Oct 6 2013

USS Constitution build log 1

Dad and I

I actually started on this model of USS Constitution about a month ago. I was inspired to do it after our summer trip to Maine and Boston with Grandpa Ed. While in Boston we visited the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat. (Lord Nelson’s HMS Victory, still commissioned in the Royal Navy,  is 30 years older, but has been in dry dock since 1922.) I had built this particular model a couple of times before, the last time while stationed at Little Rock AFB in the mid-1970s. It represents Constitution as she looked during the War of 1812 and is based on a model at the Smithsonian. The current Constitution has some things that have been changed over the years, but they are working on getting it back to the way it looked in 1812.

Dad and 32-pound carronade
Aft spar deck, USS Constitution

I found the model at Amazon.com and ordered it. After I got it, I spent about a week getting things like paint, brushes, glue, etc. I used to have a lot of this stuff, but it had been decades since I had used it, and the old stuff was lost, dried up, or the wrong color.

First I had to do a lot of painting. Unpainted plastic looks like plastic even if it is the right color, so pretty much everything gets a coat of paint.

The hull got a coat of flat black paint, and then was allowed to dry overnight. Next I had to tape off the area for the white gun streak down the side and spray paint it and let it dry overnight. Then re-tape it to spray paint the copper plated bottom.  I also had to paint the decorative carvings on the beak head (bow) and transom (stern) of the ship. My famous hand tremor made this a challenge. It didn't 
come off great, but it came off okay. The inside of the hull next to the gun deck (bulwarks) had to be painted white, and the bulwarks around the spar deck (top deck) are green.

Gun deck completed

All 54 guns had to be hand painted gun metal color, and all the gun carriages had to be painted red. In addition, I wanted a little additional detail so I hand-made eye bolts for the 30 24-lb great guns on the gun deck out of 26 gauge wire (2 per gun) so the breech lines that contain the guns recoil when firing looked better. A lot of effort for a gun deck you can’t see when the model is finished. (I would use over 100 of the hand-made eye bolts on the ship to replace most of the supplied plastic ones. They look better and are not prone to break like the plastic ones can.)

The decks were spray painted flat black, allowed to dry, and then painted tan. Then I took some fine grit sandpaper, and sanded the decks so the wood grain molded into the plastic showed as black through the tan top coat of paint. I also took an X-Acto knife and scribed each of the caulk lines through the paint so you could see the individual deck planks. Then everything got a coat of flat varnish to even out the look and to remove any gloss left from the tan paint.

Gun Deck, USS Constitution

When the picture was taken on 16 October, the hull has been glued together with the rudder and steering rigging has been installed, and the gun deck is in place. The bulkheads for the captain’s cabin have been painted and installed. I even printed out tiny paintings and glued them on the wall in the captain’s cabin. Another detail you can barely see through the windows in the transom. The gun port lids have been glued in place and rigged with a piece of thread representing the rope that would be used to hold the port open. The 24 pound great guns have been assembled and glued in place, and breech lines have been installed on each of them. (24-pound canon fired a ball that weighed 24 pounds. They could also shoot pieces of chain to cut rigging or a canister of musket balls to make a monster shotgun. The canons themselves weight about 2.5 tons, and without the breech line would hurl themselves 20-30 yards on recoil.) I left two guns out at the very front of the ship. It is doubtful guns would have been installed there as it would have very difficult to work those guns that close the next set. If they needed to shoot forward, they would have moved guns into those ports.