USS Constitution

My first sailing ship. Lots of awesome detail. Had some issues with some of the long skinny,spindly pieces being a bit out of true,but some very hot water to soften then cold to harden took care of the problem. The sails look cheesy so I just went with full rigging. Enjoyed the change from my usual car or truck models.

This is a pretty fun build. The rigging in particular is a good challenge, but certainly doable. One thing to watch for is a bow in the masts, in my kit the mizzen mast was slightly bowed, but by making the rigging on one side tighter than the other I was able to compensate. The shrouds also don't always line up as they should, but you won't know this until you go to attach the yard arms to the mast. Might be best to look ahead to the yard attachment steps to make sure your shrouds aren't obstructing the attachment points of the yards. These are easy issues to work around though, and the model looks great.

First model in about 20 years. I should have started with a larger scale but this was an interesting build for me. Being a history buff. I had to use several photos to paint more realistic that the instructions.