Here’s a look at a hobby I picked up a few years ago: Building wooden ships. I’m sure you just imagined all those plastic kits that we boys loved to make as a child, typically of aircraft and spaceships. Although you buy a ship “kit”, it is typically a bundle of wood, cotton and paints with a few manufactured pieces like cannon. The rest of the kit involves laborious use of scalpels, glue, and Dremel tools to actually cut the wood into the right shapes.
In the photo gallery below, you can kick back and look at a slideshow of photos from my first ship, The Sultana. In this kit, the hull came as a basic shape that needed to be carved and sculpted. Then you can see how I layered up all the details. All the rigging you see was sewn by hand, every little strand of it. I find this hobby wonderfully relaxing.
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My current build, (which I haven’t touched for a couple of years now), is of The Lady Nelson. This is a more advanced build in which I actually had to plank the hull just as they do in real ships. Boy was that fiddly, especially where the planks meet at the stern.
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After this one, I plan to build the HMS Mars and work my way up the crowning achievement of all… HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson’s flagship, which is about 4′ long! I hope you enjoy these pictures.
What unusual hobbies do you have?