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Hello all! I have been building this for a little while (about a month), and have decided rather belatedly to do a WIP for it, I hope you do not mind. I will update a few stages at a time to prevent overload! Way back when I were a nipper, Father Christmas delivered of me a fine, large box under the spreading Christmas tree, and inside I found a lovely sailing ship! Now, I were only 8 or 9 at the time, and I found it was a bit of a 'challenge', so my plucky dad built it for me. The kit was, from memory, moulded in a Cadbury's Milk Chocolate-coloured plastic. Dad did not paint it, but it still looked the bees knees to me, especially as the ship even had a crew of five supplied. And pre-moulded ratlines that he had to cut out and fit. A few years ago, I decided to revisit my childhood and have a go at Endeavour myself. I started painting it with oil paints to try and replicate a wood effect, that worked quite well, and then I decided to try something that I had read about in a book, and see if I could make the ratlines myself. I modified the appropriate parts, fitted the vertical ratline rigging, then found I was not dextrous enough to tie the knots. It was sat up on my hi-fi's speaker for years until it met a sticky end. Last year, my son gave me another kit of Endeavour as a birthday present, in the glorious red box that has become Airfix's trademark: I spent a lot of time abetween being given the kit and starting, because I did not want to make a mess of this one! The parts this time were moulded in a 'Caramac' chocolate bar colour, and I think they are beginning to show their age now. There was quite a bit of flash, lots of mould seams, and a few parts were warped a bit (one mast top was bent almost to the point of being broken). A lot of water has gone under the bridge since I was 8 or 9, and I felt a lot more confident this time. I decided to keep things simple, go pretty much out of the box, and add very little. An no, I was not going to hand-knot the ratlines, I would fight the 'rigging machine'! The first battle was to get the hull halves together, after I had confirmed the the deck would fit afterwards: As you see, a little assistance was needed, along with lashings of ginger beer Revell Contacta cement and a good amount of time to let it set. I then had cause to use my newly purchased clamps courtesy of Antics Gloucester: I had been on the lookout for these clamps for quite a long time and was right chuffed when I found them! There was a little filler needed at the front and back of the deck, and to remove a couple of ejection pin marks on the transom: At this point in the instructions, Airfix suggest that the attachment points are fitted for the ratlines, so I got the base painting done (Humbrol 26 enamel): These have seen better days - one is broken, one is poorly moulded and looks like it is coming apart at the seams, and quite a few were bent. I decided that I would be asking for trouble to fit them now, so I left them off. I got on with the paintwork instead, using Humbrol enamels again all thinned with Naphtha thinners, and they behaved very nicely indeed. Thankfully the black waterline section was very easy to mask, but the black along the railings was a little more time consuming. I have to admit I am not sure if I have interpreted the painting instructions correctly or not, but I like the way it looks. I popped some satin varnish onto the cabin windows as I suspect that the glass would not have been that shiny. Next task was to paint the white hatch surrounds, these were done with Revell Satin White acrylic, and they only needed two brushed coats - it did seem to work very well! It was also the first time that I had masked off a ship's deck to paint details. At least the shapes were quite easy to mask, and I had space to work with! So far it had been a fun build. I will not be dealing with any accuracy issues, and in the main, not dealing with any improvements at all. More soon, thanks for looking, Ray