Age of Sail, Black Seas - Plastic Frigates

The three smaller frigates are the Constellation, the Congress and the Chesapeake, these are the other three frigates that make up the original six (as a side note the Constellation in Boston harbor is not the original Constellation as originally thought). These have the first metal bits and I can say I'm not impressed with the metal bits. You have unique sterns for each of these frigates and quite frankly they are way over sized. I suspect the black hull paint will help but on the models before priming and painting they look huge. They also don't fit well at all. They each have their own bow carving as well, these are much better. They fit decently and seem to be in scale with the rest of the ship.

The instructions for the Frigates on the back side of the Brig instructions. Again pretty basic and it leaves off any mention of small details like anchors and ship's boats and the mast sequence is out of order again (at least in my opinion).

The hull is a bit trickier. I found it was easier to assemble the sides and while the glue was still wet drop in the deck and kind of slide things around till they are in place.

A basically completed ship, following the instructions. A word of warning here; do not attach the bowsprit until you have glued the bow carving in place as it can affect the fit of both parts. So bow carving first and then the bowsprit.

Oh yea, small details like the boats and anchors got added here. Would be easier to attach these before you glue the masts in place.

More like this! Note that there is an extra boat per sprue, I would definitely save those extras! There are lots of extra anchors too. I basically saved everything.

I should be gluing these metal bits on at this point, but my super glue failed me completely.

At this point, I only managed to glue on one of the sterns and none of the bow carvings (note that two of the frigates don't have their bowsprits glued on at this point). The super glue failure has me waiting for a package so I can finish these up.