About 12 years ago, Colleen got me a wooden model kit of the Flying Cloud Clipper ship. It has remained under my dresser, untouched, until last month when I decided it was time to slap it together and display it proudly on the mantle.
Now, I’ve assembled full-sized cars and motorcycles from bags of parts and put together and customized plastic models for years, so how hard could a little wooden ship be?
I’ve been humbled.
It has only been a little over a month, but I have seriously considered giving up several times. As I’m trying to decipher instructions, which sometimes have little or nothing to do with how to do something, as well as hard to identify drawings that give you just a little peek at the assembly detail you need. It’s not going so well.
The instructions, having been translated from Italian, contain terminology that gives new meaning to words that don’t seem to have anything to do with the process. The drawings give great dimensional info on each piece, but don’t show key intermediary steps to allow you to see how things are assembled. And I’m only on the second step!
Putting the planking on the hull of the ship requires you to have a thorough understanding of different types of glue; how to put complex bends in small strips of wood that you can’t purchase in the U.S if you break them; and how to remove cured cyanoacrylate glue from your fingers. And did I mention that 10 fingers are not enough?
Here are some photos of where I left off while awaiting delivery of replacement strips from Australia.
