2011-08-20 Sultana Schooner Model Progress

Story

With the broken rib, Charlene said "you need to find something to do so you don't get tempted to be all physical and re-injure it". The plan for the office is a cherry theme, and one of the things we've talked about is how cool it'd be to have a model ship on one of the shelves in that space. You know, have a space kinda like the Bruce Campbell Old Spice commercial, except have a cool model instead of that cheesey painting...

Anyway, we went to the hobby store, and there was a model of the colonial era schooner Sultana that said it included everything you needed to construct the model in the box. This may, in fact, have been true, if, on the way out of the store, I hadn't run into the local model ship builder's society and a guy who was building an adz mark accurate reconstruction of an old whaling vessel that was recently excavated by archeologists in Canada.

So I came home and hit the Internet. Apparently this is a popular model because extensive documentation survived from its service in the British navy. Plans have been drawn and redrawn, and a full scale reconstruction of the schooner Sultana was completed in Maryland in 2001.

Which, of course, meant I needed to order Schooner Sultana: Building A Chesapeake Legacy. and find whatever reference pictures from that I could on the net, such as these pictures from a Boy Scout Troop's trips on the boat:

http://ship25bsa.org/images/030425_SULTANA/hms_sultana.html

http://ship25bsa.org/images/03...923_HMS_SULTANA/HMS_SULTANA.html

And I think this is the thread of build notes by a guy who has led me severely astray, the reason I say "I think" is that it looks to be the same project as described in this series of PDFs:

http://www.modelshipworld.com/...cums/sultana/Sultanasection1.pdf

http://www.modelshipworld.com/...cums/sultana/Sultanasection2.pdf

http://www.modelshipworld.com/...cums/sultana/Sultanasection3.pdf

http://www.modelshipworld.com/...cums/sultana/Sultanasection4.pdf

http://www.modelshipworld.com/...cums/sultana/Sultanasection5.pdf

http://www.modelshipworld.com/...cums/sultana/Sultanasection6.pdf

http://www.modelshipworld.com/...cums/sultana/Sultanasection7.pdf

Pictures

The plans and kit call for simply carving the hull, but... The reconstructed vessel is painted above the wales, however, I'm going to try for simple stain. Below the wales the original was probably painted with a white lead oxide paint and coated with beef tallow, giving it a slightly off-white color.

And, of course, I should have stained the boards before I glued them on the hull because I'm having trouble getting stain to hold.

The cast lead capstain that comes with the model looks nothing like the capstain in the reconstruction, and probably isn't terribly similar to the original, so I'm trying to carve a new one.

Of course one of the challenges with craft is determining what actually looks good, and what loks good simply because it's taken a lot of time and energy to accomplish.