napoleonicfrigates

 

 On completion of the Clare Marie I was stuck at a crossroads. I had to decide whether to go into more detail in the hobby - and at great initial expense or alternately to say, 'I have made two, it is now time to move on to something else.'. This may seem like a strange choice but the time requiretments and research requirements are really quite excessive - if you plan on improving.

 After much soul searching and the fact that my little boy would cause me to need to be at home 4 nights a week, thus precluding any other hobby, and I decided to go for it. A couple of weeks in May saw over two thousand pounds spent on a Scroll Saw, dust extractor (for all the power tools), lots of wood, a band saw and a fixed drill.

Because my wood working knowledge is minimal and the next step is scratch building I signed up to the excellent Model Ship World cross section build of the Triton. This is a site I cannot recommend enough. On the cross section build some talented modellers have made all the plans and other people have made logs so you can dip your feet into scratch building with logs of exactly what you are building and even what issues you may encounter.

A cross section incidentaly is a small part of the ship allowing you to see all levels of the hold, gun decks etc. By doing a small section it teaches the relevant skills required for the larger models without the commitment required to do one.

This section of the site will therefore be a semi-mirror of my own posts on MSW. As the msw posts cover (in great detail) every single mistake I made this site will just concentrate on how to do things and how I would do things differently next time. There will be a lot of overlap.

Chapter One:        Choice of wood
Chapter Two         The Keel
Chapter Three       The Building Board
Chapter Four        The Frames
Chapter Five         Attaching the Frames
Chapter Six            Planking the Hold
Chapter Seven      Oiling and treenailing
Chapter Eight        Lower Deck Beams