HMS Druid

First steps

Choosing the new model took me ages, including getting the ship plans from Mr. Hahn. This blog  will  hopefully be a good reminder of the difficulties I will be facing during the construction of the HMS Druid , just to avoid repeating my own errors. Why in English? I happened to learn all the nautical terms while I was working in UK, after my first visit to the Victory, followed by others to Greenwich, etc. etc. and now I cannot ,for my dear life, remember the italian terms. Why the Druid? It is going to be (if I'll live long enough) the first built from scratch, and I wanted a not- too - difficult model. She is (and was) not particularly attractive, but has  personality: a 300 tons sloop of war (14 six pounders, 2 three pounders, 10 swivels and 100 men)

Born to be a cargo, (named Brilliant, carrying loads of virginian tobacco to  England), after a single trip she was bought for The Royal Navy, and had some share of the war, loosing eleven men including her Captain Carteret (info from Mr Hahn book "Ships of the American Revolution") in a close quarter fight protecting a convoy with the Camel (22) and the Weazel (16), against the american Raleigh (with only a few cannons mounted) and the Alfred (74)

Et de hoc satis.

I have to shoot some photos of the few elements I am building, and I am also waiting for some new needed tools.

The wood. Two years ago I had the luck to find some 20 year old boards of swiss pear, of which I bought half cubic meter. Then I had it milled in more manageable size, and that is the main  source of the wood I'll use for the model 

The frames
There are 44 frames, including the cant ones, each made up of two half frames. Adding up floors and futtocks there are some 397 elements to cut and assemble. So I started to cut a first lot of 27 mm strips of wood and plane them down (with a Proxxon DH 40) to a thickness of 3,6 mm. Then I started cutting the different elements using the jigs suggested by Mr Hahn, as in the photo below.

 The pieces of the half blank are then assembled and glued on a photocopy of the same blank, and this is the result:

As this will take some time I also started  the backbone of the ship and the frame assembly Jig