Achilles099

Very nice model! Just fyi, a 28 gun ship would be a sixth rate, not a fifth rate. The rating system only accounted for long guns, so carronades and swivels didn't count towards a ship's rating (hence why ships rated as 38's in British service actually carried 46-48 guns in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, but were still only rated as 38's).

Have you thought about making it longer and wider? It's going to look very squat once you add additional decks and the upperworks, in my opinion.

Ambitious project, great progress so far! What's the length of the gundeck in studs going to be?

Nice build! Are some of these custom minifigures, and if so, where'd you get them made?

Thank you! Me too, I was worried about using all LEGO strings at this scale but I think it turned out great! I'm thinking about adding more of the running rigging if I can get some more white string, but I need to reinforce the spars somehow otherwise the weight of string on them will be too much. Thanks for the kind words!

Thanks so much for the kind words!

Thanks! It is in fact 100% LEGO strings used for all of the rigging!

Thank you for all the compliments! Yeah photography is not my strong suit, I might resubmit if I can get some better shots. If the sun would finally come out where I live I could get some decent natural lighting hopefully! Thanks! No problem at all, high-quality sources on this topic are sometimes hard to find and difficult to assess the reliability of so I figured many people could benefit from knowing some of the sources I found were best! Enjoy the reading!

Thank you! I built it very large so I could cram in as much detail as possible! Check out the full album to see all the below-deck details too!

Thanks, that's what I was going for! It is taller than me when it's on a table! Thanks! Thank you, glad you like it! Now I just need somewhere to display it! The rigging was a lot of time and effort but it is also one of my favourite parts to work on because the payoff is so great when you can get it to look the way you want. Thank you!

Hello! I'm excited to share my nearly complete MOC of HMS Diana, a fifth-rate Artois class frigate launched in 1794. I set out to make this ship as close to true minifigure scale as I could get it, and I am pleased with the result. I also wanted to improve on the design of my previous frigate in terms of achieving greater accuracy and detail. IMG_1171 by Andrew Cardy, on Flickr The ship took me over a year to design and build, which included lots of time reading up on rigging. I'll include a list of the books I read at the end of this post in case anyone is interested. I re-designed several aspects of the ship multiple times. IMG_1168 by Andrew Cardy, on Flickr IMG_1202 by Andrew Cardy, on Flickr The ship is built with 100% LEGO elements, including all of the rigging. When I began working on it I intended to make the masts and rigging the same way I did with my first frigate, but I soon realized that I could improve on that design and make it more accurate, albeit with far more pieces and many more LEGO strings. All of the standing rigging (the lines which support the masts) is included, as well as some of the running rigging. All of the spars are supported with a series of ropes, just as they would be on a real ship. The spars can all be lowered and raised using the rigging, in these photos the spars are in the raised position, where they would be when the sails were set. IMG_1161 by Andrew Cardy, on Flickr The ship is 45 inches tall at the mainmast, and 46 inches long when measured from the beakhead to the taffrail. It is 65 inches from the tip of the bowsprit to the tip of the driver boom. IMG_1166 by Andrew Cardy, on Flickr IMG_1197 by Andrew Cardy, on Flickr Click the album for more detailed pictures, it was difficult to get some decent shots with the entire ship in frame but I did my best! Some books I read: Mondfeld, Wolfram zu. Historic Ship Models. New York: Sterling Publishing Company Incorporated, 1977. Ball, Nick, and Simon Stephens. Navy Board Ship Models. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2018. Petersson, Lennarth. Rigging Period Ship Models: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Intricacies of Square-Rig. London: Chatham Publishing, 2000. Lavery, Brian. The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War: 1600-1815, n.d. Anderson, R.C. The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, 1600-1720. New York: Dover Publishing Inc., 1994. Lavery, Brian. The Ship of the Line: A History in Ship Models. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2014. I also used the Anatomy of the Ship series extensively, especially the one about HMS Diana of course, but also several of the other entries in that series. I hope you all enjoy the model and let me know what you think of it!

No problem! Here are some of the sources I've found helpful in my own building if you're interested: Mondfeld, Wolfram zu. Historic Ship Models. New York: Sterling Publishing Company Incorporated, 1977. Ball, Nick, and Simon Stephens. Navy Board Ship Models. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2018. Petersson, Lennarth. Rigging Period Ship Models: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Intricacies of Square-Rig. London: Chatham Publishing, 2000. Lavery, Brian. The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War: 1600-1815, n.d. Anderson, R.C. The Rigging of Ships in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, 1600-1720. New York: Dover Publishing Inc., 1994. Lavery, Brian. The Ship of the Line: A History in Ship Models. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2014. As someone else in this thread also suggested, the Anatomy of the Ship series is another great resource. In particular the books of that series about HMS Diana, HMS Bellona, and HMS Victory would probably be useful to you. Several of these books have lots of diagrams and/or pictures of models that should help you to properly locate your masts. Good luck!

I think you should consider making the masts taller, from these pictures it looks like they'll be fairly short compared to the length and overall size of the ship. If you're going for a more accurate look the mainmast on a ship of this type in the 18th century was typically close to the length of the ship itself (not including the bowsprit), which should give you a rough idea of how tall to make it.

Yeah I see what you mean, adding the lines is helpful! Adding simple plate step-ups is definitely on the table, if I can't find a way of doing a true curve to it.

Thank you, I am really happy with how those areas turned out, though the beakhead I might need to adjust slightly once I start adding rigging and need tie-down points in that area. Which set of draughts are you looking at? The ones I've used show only minimal sheer on the upper deck itself, though the exterior view of the hull does certainly have more. The trick I'm finding is striking a balance between the almost flat deck beneath and the sheer of the hull that you see from the outside. I've been trying to design a good way of giving smooth, gradual sheer, currently experimenting with setting the quarterdeck barricades at an angle along with the aft-most two-thirds or so of the quarterdeck, but I'm still not finding a way that I like of giving the very slight sheer to the hull along the upper deck. The other problem of course is that I've used hinges to angle the hull inwards beginning at about the mainmast to show the gradual narrowing, and then combining that with gradual incline it's hard to get a hull without gaps and with sufficient strength to it. I'm hoping that with some sheer on the barricades it will give the impression I'm looking for. I also might need to wait and see how some of these things look once masts and rigging are added, I found with my first frigate I was not as pleased with the look of the hull until I rigged it, and then it all sort of came together and looked better in my opinion. So we'll see. Definitely appreciate the feedback, there aren't many LEGO mocs of this scale that I have seen to take notes from so it's a lot of trial and error at this point!