johnsmachines

I have been waiting for an inspiring next modelling project, preferably one that I can mainly manage at home, rather than my workshop which is about a 20″ drive away.

In the past month I have committed to two projects. One for the workshop (9pr field cannon of Napoleonic vintage), and the other I spotted on Ebay, placed a bid, and won it.

It is a wooden kit for a 1:93 scale model of USS Constitution. A Mamoli kit, about 30-35 years old. Sold by a QLD vendor (austin31614) with a starting price less than half new price. Constitution was an American heavy frigate, with a spectacular history, launched 1797, for the purpose of tackling Corsair pirates in the Mediterranean. And later heavily involved in the British-US war of 1812. More about the history in later posts.

I was a bit concerned about the kit because of its age, but the intact plastic packages within the carton was somewhat reassuring. I was very impressed by the seller (austin31614) who fully answered my questions and provided extra photographs.

To my delight, my opening bid won the auction. The vendor, was probably the best Ebay seller I have ever dealt with. They responded quickly to my request for more information with many photographs and descriptions. There was further amiable correspondence after the win, and an invitation to notify them if there were problems with the kit. This was reassuring because of the age of the kit.

The kit arrived about 5 days ago. 2 packages, weighing about 5kg. They looked undamaged. Our modelling engineering club president suggested a video of the unboxing, and we decided to do the unboxing at the next GSMEE meeting. I know that kids love unboxing videos, and I admit to watching them myself occasionally. But would our GSMEE membership be at all interested? After all, most of us are grandfathers, and possibly a few great grandfathers. But as model engineers I suspect that we just love toys, so we decided to give the unboxing a go.

We have a prospective new member. He gave the first talk. Retired now, but a long working career as a pathologist, with special expertise in gynaecological pathology, and forensic pathology. He talked about shotgun cartridges, with a display from a local industry, Winchester, now closed I think. And a very interesting case involving a shotgun murder suicide.

Then my turn. What an act to follow. So I just did a brief introduction, and opened the cylinder with the plans. They were yellow with age, laminated, and in good condition. I noted that there were 2 large sheets which had been sticky taped together to make an A1 size, along with a number of A2 sheets. The sticky taping had not been done very neatly, but more about that later. Handed the sheets around the table for the perusal by the 16 members present.

Then I attacked the rectangular box. The superb, multilayered packaging took a while to remove. The box was also a bit discoloured with age, but not as bad as I expected.

Found a ship modelling book. Nice. A good read for later. A long intact package of strips of wood for planking, mast components and spars.

Several intact packages of bulkheads, decks, the keel. All looked intact and good.

Packages of twine in different thicknesses, blocks of different sizes, wooden tiles to substitute for copper sheathing (I expect to replace those with copper foil), quite nice castings for anchors, name plate, and other fittings. Castings of carronades which I will probably use, and of long gun barrel mouths which I will probably replace with long guns of my own manufacture. Brass Pins. Chain links. And lots of other small parts.

All in all, the components were better than I expected.

There was quite a lot of conversation about the kit, the project, and the plans. An offer to lend me some modelling tools, and another to top up the brass pins.

A successful trial of an unboxing, I think. Despite the average age probably north of 70.

Since this is my first wooden model ship since a was a teenager, I will probably make it as intended, rather than introducing suggested modifications, but I am already considering a future project of scratch model ship build along traditional lines, with built up frames, layered planking etc.

This evening, after the unboxing, I could not wait any longer. I had read several books about model shipbuilding, and watched numerous YouTube videos, and read the fairly detailed instructions accompanying the Mamoli USS Constitution kit.

I found the keel components and glued them together, with PVA glue. Actually, I set up a flat baseboard on the dining room table, placed the full size keel plan on the baseboard, and tried to fit the 4 plywood components together. And realised that the 30-35 year old kit was not accurately cut out. It was clear that the bulkheads needed to be positioned on the keel at precise positions. Not only did the keel components not fit together, but the bulkhead slots were up to 1mm out of position. This was not a laser cut kit. Silly me. It was probably CNC cut, with relatively primitive cutting tools by todays modern CNC standards. So I spent some time with an Exacto knife adjusting the keel components. Not difficult. Mainly concerned to not cut my fingers. And ended up with a straight keel, and slots very close to their intended positions.

The glue can set overnight. The plan was protected with Glad Wrap, which was also placed against the keel pieces, preventing them from being glued to the base or compression piece, weighed down with some heavy books from my library.

I intend to continue with further posts about progress on this model.