Davco 1:1200 HMS Agamemnon 64 Gun

I recently bought 12 Davco 1:1200 Napoleonic ships from a fellow shipmate on the SOG Anchorage. Having never built a Davco ship before I decided to start on one of the larger ships of the line rather than the smaller vessels. I picked the 64 gun HMS Agamemnon.  The hull casting was almost as good as the Langton and GHQ ships and comes in two pieces, stern gallery and hull, like Langton and GHQ. The masts are also nicely cast, unfortunately they are softer than the GHQ masts and unusable in my opinion. The sails are also nicely cast but the spars are nonexistant.

So, although there is nowhere near as much scratchbuild and modification work required compared to the Navwar ship Revolutie, there was still  a substatial amount that needed to be done. New masts, jib boom, and bowsprit had to be built, and spars cut and added to the sails.

Also there was a real surprize towards the end I hadn't counted on. I always build from the stern to the bow and rig as I go. When I got to the bow, after mounting the fore mast and jib assembly, I discovered the flying jib and fore topmast staysails were billowed the oposite direction from the driver?? Really?? I checked all of the Davco ships and they are all that way, just wrong. I find it difficult to believe the manufacturer and customers never noticed. I asked my friend about it and he looked at his Davco fleet that he has had for many years. He confirmed they are all backwards with the drivers billowed to port and the jib and fore staysails billowed to starboard. He says he and all the gamers he's played with over the years never noticed or never mentioned it if they did. I'm almost sorry I pointed it out to him. The bottom line is that just when I thought I was almost done, I had to make two new brass sails, paint and seal them, then wait for them to dry before I could mount them.

Here are a couple of photos of the reverse spanker/driver and jib, fore topmast staysail, and fore staysail for the HMS Temeraire I am also building:

The last thing I added were anchors, GHQ extras of which I am running low.

The Davco package included the following info on the ship:
3rd Rate, 64 gun
Sister ships: Stately, Belliqueux, Nassau, Indefatigable
Launched: 1781
Displacement: 1384 tons
Gun Deck: 26 x 24 pounders
Upper Deck: 26 x 18 pounders
Quarter Deck: 10 x 4 pounders
Forecastle: 2 x 9 pounders

I would also like to mention the fact that the Langton HMS Agamemnon is in no way the same ship. So I'm not sure which is the more accurate for class and configuration.
Here are the finished photos:

My next post will be the completed Davco HMS Temmeraire.

NavWar's 1:1200 Dutch 64 gun Revolutie

(I note that this post gets viewed frequently so I want to point out that the rigging is incorrect, done before I had a good reference to go by.)

A fellow shipmate at Sails of Glory Anchorage shipped me 10 NavWar/Devco 1:1200 ships he had laying around. This is what he sent:

Looking through them I found two Dutch 64 Gun Revolutie Ships of the line, so I decided to build one and see how it went.

The Revolutie was a Dutch 3rd rate ship of the line carrying a nominal 68 carriage guns. It was launched June 15th, 1779 at Rotterdam. It was captured by the British on August 17th, 1796 and renamed the  HMS Prince Frederick.

These NavWar ships are no where near as crisp molds as the Langton and GHQ ships, but I just couldn't beat the price at only $4 a ship. I had no idea how much work would be involved to make this a decent model that could take it's place on the same game table as my other ships. The hull required removing sprue stubs and adding missing gun hatches. The ports on one side don't match the ports on the other. The guns on the quarter deck don't line up with the ports, etc. but with some creative modification and painting, it ended up OK. Rather than the classic yellow stripe along the gun ports, I chose a black strip along the gun ports and yelow port hatches with a yellow hull (wales).

 The sails were the most work. They are solid, flat with no billow at all, and no openings between the sails and the spar below. This would make it near impossiple to rig. I considered just scratchbuilding the masts, spars and sails, but decided to see if I could modify them enough to work by drilling holes between the bottom of the sails and the spar below, then carving an opening out with a xacto knife. I also had to carve out the poor excuse for spars molded into the sails and make some new ones to glue in place.

The spanker and sprit sails were just total losses, so thick I think they weighed as much as the hull. I scratchbuilt these out of wire and brass sheet. I also added the clew lines on the lower main, fore, mizzen and spanker sails. I thought at first I could make the jibs work but ended up making sails out of brass.

The mizzen went on first:

After setting the mizzen shrouds and stay rigging, the main was next.

The main shrouds and stay rigging done, the foremast was set and the process repeated.

Next was the running rigging:

Next was the base. As always I used matt board and common spackle to form the waves.

Here is the finished ship:

 And here is a comparison shot with Langton's HMS Glatton.

1:1200 Langton's 24 Gun Frigate

Here are some pics of the 24 gun frigate I just finished. There are no ensigns on it yet because I'm still not sure whose it is. Hope you enjoy!

Next to GHQ's HMS Victory for comparison:

Update on Langton 1:1200 Small Merchant part II

Here are some photos of the finished small merchant ship from Langton. The ship has scratch built masts, sprit, yards, and sails. Sails were cut from thin brass sheeting then glued to the wire yards and glued to the masts. Studding sails are on the Port side foremast and Starboard side main.