My Golden Hind process

So wordpress just emailed me suggesting I do a blog and I thought as I haven’t done one since October, I figured why not do one.
So I thought as I finished my Golden Hind airfix model 5 days ago that I would do a blog about the process.

The first stage was building the main ship part, which meant gluing big bits together, then gluing smaller bits onto it, like canons. I then made the masts and put them in place on to the main ship. Then came the rigging which was rather complicated to start with. Basically it came with a little gadget which you could set at different lengths depending on how big the rigging needed to be. I had to start it again about 4 times because I kept doing it wrong, the main problem being the instructions on how to do the rigging gave you an example of measurements, but didn’t say it was an example, so I thought that was the first measurement, not realising I should have followed the table in the main set of instructions, so eventually I got the hang of it. Once you had done the string part you then covered it in glue so it hardened and would stay stiff once cut out, I had to do this process five times and therefore make ten bits of rigging. During this, I was also starting to paint the ship and masts. Some bits were easy big bits, but other bits were the most tiny bits of delicate painting, with alternate triangles with just a faint line visible to determine where to stop painting one colour, but the perseverance was well worth it and eventually the whole ship was painted and it looked really nice, bright colours. Then came time to put the string on which would hold the sails and attach them to the ship and masts on the actual ship. The instructions for doing the string was just a picture of it all done, so that was interesting, but I managed it, then came time to glue the rigging on. I had dipped them in tea so they were not white and clean but more a browny murky colour and therefore more realistic. I then stuck the sails on and then put the three flags in place, then painted the five tiny figures and glued them into place and it was done. It looks cool and it is on my shelf in my lounge.
No rest for the wicked though as the HMS Victory is sat on my dining table waiting to be started!

This is how it started

                                                                                                                                                                                            and this is the end result.