I completed rigging (for the most part). I used stretched sprue for all of the rigging. I scrounged black sprue from a variety of kits (I buy a cheap all black kit just for the sprue). It just needs a shot of dull-coat to knock down the shine, and then I need to add a flag and a few pennants. I'm taking suggestions if anyone thinks more rigging needs to be applied... I have no real good references on this matter.
I finished the construction of the Maine tonight. This entailed adding the deck railings, anchors, some extra details (side lights, hatch ways, booms, etc.)
An overall view
Without the pen.
Midships.
An overhead.
One of the neat parts of this kit is the bow scroll work. It was pretty difficult to get it painted right because of its size. I also polished it prior to painting. I considered keeping this off until after I dull coat the ship, however, some wise advice I recall is that all models should be dull coated, otherwise they look like toys. So Even though it's been polished, at some point after the rigging is applied, the scroll work will get dull coated.
I used the anchor chains supplied on the etch sheet instead of my regular small chain. I decided to use it because of the bar in the middle link. I thought it added some nice detail to the chain. I twisted every link 90 degrees from the previous to make it look like real chain.
The port side light.
Bow view of the scroll work
Next up: Rigging
After adding the machine guns that reside in the crows nests, it was time to turn my attention to the remaining ships boats. First I mounted the davits in the locations shown on the plan view in the instruction.
It's usually pretty difficult to mount boats that aren't residing on a deck. I hit on a solution on a previous build that I did a few years ago for the now defunct Navis magazine. I used a block of balsa to set the height of the boats.
I rocked the boat up against the davit. I used liquid CA on the end of a piece of wire to bond the boat to the davit. Remove the balsa "stage" and the boat appears to hang from the davit... minus the rigging. Once I start to rig the ship, it will look like the boats are being supported by the rigging.
Here you can see all of the boats rigged. You can also see the oars resting in the boats.
An overall shot of the boat to this point.
And my obligatory beauty shot this time.
