So, I've decided to move forward with converting the Lindberg “Jolly Roger,” formerly the La Flore, into the HMS Surprise. As reference material, I’ve looked thru the handful of threads on this forum, as well as Don Ferguson’s gallery on ModelWarships.com.
I still have the 1:96 USS Constitution in the stash, and will tackle that at some point, but I’m more emotionally drawn to the Surprise, and really like the idea of working thru this conversion and mentally moving into and throughout the ship during the process.
So, the first big step is to cut out a hull section. As I sit here today, I can tell you that the proper process, gleaned from numerous journals (particularly Sumpter250’s) looks something like this:
- Take a sheet of paper and mark a centerline
- Determine the exact amount of hull you want to take out. For this kit, it’s basically to take out the 5th and 6th gunports
- Using a square rule, mark two lines perpendicular to that centerline that are the correct distance apart.
- Carefully place the temporarily taped-together hull on the centerline, and when it’s lined up properly with respect to the centerline AND the two hull-cut lines, tape it firmly to the sheet of paper
- Using your square, mark the cut lines at both the bulwark AND the keel
- Carefully place tape along the hull on the cut line, ensuring that it’s straight and is exactly on the marks you made at the bulwark and the keel
- Get your micro-saw out, and cut slightly outside of the line, so you’ll have some room for the final sanding and fit
- When you’ve completed all of your cuts, securely tape a sheet of sandpaper on a sheet of glass (to prevent bunching) and slowly draw-sand each hull piece until you are flush against your tape line, from bulwark to keel. GMorrison recommends a slightly different approach, wherein you paint the “scrap” part of the hull a highly-contrasting color, remove the tape, and sand as above until the paint is all gone and everything lines up.
- Check for alignment. On this conversion, you’ll probably note the following:
- The port side needs a little work on the wide wale just under the gunports
- Other than that, the profiles should match up nicely
- As Sumpter250 points out, it’s very critical to ensure the bulwarks line up. It’s better to have the pieces lined up here and slightly off down at the turn of bilge, since filling/sculpting etc., is very difficult in the bulwark area
- When you’re ready, decide on your gluing strategy. As GMorrison also noted, “It's often a toss whether to glue the front halves together and the back halves together, or do all four parts individually.”
Sounds easy, right? It probably would have been, if I had actually done it this way. 
Instead, I somehow got things wrong in my initial research, and skipped over that whole “cut slightly outside the line” thing. I’m blaming impatience, but in any event, I thought I had a really clear picture of what I needed to do, and I worked really hard to cut EXACTLY on the line, leaving me no room for recovery.
And it almost worked.
The port side mated up wonderfully, but on the starboard side, the aft-most cut ended up just slightly out of line (not sure how), and I ended up with a gap on that side due to my recovery efforts, meaning that when I mated up all of the hull pieces, my lovely cut on the port side ALSO required some (much tinier and straighter) gap-filling.
So . . . what could have been a simple process has turned into quite the exercise in proper gap-filling, sculpting and working for close-to-flawless fit and finish. In a “make lemonade out of lemons” kind of way, I’m grateful for this, since it’s been a rather intensive indoctrination into what is a much more common skill/practice than performing major hull surgery.
So I got that going for me, which is nice.
I plan on posting some pics in the next couple of days, but so far, here’s what I’ve been deploying:
- Tamiya white putty
- Testor’s plastic cement, for both thinning and “melting” the seam where it’s hard to fill, i.e., at the “bumpers” aft of the fourth gunport.
- Acetone (nail polish remover) for softening and swabbing down/feathering
This has been very hard work for me, since I’m holding myself to a very high standard. I’m resisting the urge to just scrap it and spend the $20 on another Lindberg kit and starting over. I'm also holding off on going ahead and hitting it with primer to expose the flaws, since—frankly—I can already see most of the flaws.
The biggest battle I’m facing right now is keeping the slightly rounded hull shape on the seam (in the horizontal axis). I keep flattening the seam down more than I want to, which spoils the curve. On my most recent pass I tried wet-sanding, and that generated a much better result. Still not quite there though.
In any event, I’ll post some pics soon, and will absolutely welcome any and all feedback/suggestions.
Charles