My Workbench

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

The End of Ships For a While

Yesterday evening, as I was finishing up working for the day, I had an altercation with my radial arm saw and came very close to losing a finger. I mangled it pretty bad through the glove. It took about 40 minutes to round the wife up (she was working too on another section of the property) and get going into town to an urgent care center. It was late in the day, after 5 PM and we hit two centers before we found a third that was open. It was excruciatingly painful and by now I was in the second hour of holding pressure on it to control the bleeding. by the time it was X-Rayed and the PA showed up I was well into the third hour of pain.
But even more painful were the needles inserted (it took five) to numb the area to allow for stitching. It took eleven stitches, and not pretty ones either. I am extremely lucky there was no bone or tendon damage. I have to wear a splint for 10 days and then return to the center to see if the stitches can be removed. They told me I most likely will never regain feeling in that finger again past the first joint. That will certainly make it difficult to rig a ship for sure.


Ares USS Constitution

Here is the last Sails of Glory ship for Gunner. The Ares version of the USS Constitution included some funky looking boats glued to the sides, in the wrong place covering up two cannon per side. I removed them and installed davits in the proper position bracketing the mizzen shrouds. There are now four cannon with stubbed barrels where the boats were glued. Ares does some really weird stuff. At least on this one they have the stay sails and spanker billowing in the same direction. I repainted the deck and the deck furniture. As with the others, sails were cut away and dressed, and new masts were inserted.

The Original Toy Ship















I had more trouble fitting the rigged ship back into the packaging it came with, so I had to make several modifications. I used a larger 1st rate box I had stored to fit the packaging in.