JesseLee

Now that is a good method of making cannons! I'll have to try it sometime.

Jesse

Looks like a good start. I would add lines above the yards passing through holes in the masts & add shroud lines. The lower front line needs to be just above the yard so it wont be in the way of the sail. Looks like a good project. I love those older style ships with multi level top decks!

Jesse

Wow! Beautiful. Never used wire for rigging. Is it harder to use than thread?

Me too. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Wow! glad it wasn't any worse for you!

Woke up to a cold house this morning. I was up & down all night keeping a small fire going (mostly slow burning coals) in the fireplace to have some heat. It got down in the 20s last night here. Still very thankful. Rather have a cold house than a burned down house!

Jesse

Now that is some precise sawing!

Thanks everyone! Jeff, we are ok, a little chilly but doing ok. We are attempting to get a guy from our church to come look at it who does heating/air but he seems to be out of town right now.

Our daughter woke us up this morning very frightened. The house was getting smoky. Our electric furnace was on fire. I was dumping baking soda & flour on the flames the best I could while my wife was on the phone with 911 & everybody ordering me out of the house. When the fire department got there they found only smoke & heat. I believe a Higher Power put that fire out. I am upset because I know we don't have the money to fix/replace the furnace but I am so thankful our house didn't burn down. We do have a small fireplace for the colder nights. Will be extra thankful this Thanksgiving!

Jesse

I love this ship. I built a larger one of her over at MSW. Her history is interesting. The maid was an experiment at the time. What became the famous clippers all started with the Scottish Maid.

I love to study this time in history. I had ancestors on both sides here in North Carolina. I have visited Fort Fisher many times.

Jesse

Very, very nice! The ship is very crisp & realistic & the sea is amazing!  I want to learn to make seas look like that.

Jesse

Thank you Gwyl. I wasn't sure about the sea. Thought maybe I overdid the white caps but it is supposed to be rough seas.

Jesse

Different angles of the finished build......

Never heard of that one

View of the bottom label with ship info, a finished shot & close-up of Christmas trees on deck. More finished angle shots coming....

Thanks Daniel & Gwyl.

Funny you ask Gwyl, the next posting is just about that!

Used epoxy glue to repair the broken neck then added the cover & hanger wire back on. The glued seam is completely hidden.

Completed project pictures to follow......

Folded everything down to go through the neck opening. Inserted into Christmas ornament, glued down, masts raised, sails straightened, pulled all lines tight & glued them. Taped a narrow hobby knife blade to one of the tools to cut the lines off after the glue dried.

Made the lifeboat & added it to the back of the ship. Added the flag.

Now that's tiny!

Got a lot of the rigging done. Tried adding ratlines after looking into it. It just about drove me crazy. I used Fray Check to hold them all in place then went back & used very tiny amounts of CA on the ends of each one so that nothing would come loose when folded down to put through the neck.

As I posted before my silicone sea didn't work out. I have been told that you can mix the color in it when applying. If I had know that then I would have used that method but since I didn't know it at the time I used Platalina modeling putty. I used as thin a layer as possible for 2 reasons. 1: in the past I found out that the pressure of putting it in & wave forming was enough to break the thin glass sides, 2: Weight. Putty is heavy for a Christmas Tree ornament so I wanted to keep as muck weight as possible out of this. Got a thin layer laid in. Put it in between our double paned windows on a sunny day The sun melted the putty down to the base & softened it so I could form the waves, ripples without much pressure so I wouldn't break through the thin glass sides. I did a lot of white aps because this ship sailed in the rough waters of Lake Michigan & these waters even sunk the ship in the end.

Looks great!

That is a good idea Howard. I'll have to try hinging a bowsprit some time.

Jesse

I made a mistake in my post above. I have melted Platalina not Plasticine.

Jesse

Another thing I did different was I didn't make any kind of jig or base to hold the ship down while I worked on it. Just wanted to try it to see easy or hard it would be this way. I was able to do it but I highly recommend not doing it this way It was much more irritating- especially doing the rigging.  After gluing the sea baser in. The !st bulb out of the pack of 4 bought this year was found broken open one morning much like the picture before showed. That was now 5 bulbs broken. Got the 6th one out & for the 6th time started it all over again. Began to wonder if this would be possible at all, Repeated all these steps again & was now needing to figure out what I would do for the sea. After test fitting the ship in the neck - you guessed it- another break. This time it was just the neck itself. Very frustrated I was about to give up. Then I looked at the thin metal decorative cap that goes over the neck that holds the wire for hanging the ornament. When this piece is on it would completely hide this break. I decided I would finish this build & epoxy the neck back on & hide it all with the cap afterwards. The opening was still the same except it had a sharp edge I would need to be very careful with. I went with it......

Got a set of Christmas bulbs made by different company from a different store this year. Began the process over again. glued the bottom label disc in. Painted the space between, got the sea bed base in. The Rouse Simmons carried Christmas trees so I wanted to show some on this build. Made some Christmas trees to put on deck by trimming the tip of a pipe cleaner- (being a pipe smoker I've got these laying around). Clipped them off & painted them. They were shipped bundled by tying them up with ropes so I rapped some very thin thread around them.