Scratch Building 1/1200 USS Chesapeake 38 Gun Frigate
The USS Chesapeake is a ship no one seems to manufacture for some reason. Its famous foe HMS Shannon is easy to find, but not Chesapeake. At the time of Chesapeake's meeting with Shannon her armament was as follows:
Gun deck = 29 x 18 pdr long guns
Quarterdeck and Forecastle = 18 x 32 pdr carronades, 2 x 12 pdr long guns, 1 x 12 pdr carronade
Inspiration painting:
My plan was resized to 1/1200 scale
My first step is to glue the deck plans onto a sheet of basswood.
Next I cut the decks out.
I ended up using only the top three decks.
After sanding the sides to shape, I glued the laft and right profiles to the hull.
I used small shaped bits of card for the quarter galleries under the profiles. I glued the stern gallery plan to a thicker piece of card, cut it out and glued it to the stern.
Square bits of bond paper were glued in place where indicated on the profiles for gunport hatches.
Gun carriages are made from card. Cannon and carronades are monofilament fishing line, 20 and 30 pound test respectively.
Adding the paint scheme. The channels were made from bits of old plastic credit card and the stern davits from brass sail sprue (I never throw anything away! Drives my wife mad.)
Cat heads and skid beams are made from common staples.
Boat added to the skid beams and stern davits.
Sails were traced out on paper.
Mast parts cut from three different gauges of steel rod.
The tops are cut from plastic credit card. The masts are glued together and tied.
Masts attached:
Sails with spars attached.
Lower shrouds/ratlines made and set.
Upper ratlines attached and standing rigging started. Not the quarter davits and boats have been installed.
Closer view of the quarter davit boat assembly.
Standing rigging complete.
My American ship labels:
Completed base with label.
The finished ship:
Comparison shot left to right: Langton USS Essex, my scratch Chesapeake, GHQ USS Constellation.
I hope anyone viewing this has enjoyed the post. I enjoyed sharing it. I did not include a lot of construction detail, as my methods have been covered in previous posts and can be easily found using the "How To" label search tag on my Blog
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