SOS Build Log - page 8

CARVINGS

This entire page will be dedicated to the carving of all the tiny figures that decorate the ship.

Just guessing - I probably have at least a thousand hours of very tedious carving in this project. Seen here are the ones that survived the trash bucket.
I must have thrown dozens of efforts away.

Creating molds and casting duplicate pieces of the master carvings.

Some of the carved figures, such as these gun port wreaths, are used many times on the model.  In such cases, I created molds and then cast as many duplicate parts as needed.

Some of the figures are so tiny I simply used a scalpel to cut them from paper stock, then spray painted them gold.

(like these and the horse figures below)

Then there are many figures created from "Sculpy".... a special modeling clay which can be shaped into figures and heated in an oven until they are as hard as a piece of wood.

(like these figures and the two seen below)

Many of the wood carvings required that they are facing in opposite directions, like these little sea horses and the porous figures seen below. 

Here you see an example of how most of the carvings begin with a rough sketch on paper, then directly onto the piece of wood used for the carving.

Note that most of the time, the actual carving may turn out quite different from the original sketch.

More carvings....

Another example of creating a mold from a master carving....

Two more carvings....

Another carving....

These two carvings are extremely small.  They are seen on top of the center roof of the stern galleries on both sides of the ship.

Scales of justice....

I would say the remaining carvings seen below were the most difficult, in terms of detail, of all the carvings created for the ship.

Note, there are many more carvings not seen here on this page, as I did not always interrupt my work to take photos.

This final carving is the only fully 3 dimensional figure on the ship.

The figure of King Charles slaying a dragon is seen as the "Figurehead" on the ship's beak....