Some Materials

So here are 1000 of the coffee stirrers I am using... I bought 10,000 of them.

Here is some of the scale rope I bought for the rigging...




The rope has to be prepared by running through a burning candle quickly to remove the fuzz and then coating in oil / wax to make it hang more naturally.

Plans & planning for French Galleon: La Couronne

Before I even ordered the coffee stirrers, I had established which ship I was going to make and found rough plans online. I also read the entire contents of this website so I would know what I was doing: https://sites.google.com/site/shipwrightsfaq/

If you are planning to do anything kind of similar I would seriously recommend reading through that site.

One of the things that I first decided is that I am not trying to achieve so called 'museum quality' mostly because I am probably incapable of doing so especially on my first (perhaps only) ship model. I also wanted this to be fun and so I knew from the start that I'm looking to create a work of art more than an 'accurate period model'.

That said, I did want to stick to the basic design as best I can and include as many details as possible. Here are the plans I found that would let me work to the standard I set for myself: http://www.themodelshipwright.com/high-resolution-ship-plans/sailing-vessels/french-17th-century-warship-la-couronne/

Introduction

Back in 2007, I randomly started building a model 17th century galleon-style ship - out of wooden coffee stirrers. (As you do.)

I worked on it solidly for about 6 months but have since been a little distracted by the births of my two sons - Johnny (who was tragically born at just 25 weeks and died after just a few minutes) and most recently Miran (who is now a very happy bouncy 10-month-old)

Right now it is buried away in a closet about 50% complete, but I am definitely planning on finishing it, possibly within the next year or two.

As I spent so much time on it (and also it looks pretty awesome) I figured I'd use this blog to document a summary of my progress so far and record my progress as I complete the rigging and details.

I'll start by posting many pictures and little stories about how I worked on it over the next few weeks...

-Kieryn