surface battles. Hope this helps

Rustyboat

I read that the interior bulkhead of the gun deck was painted dark red. Historical reasoning: crew wouldn't be unnerved by the bloodshed stains from surface battles. Hope this helps

But on an entirely different tack ,one of the docents leading a tour of the USS Constitution said that the inner surfaces of the bulwarks on the main deck were painted green to remind the sailors of fields of green grass.

You take 6 tours and you'll likely get a dozen answers

Recent research has established pretty firmly that, in most European navies, red was used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a general-purpose primer.  The story of using it to camouflage blood has been around for a long time, and may, I suppose, have some truth to it; apparently red ochre paint was cheap and durable, and if it hid bloodstains, so much the better.  In any case, the general consensus is that it was usually a dull, medium to dark shade of "red ochre," rather than really bright red.

It's well established that green, as a color for the insides of bulwarks and miscellaneous deck furniture, was coming into popularity by about the time of the War of 1812.  That line about it reminding sailors of grass is a new one to me.

Once, quite a few years ago when I was taking a tour of the Constitution, a sailor announced that the berth deck was called that because when the ship was in port the sailors' wives and girl friends frequently had babies on it.  Don't believe everything you hear on such occasions.

Tango,

I am very interested in any plans you might have used in your conversion.

Thanks!

Bill Morrison