Constitution. Alternative Colo(u)rs.

Despite the paucity of posts lately, I have not been inactive. Just not totally happy with the new colours (British-Australian spelling).

So here is the transom bling.

I might have mentioned previously that I was not using the traditional black and white painting of USS Constitution, but using the natural wood colours, and gold and brass of the Mamoli castings. I am not very happy with the gold name plate, and might yet black the recessed parts, leaving the letters gold. The stars are not the Mamoli parts, because there were only 4 in the kit, and I dropped and lost one of them. These are gold stars from a Temu supplier. Intended as decoration on little(?) girls fingernails. And I painted them gold to reduce the glitter.

And then there was the prow decoration. Again a decision. To use the Mamoli casting or replace it with the original black and white wooden strips. I realise that USS Constitution aficionados will hate what I have done, but I must announce that I quite like the result.
These are the castings, painted gold, with the tricolour shield hand painted by me. I am not proud of the red white and blue stars and stripes, but they are the best which my shaking hands and deteriorating eyes could manage.


From a distance they are not too bad…. but might have looked better with black and white stripes. Note that I have made a start with the masts and bowsprit. …. just sitting in place.
And made a start with standing rigging deadeyes, and the gun deck long guns. The deadeyes are a bit too big for the scale to my eyes, and I am considering buying some smaller aftermarket ones. The gun deck guns are barrels only, no carriage etc because they cannot be seen.
These are the 24 pr long gun barrels after I cleaned them up in the lathe, and bored out the barrels . I prefer the bronze appearance to the black. Black is more authentic, but this model will be a home decoration, and SWMBO rules! If Mamoli intended them to be black, why did they plate the metal in copper? Not quite ready to glue them into permanent position.
These are the blocks supplied by Mamoli for the running rigging. I did not like the original white appearance, and applied a walnut stain to darken them.
I think that these are original belaying pins. GSMEE (the Geelong Society of Model and Experimental Engineering) of which I am a member, has relocated to the stables of Osborne House, which used to house the Geelong Naval Museum, and long before that the Australian Submarine Headquarters in WW1. I found this rack and belaying pins outside. No idea of how old they are, or their origin. But they are interesting, no?
The stables of Osborne House, Geelong
And our new meeting room inside the stable. Now a “Listed Building”.

My current project is making a machine which will make scale size ropes. More of that in the next post.