First Parts

First Parts

So my first parts for the HMS Surprise have arrived and I ready to begin my voyage!

For the benefit of anyone who is reading and wondering whether to buy the kit in installments I will try to keep a log of what parts I am receiving when I am receiving them so that people can get an idea of what buying the ship in installments entails. I opted for the 28 monthly installments.

I also intend to try to explain everyhing that I am learning as I go, with nothing considered too simplistic. Any explanations I give will no doubt be something that I had to find out myself and didn't already know. I hope my explanations aren't too inaccurate but please let me know if I am giving out any false information!

I first received an Email wth the full parts lists, the cut sheets (more on these later), the editorial to the instruction manual, an intesting article about early navigation and of course the first instructional steps of the build.

Of course all of these were meaningless until I had the parts and these duly arrived. In the first installment I reeived the following items:


As you can see there are 2 sheets of plywood with various shapes seemingly drawn on. Just to set the tone of this entire blog I'll share my first thought process. I receieved the parts early in the morning before work and had a quick look at them without removing them from the plastic wrap. I then spent the entire day wondering how I was going to cut the parts out seeing as I don't own a jigsaw and the only knife I have had straight blades. It wasn't until I opened the parts when I got home that I realised that they are laser cut and can be removed easily with a craft knife to cut the small threads that keep them in the piece of wood. You see, I told you this blog would be "warts and all."

Anyway, with these pieces in hand I could start to look at the cut sheets and the parts lists. The cut sheet show the very same pieces that I had received, but with each part numbered so that I could check them against the parts list to see what each part was. This first installments contains:

1. Vertical Keel (Bow- the front of the ship)
2. Vertical Keel (Stern -the back of the ship)
3. Central Joint strengtheners in vertical keel
4. Mainmast stay

These 4 parts are acutually the only ones I need to complete the first stage of the construction. Once together these pieces will form the core centre of the ship.

6. First winding frame (1 of 2)
7. Second winding frames (2 of 2)
8. Third winding frames (2 of 2)
9. Fourth winding frames (2 of 2)
10 - 25. Frames (5 of 11)
26. Central stern collars
27. Stern strengthener collars

Of these parts the only ones that I understand the use of are the frames. Slightly confusingly the "frames" should really be called "bulkheads." This ship is what is known as a "Plank on bulkhead" model. This refers to how the hull (The main body of the ship) is constructed. Simpler kits would have a solid hull, so very little work would need to be done on the hull itself. Plank on bulkhead models, on the other hand, use a technique of building a skeleton of the hull and laying planks over it. A genuine "plank on frame" model is built in the same way that the original ship would have been built, and are most often seen with scratch built models. To avoid confusion throughout this blog I will talk about bulkheads, and any reference in the model instructions to frames should really be bulkheads.
To cut a long story short then, my first parts contain the first few frames to build this hull skeleton. I currently have no idea what a stern collar or stern strengther collar is, nor a winding frame. Time for some research I think. While I'm on it I am not 100% I know what a mainmast stay is. I presume that it is used for stability when attaching the main mast, but again some research is needed.

Next Steps

So the first instructions tell me to carefully cut out the parts from the plywood sheets and then sand the edges. I then need to construct the keel by attaching the 2 keel parts and the strengtheners to support the join. I can also install the mainmast stay.

One thing that I need to purchase is a good selection of clamps. I keep reading that "you can never have enough clamps" so I intend to get myself a good selection. I currently have some small C clamps but need some larger ones. They look like this:

I also want to get some clamps of the following variety:

In particular I will need a good clamp to hold the keel parts together when I glue them.

Something else that I am intending to do was gleaned from the very useful book "Model Ship Building From Stem to Stern" by Milton Roth. He advised using a tracing technique to check the cut of the frames (bulkheads) and make any adjusments needed now before fitting them to the keel. I will be doing this and will post the steps to do this as I complete them.

I will post again to show the keel construction and the method for checking the cut of the bulkheads.

Jonny.