The idea of building a large scale sailing model square-rigger had always been floating around in my head, but seeing an article in a 1983 Model Ship Builder magazine about a large scale sailing model of the Rattlesnake really got the wheels turning. (PDF's of all three parts of this article are in the Note's section.)

By 1998 I was fairly "settled down" from my wanderings on sail boats and schooners; I was married, had a regular job, a house - I was ready to finally build my own RC square-rigger.

As I lived near Baltimore the with the Constellation then being rebuilt and restored to her proper appearance as a sloop of war, it seemed a perfect subject: A local boat I could examine first hand and an interesting and yet undone subject to boot.

John Lenthall’s plans were drawn in 1:36 scale, or 1 inch = 3 feet. A half model was also built in this scale which makes the hull slightly over 5 feet long on the spar deck.

I felt this scale was right at the upper limit of what I could cram into the back of an SUV, while being large enough to sail on the local creeks without looking like a bobbing cork. Soon I had copies of all the drawings I could find for the ship at the National Archives - including Lenthall’s 1:36 lines.

Guided by the MSB article, I began cutting the keelson, forms, and setting up the framework for the model in February of 99.

Then I found a copy of William Mowll's Building a Working Model Warship:HMS Warrior, 1860.

Mowll covered a battened form with gummed brown paper packing tape over which he applied masking tape to create a plug for making a fiberglass mold. The masking tape would impart the texture of Warrior’s cast iron plating and other surface details. I happened to have a large roll of this tape and got it into my head to do the same.

The plan became to make a sacrificial plug, using the tape as Mowll had, including planking, coppering, and other surface details that would be taken up by the mold. Then I would make three fiberglass hulls. One would be my model to RC and sail. The others would be finished unrigged as static models. One would be donated to the ship, the other sold - figuring some local company would love to have a big model of the ship downtown in their lobby - and the sale would pay for everything. The model would represent the ship as she appeared during the Civil War, since Im’ a Civil War reenactor.

The "plug" was battened down; keel, sternpost, and stem installed; and completely taped by March 4th. More tape was applied as planking, the waterline marked, and then everything stalled.

Despite all the drawings I acquired from the archives, I was missing some important details and I needed to research things like the spar deck layout (one of several drawings missing from the archives!).

The folks restoring the real ship pointed me to Mr Potter’s 1941 drawings for a 1:96 model distributed by A J Fisher that showed the deck arrangement the restored ship has today, but these didn't jibe with Chappell’s drawing in The History of the American Sailing Navy, especially in the shape of the main hatch and the galley hatch/trunk.

As I dug around trying to determine what was right, life crept up. I remodeled the house; we sold the house; we moved to a small farm; I owned and boarded some horses; I remodeled that house; my arranged job fell through and I wound up commuting 140 miles a day to the old job; we split up and sold the farm; I moved to an apartment closer to work; a divorce; I bought a house, and finally, I pulled out the model and started working on it again in the middle of 2008.

The project recommenced with the original plan of making a sacrificial plug for a fiberglass mold. My research had answered several questions, raised a few more, and altered the plan for the finished model slightly - I decided to finish the model as the ship appeared in 1856 when she was painted by Tomaso de Simone in Naples.

The Model's Statistics:

1. Scale 1:36 - 1 inch = 3 feet.
2. Beam: 13-5/8" (34.6 cm)
3. Length on deck: 61" (154.9 cm)
4. Length between perpendiculars: 59-1/8" (150.2 cm)
5. Draft, without ballast keel: 7" (17.8 cm) With 3-1/2" ballast keel: 10-1/2" (26.7 cm)
6. Weight, with-out ballast or battery: 30 pds; battery: 5 pds; external ballast: 44 pounds; internal ballast: 15 pds; total: 94 pounds.
7. Length over the rig: 95" (241.3 cm)
8. Width over the rig: 30.5" (77.5 cm) ~ Main yard w/o stuns'l booms.
9. Height bottom of keel to main truck, without ballast keel: 65" (165.1 cm) With ballast keel: 69" (175.3 cm)
10. Total Sail Area: 2,623.26 square inches in 17 sails (18.22 sf, 16,924.21 scm)
11. Minimum Sail Area: 1,148.77 square inches in 5 sails (8.75 sf, 7,411.38 scm)