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.

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