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I’ve been a long time “lurker” on this site and thought that it was about time I shared some of my own efforts. I started modelling when I was about 9 or 10 years old, I still remember buying an old Airfix Saab Draken from a jumble sale, rushing home to make and paint it (all done in an afternoon) and being delighted with the result. From there I worked through a large part of Airfix’s other offerings most of which ended up gathering dust hanging from my bedroom ceiling. AFVs followed although by then I was trying more for quality rather than quantity. Then it was back to aircraft, mainly US Navy stuff and I even managed a “highly commended” at a small model expo, being awarded the trophy by Miss Sutton Coldfield herself !! Anyway life then started getting a bit real and the whole hobby took a back seat although I still read magazines and bought kits but they just ended up languishing in my attic. Now 30+ years down the line, back in the UK and with more time on my hands I’ve been able to dust down the toolbox and get started again. I started looking at an old Airfix Mauretania but then found a load of old ship plans on Ebay, the Servia amongst them, and decided to try to scatchbuild something. Having not built anything for 30 years or so, never having scratchbuilt anything and having never built anything without wings or tracks I expected this to be more of an experiment that would ultimately end up on the shelf or in the bin. Although its been a bumpy road with every 2 steps forward usually followed by at least 1 back it does seem to be going a lot better than I expected and whilst I doubt I’ll be meeting Miss Sutton Coldfield again anytime soon thought it was about time to add the work to date to the site to both share my experience and hopefully get some pointers from the seasoned experts out there. My starting point was the Underhill plans that I picked up from Ebay, because of the age of the ship (1881) there are very few photos around and the only really decent one I could find was on Wiki and this seems to show the ship after a refit which dramatically altered the upper decks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RMS_Servia_Underway,_Detroit_Publishing_Company.jpg There is a 1/48 builders model apparently but this lives in Canada I think so no chance of seeing that close up. I therefore took the view that I’d follow the plans and use a best guess where they couldn’t help. https://www.diomedia.com/stock-photo-ss-servia-1881-image5522819.html Unfortunately because I’m playing catch-up there are not that many pictures from the early stages as I didn’t expect my approach to work but I will post what I have and fill in the gaps as best I can. I also tend to work in bursts so progress is slow, I’ve probably spent about 400 hours on her so far but this has been spread over 18 months or so. I’d also like to apologise in advance for my patchy knowledge of nautical terminology. Anyway enough blathering - on to the build itself….. The starting point was to use the plan to cut out the various cross sectional bulkheads from 2mm plasticard. A piece of mdf was then used to act as a base and the spine and placement of the various cross sectional pieces was carefully marked out. I used small fillets of wood to create clamps to hold these pieces in place at the correct position along the spine and perpendicular to it. One thing that I learnt quickly is that at this stage you need to be as precise as possible as misalignments will come back to haunt you later. I also used the plans to make plasticard spacers so that the cross sections could be positioned at the correct height from the base board to make laying the decks easier later and to give them the correct camber.