Ares Bonhomme Richard 1/1000 scale

Here is the third ship for my friend Gunner, the Bonhomme Richard. On this one I left the deck alone except for plugging the old flag pole hole in the aft deck, and repainted the hull. For some reason Ares painted the hull black and gunwales bright red??? They do some weird stuff. Again the spanker and stay sails were billowed in opposite directions, weird! So scratch stay sails to match the spanker, old masts cut away and sails cleaned up. New masts attached to sails and fully rigged.

Original model from Ares

Repacked and ready to go

Ares Agamemnon

The second of the four Sails of Glory ships for my friend Gunner is the HMS Agamemnon. 

Before pic:

After pics:

Again, masts replaced, deck and furniture repainted, stern windows blued, figurehead added, stem repainted to match historical paintings, rigged and scratch ratlines added.

Ares Ville de Varsovie

The first of the four Sails of Glory ships for my friend Gunner is the 80 gun Bucentaur class Ville de Varsovie.

The before pictures:

Note the jib and fore stay sails are blowing  opposite of the mizzen lateen driver direction. All of the ships except the Constitution are like this. Really dumb error on Ares part. Also this ship was launched after 1800 and should have a gaff and boom driver. I did not change it.

After:

The ratlines I made on the jig I developed for the 1/700 Black Seas ships. It works for this scale as well. The plastic masts are replaced with various weight music wire. 

Main and topmast spars added for reinforcement of the flimsy plastic.

Note the rail I had to add to be able to tie off the main mast back stays. Made from common staples. Paper jib and fore stay sails made to billow in the proper direction.

A little blue silver added to the windows to replace the black

View of the new heads in the bow
Just noticed the base is in the wrong orientation 

With just a few modifications to the packing to accomodate the new rigging

Sails of Glory Commission

Recently I took on a commission from an old hobby friend in Arizona. Several years ago I kit bashed two SOG ships for Gunner (refer to the Ares label on my home page). He paid me a great compliment the other day and asked if I would be willing to do four more specific ships for him. The package arrived last Saturday. Opening this package was like opening every other package I have ever recieved from Gunner,  Christmas! To backtrack a bit, all of the Davco and Navwar, plus many of the GHQ hulls I have, arrived in packages from Gunner. This package was no different. In it was the four commission ships:

HMS Agamemnon 

USS Constitution 

Bonhomme Richard

Ville de Varsovie 

In addition the package contained Gunner's generous idea of payment: Another SOG Constitution, an as yet unidentified SOG third rate, several small bags of 1/1200 scale buildings and a few Langton ancient ships. But the main candy was the two large bags. One contained 20 plus packs of Langton Napoleonic ships and the other large bag was full of Langton sail sets, several of which were the older discontinued studding and full sail white metal sets. A small bag of various etched brass sail sets and two packs of Davco frigate sails were also there. 

Wow! I was in mini ship heaven! Haha, like I really need more unbuilt ships! But you can never have too many minis! Right? Help me out here!

The first ship Gunner wants is the Ville de Varsovie.

Note the spanker and jib/stay sails are blowing in the opposite directions. Of the four ships, only the Constitution is correct.

So it appears there will be a bit of a delay  for the rest of the Black Seas ships while I knock these SOG ships out for Gunner.

Black Seas American Brig

I moved on to one of the brigs in the Black Seas US Squadron pack. The modifications I made are:

1) Cut the spars away from the masts and dress the masts.

2) Cut the two pieces of the furled main course sail away from the plastic spar remnants.

3) Cut and dress new spars using 0.32 music wire.

4) Glued the two pieces of the furled sail to the new main course spar. Filled the gap with green stuff putty and sculpted it to match the rest of the sail.

5) Cut two gun hatches in a piece of 60# card, fitted and glued it to the inside of the taff rail at the stern. (As it turned out this detail really wasn't necessary since the driver and all the rigging make it difficult to see anyway.)

6) Cut out two card hatch covers and glued them to the outside of the stern, matching the inside hatch locations.

7) Mounted a fife rail aft of the main mast base to tie off the brace lines from the foremast spars. (Next one I will do the same at the foremast.)

8) Extended all of the fighting tops

9) Made the ratlines with the new jig

Heading into the Mediterranean