Sometimes during a build you just have to go back and fix some things that aren’t quite right or accurate. Every build is a combination of accuracy, artistic license, and level of effort into details. For instance – how much time do you spend on details that aren’t likely to be noticed?
Along with maintaining this blog, I’m also part of a group called the Model Ship World, a forum made up of ship builders and hobbyists from all around the world with varying degrees of skill and interest. Some of the very best master builders, authors, and researches are part of the membership which is sponsored by the Nautical Research Guild. After my last post about guns and carriages, one of the members of the forum pointed out that my hatches and battens weren’t accurate in their representation. As you can see in a previous post and pictured below – I had the crossmembers extending all the way out to the coamings (the frames of the hatches), which is not correct. The battens need to be constructed in a way that they can be removed – as seen in these hatches on the HMS Victory:
Now granted, the casual observer is not likely to notice the difference, or even realize what they’re seeing. However – the hatches are very prominent parts of the ship and so I decided that getting them “correct” is pretty important. The exercise also reminded me of why I started building model ships in the first place – to instill additional patience in the things I do and reinforce the idea that taking some extra time to achieve correctness is well worth it. Overall, it took a full day (about 8 to 9 hours) to go back and re-do all the battens and hatches correctly. However – for a ship that is likely to last many years and hopefully be passed on from generation to generation, what’s an extra day?
Sometimes it’s pretty easy (at least for me) to get caught up with the idea of just getting something done and lose the importance of the process. The second go at the hatches is much improved and very much worth the extra time and effort.
The Lehman Shipyard 