What Is My Time Worth Part 7: Final Analysis and Thoughts

So, it's taken a while to go from this:

The actual hull number is NB16. I didn't think to take a picture of the original packages.

to this:

Now, with the project finished, it's time to take a look at the numbers.  How long did it take?  What would it cost me to buy one pre-assembled?  And, finally, what is my time worth?

So, How Long Did It Take?

In looking at the build time for this project, we can break it down into four parts: Hull, Masts, Standing Rigging and Running Rigging.  So, let's look at the parts of the project in that order.  

The Hull:

To get the hull put together, cleaned up and make sure the masts would fit into the holes in the hull took 50 minutes.  I decided that the guns were a little too high above the water on this model, so I decided to grind the waterline down to the proper height.  To measure that and get it ground down took about 12 minutes.  This isn't normally a step I would take, but in this case I decided to do so as I thought it was too far out of line.  These times were minor compared to painting the hull of course, which took just a touch over 3 hours, or 185 minutes.  The total time in getting the hull ready was a total of 247 minutes, or 4.12 hours

The Masts (Including the bowsprit):

It only took 22 minutes to clean and assemble the masts.  Once again, painting was the main amount of time here, which took 152 minutes or 2.53 hours.  Because I made sure the masts would fit into the hull before assembly started, it took only 6 minutes to install all the masts including the bowsprit.  When all the times for the masts were totaled up, it took exactly 180 minutes, or 3 hours.

Standing Rigging:

Including drilling all the holes for the rigging, it took 106 minutes to install the stays between the masts.  It took 48 minutes to paint and install the photo-etch ratlines. To do the backstays for all three masts took 88 minutes, and it took 29 minutes just to put the rigging around the outside of the bowsprit.  When added together, the entire set of standing rigging took 261 minutes, or 4.35 hours.

Running Rigging:

Surprisingly enough, this turned out to be the quickest part of the whole project, which I did not expect.  To do all the running rigging took 106 minutes, or 1.76 hours.

Totals and Grand Total:

1. Hull:                                    247 minutes/4.12 hours
2. Masts:                                 180 minutes/3.00 hours
3. Standing Rigging:              261 minutes/4.35 hours
4. Running Rigging:              106 minutes/1.76 hours

          GRAND TOTAL:            794 minutes/13.23 hours

What Would It Cost To Buy One Prebuilt?

For purposes of this comparison, I'm using the prices found at the Model J Ship website (http://modeljship.com/en/).  The basic cost from the website of a ship like I just built would be 60 Euros.  Julian (the website owner) charges 15.00 Euros for a base, but he hand-sculpts his and I don't do that any more so I don't think the comparison there is fair.  He also offers an accessories kit for 25 Euros that includes anchors, towed boats and flags, but I didn't build my ship with any of these.  Consequently, the best comparison from the website is the basic model.  Using the XE.com exchange rate website, 60 Euros equals $71.39 US.  So, $71.39 is the amount I will use to determine the answer for the next section.

What Is My Time Worth?

So, now we've come to the big reveal and it's just a question of simple math.  Take the cost of $71.39 and divide it by 13.23 hours.  That gives us a total of:

$5.39 per hour

Hmmmmm.  Well, it's a little more than what I expected, since I originally expected it to be about $3 something an hour.  When I started this series in August of 2017, the same frigate from Model J Ship would have cost 73 Euros, or $85.96 US although that includes a base.  If I had included a base in the price above, it would have still been 73 Euros, but $86.86 US due to the different exchange rates over time.

What Does It All Mean?

My first thought here is that it means no one is getting rich in the model shipyard business!  For other meanings, I have to go back to some of the comments on the very first post in this series.  One comment said that he suspected the final analysis would show that while commercial prices seemed high, they might turn out to be a pretty good deal on a per-hour basis.  I would have to agree with this.  Also, I said in response to another comment that the last entry in this series would probably have a disclaimer about how we build these for love, not money.  That seems true too, so let me repeat it in a larger font:

WE BUILD THESE FOR LOVE, NOT MONEY!

For a closing thought (OK, thoughts), I think that Age of Sail gamers are different from other wargamers.  First of all, we realize that we are a niche within a niche within a niche [war-gaming > Naval war-gaming > Age of Sail naval war-gaming].  Secondly, we all seem to have read Horatio Hornblower or Jack Aubrey novels at some point in our lives, and identify with them somehow.  Something about the gentility of the period appeals to us; you don't seem to find the "win at all costs" mentality among serious Age of Sail gamers.  

I game in other periods, of course.  Rare is the wargamer that doesn't dabble in several periods of history.  I can tell you though, that my WWII Soviet infantry doesn't evoke the same feelings for me that my sailing ships do.  If I lost all my other miniatures but kept my sailing ships, I would keep playing.  If I lost my sailing ships, I would probably be out of the hobby altogether, as it would be too hard to start over.

In a way, my miniature sailing ships are a lot like real ships: They're labor-intensive, they cost a lot of time and money, and you can never get back what you put into them.  Another way they are just like real ships is this:  Once they get into your soul, you can't just walk away from them.

What Is My Time Worth, Part 6: Running Rigging

I had planned to have this post in place before Christmas, but there were two things I didn't plan on.  They are:

1. General holiday season craziness, and
2. A bout with the flu.

I should have known that the holiday season would mess up my schedule; after all, it's not my first Yuletide season.  I am, however, going to plead ignorance about the flu as I really didn't expect to get sick.  I certainly didn't expect it to turn a week of my time into a blur of sleep, coughing and fatigue.  That's enough about my issues though, as I suspect you're here to read about sailing ships and not sickness.

In this post, I'm going to deal with running rigging.  That's the rigging that, in real life, operates the yardarms and other parts of the sail set.  These lines were not coated with tar, because they had to move through blocks in order to operate properly.  This is whey they are called "running rigging."  On my models, they are done with a light tan thread so as to differentiate them from the standing rigging.  Unlike the standing rigging, when doing running rigging we start at the bow of the ship and work our way towards the stern.    Another difference is that, unlike standing rigging, the number of steps in doing running rigging will vary based on which sails your ship has set.  So, while the Langton rigging guide shows 16 basic steps for running rigging (plus more if the model has its staysails set between the masts), some of those 16 basic steps will be ignored as we go. 

So, from this...

to this in only 16 steps or less.

One other picture that should have been included in the previous post, but wasn't.  The picture below is a homemade tool I use to get glue onto knots in tight spaces.  In practice, I use it almost everywhere, given that the nozzle on a container of glue is way too big to get into small spaces.

It's just a pin vise with a straight pin that has a large head chucked into the larger of the two openings.  It is so useful that I'm tempted to buy a new vise, and convert this one into a permanent tool for gluing knots.

Before starting, I should point out that the running rigging on this model is considerably simpler than the standing rigging.  As the Langton guide points out:

we are only showing the lifts, braces and sheets of the running rigging.

Lifts were the lines from the mast down to the yard arms. Braces were

taken from the yardarms to the next mast in order to be able to trim the

sails to the wind.  Sheets were used to haul on the lower part of the sail.

The first step is to run a line from the foremast stay to each side of the spritsail yard below the bowsprit.  In Harland's book Seamanship in the Age of Sail this line is called a spritsail brace.  I refer to it as "another line to keep the spritsail yard in place if the glue breaks," but then I'm not as precise as Harland.  

So that's the first step....

Step 2 involves the sheets for the jibsails, which are those triangular sails out over the bowsprit.  According to the guide, you should use a separate line for each of the jibsails, but I find this to be too fiddly given the small area you're working in.  What I do is to drill a hole in the rearmost jibsail, tie the line there, run it back to the hole where the shrouds are, take a turn and then glue the end of the thread under the second jibsail.

The highlighted lines run inside the line from step 1, and behind the ratlines.

The next photo covers steps 3,4 and 5, and will have us installing the braces and lifts for all of the foremast.  Here, we start from the lowest line and work our way towards the top of the mast.  Step 3 is highlighted in blue, step 4 in green and step 5 in red.  As you can see, each thread provides both the brace from the main mast to the foremast, and the lift for the yard.

Despite what the picture looks like, the lines do not foul each other.

With this sail set, we skip steps 6 and 7.  That's because there is no royal sail at the top of the mast for step 6, and with the foresail brailed up there is no need for a line to the bottom edge of the foresail.

There are different versions of step 8, depending on whether or not the mainsail is lowered or furled. Either way, step 8 is the most time-consuming step of all for running rigging.  I've tried to color-code the picture below in such a way as to let you see the different sub-assemblies of step 8.  Keep in mind that, even though I've used different colors, this is all one long piece of thread.  You start by tying the thread onto the main yardarm, and then taking it back to hole A (dark blue).  You go through hole A, wrap around the bottom boom of the spanker sail, go up the sail and under the ratlines, go over the crossjack boom and then do the same thing on the other side of the sail (teal blue).  Then, go through hole A on the port side and back up to the top boom of the spanker sail.  Take a turn around the top boom, then take the line up through the gap in the standing rigging and back down to the upper boom of the spanker where you take another turn (light blue).  From there, go back down to and through hole A on the starboard side (light blue).  From hole A, go back up to the top of the spanker boom, take a turn and go down and through hole A on the port side (pastel purple).  From hole A on the port side, to up to the port mainyard and wrap the thread around it (dark blue again, on the port side).  From there, take the line over the topgallant yardarm, back down to the yardarm on the starboard side, tie off and glue it (dark green).  Trim off any excess once you're done.

Sorry, but I don't think I can make it any simpler than this.

Step 9 is ignored because the main sail is furled, so the next picture shows us steps 10, 11 and 13.  We ignore step 12 for the same reason as step 6: i.e., there is no royal sail on the mainmast.  For the sake of consistency, I've colored the steps in this photo the same way I did the photo for 3 through 5.  This set of steps is a little different, because here we start in the middle, move to the top,and then drop back to the bottom for step 13.  When you look at the model in person, though, this makes sense, because you do the interior lines first and then go back to the crojack line which is outside of the other two.

Light blue first, then green, then red.

The green line in the above photo should be back against the mast like all the other braces, so that's a mistake on my part.  I suspect I didn't let the glue on the knot dry enough before I started running the lines.

Now, we're in the homestretch as there are only 3 steps left.  We can ignore step 16 though, as there are no royal sails on the mizzenmast.  In these last two steps however, are the major differences between British warships and every other nation's vessels.  British warships (and warships only) ran the running rigging for their mizzen sails back to the top of the spanker boom.  Every other nationality ran these lines forward to the main mast.

British mizzen rigging.

 

Everyone else's mizzen rigging, including British merchants.

With the mizzen rigging finished, the ship is now complete.  Total time for the running rigging was 106 minutes, or 1.76 hours.

There are still some little things, like finishing the ship's base. However, as  I make my own bases and buy the material in bulk, there is no way to directly compare them to buying and painting a resin one.  Because of that, I won't be including the time or cost of the base in the project.  I had also wanted to make this the final post, but given how long it already is I think I'll save the final analysis for one more post.

What Is My Time Worth, Part 5: Standing Rigging

So with the masts in place, it's time to start doing the rigging.  This is the area where most gamers start saying things like, "Oh, I can't do that."  Truth be told, looking at a finished model without seeing how it was done can be a little intimidating.  There are, however, several guides available to the modeler that will walk them through the process.  Some of them are online, and a good one is at my buddy Vol's blog: http://volsminiatures.blogspot.com/ .  Look for "Rory's rigging guide", as it is in several entries, and some can be purchased.  Personally, I use Rod Langton's guide, which is pictured below:

They now cost $22 from Waterloo Miniatures here in the US,
but to me it's been worth every penny.

I will try to follow the rigging instructions step by step, as they are outlined in the manual.  That is probably the quickest way to see how we go from this:

Nice enough, but naked.

to this:

Now, she is starting to look like a sailing ship.

The first step is drilling the holes that will let us run the rigging.  Normally I would do this before the hull was painted, but decided to wait on this ship so that all the steps would be in a logical order.  If  you do this, you will have to touch up paint on the hull and possibly the deck when the drill bit goes through and scratches your work.  The picture below is from the rigging guide, and shows where the holes need to be:

Holes A, B and C are each .5 millimeters with hole D being .7 millimeters, but I drill A with a .7 millimeter drill bit as well.  That's because there will also be running rigging going through that hole.  You'll also see a handwritten note about an extra hole near the bow.  That's so the bowsprit can be rigged.  It's mentioned in the book, but not shown on the reference sheet.  There is also a .7 millimeter hole at E, which I should have mentioned in Part 4 but apparently didn't.  To give you an idea of how small these drill bits are, here's a picture of them:

.5mm on left, .7mm center.  The big one on the right is 1/16 of an inch.
I get my small bits from Micromark. https://www.micromark.com/

1. Here, we drill the holes at A, B, C and the one I have written in.
2. Next comes the .7mm hole at D.  The manual also says to drill the hole at E here, but I do that before the masts are installed.To drill the nine holes in the hull took me about 23 minutes, including touching up the paint where needed.  Next comes the stays, or the lines that run between the masts.
3. This runs from the bowsprit, around the left side of the foremast, over the main yardarm and through the hole drilled there earlier.  In the photos below, it's highlighted in orange and took 23 minutes to complete.  
4. This line runs from the foremast, over the main yardarm and through the hole where it's tied to the larger string.  It's highlighted in bright green. 
5. The gammoning of the bowsprit comes next, and it's done in purple.  This helps hold the bowsprit in place on the real ship, and does the same thing here by keeping it from bending up.  It's hard to see in the photo, but it's done in a figure 8 shape that also runs lines out to the spritsail yard.
6. After all that, the next line is pretty simple.  It runs from the mainmast over the crojack yard and secures the mizzenmast.  You'll see it in bright yellow.  Steps 4-6 took 44 minutes total.
7. Finally (for these threads) is what the manual calls "a long length of thread and it finishes off the lower stays.   It runs all over the ship, and you'll see it highlighted in pale blue.  It took 27 minutes to install.  The total for standing rigging to this point: 106 minutes, or 1.76 hours.

Highlighted lines are explained above.

Next up are the ratlines, and this is where I do things a bit differently from the Langton manual.  When it was written, When my copy was written, there were no photo-etched brass ratlines, with a mesh being used instead.  The manual recommends those mesh ones be put in after all the standing rigging is in place.  I find that's too hard to do with the brass ones, so I install them before I install the backstays.  They come in unpainted brass (as seen below), and I simply spray paint them black and then seal them with a spray of dullcoat.  After that's done, I cut them from the sprue, touch them up with a black Sharpie, and install them.  It's never an exact fit; you have to cut some off of the top to ensure that the bottom sits on the channels like they're supposed to.  It took 28 minutes to install the six lower ratlines, and 17 minutes to install the six upper ones.  It takes less than 5 minutes to paint and seal them, so I called it 3 to make this step an even 48 minutes.

I'm pretty sure this picture is larger than life-size.

After this is done, it's now time to do the backstays and remaining stays.  The manual says to start from the mizzenmast and work your way forward.  This makes senses, because it gives you more free space to work in.  You take another "long length of thread," and run it up and down the mast three times to give you the backstays.  After you tie that off to the mast, you use the remainder to make the other stays running towards the bowsprit.  I've tried to use different colors to show how the lines go up and down, but may not have been too successful.  Anyway, the times for each mast are:

      8.   Mizzenmast: 35 minutes
      9.   Mainmast:    28 minutes
      10. Foremast:     25 minutes

Lines from earlier steps have been erased (although not very well).

And that gives us a total of 88 minutes for the backstays.  Now, we're almost done with the standing rigging, with all that's left to do being rig the bowsprit.  Rather than take another picture of the ship and having to erase more lines, I'm going to be lazy and use a view from the manual.  

   

   11.  This is one line, tied in the center at X, then run in numerical order (number 2 are the holes we drilled back in step one) and tied off under the bowsprit at 3.  Time for finishing this line was 19 minutes. 

Total time for doing all of the standing rigging was 261 minutes, which works out to 4.35 hours.  When combined with the other times I've recorded so far, this gives us a total of 11 hours and 28 minutes, which we can round to 11 1/2 hours.  In the next "What Is My Time Worth" post, I will do the running rigging and bring this project to an end.

What is My Time Worth, Part 4: Painting and Installing the Masts

This post comes to you with a mixture of emotions.  I'm happy that the masts are finally painted and in place because that means rigging is next and the end is within sight.  I'm unhappy, because it seems that I've gotten quite good at repairing the things I occasionally break while building these ships.  More on that later.

I went round and round with what color to paint my masts.  The recent repaint of HMS Victory seems to indicate that the masts are not necessarily the same color as the sides of the ship.  Instead, they are more of a cream color.  Of course, that brings up the question of, "what color is cream?"  Technically, it's the pastel color of yellow, according to Wikipedia.  Googling "cream color" will give you a whole range of shades, many of which can't possibly be right.  In the end, I went with a suggestion from Mark Barker of the Inshore Squadron, and used a desert sand color over a black basecoat.  My desert sand doesn't have the slight pink tone his did, but it does make a pale tan that contrasts nicely with the hull.

So, how long did it take to get all this done?  Well, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, there was some breakage.  Like the old doctor joke says, "First, the bad news."  After having everything painted and waiting for the sealant coat, I knocked two of the masts off my painting desk as I was getting up.  The top of the mainmast curled back onto itself into a circle, and the foremast snapped just below the furled course.   I don't have any pictures of this, because I was too busy saying filthy words at a higher volume than I usually speak  I'm pretty sure some doors were slammed too.  After a day or so to decompress, I was able to straighten out and repaint the mainmast.  I repaired the foremast the same way I repaired one of my Spanish 74s after I knocked it off the table. You drill a .5mm hole in both halves of the mast, then make that larger with a .7mm drill.  Then, you pin both halves using a straight pin cut to length and glue it all together. I don't have any pictures of this process, as I was busy trying to make sure I didn't drill a hole in my fingers, or out the side of the mast.

I didn't keep track of how long the repairs took, because I want this project to document how long a model takes to build under regular conditions.  With that in mind, how long did it take to gets the masts painted and installed?  I took more detailed notes this time, and can break things down accordingly:

1. cleaning and assembling masts and bowsprit, 22 minutes
2. priming, 3 minutes
3. to paint the masts, 29 minutes
4. to paint the sails,  17 minutes
5. to paint the yardarms, 29 minutes
6. for touch-up and  mast bands, 29 minutes
7. for buntlines and reef points, 25 minutes
8. for final touch-up, 14 minutes, and
9. for sealing and installing the masts, 12 minutes.

That's a total of 180 minutes, so 3 hours right on the nose.   Combine that with the 247 minutes it took to finish the hull and we're up to 427 minutes, or 7.12 hours.  However, we're now ready to start drilling holes and putting the rigging in place.  The end isn't near, but as I said earlier, it's certainly in sight.  Even better, she's now starting to look like a ship.

The base will be detailed later.

The masts are in line with one another.  In my rush to snap a picture, I didn't
line up directly on the bow.

What Is My Time Worth, Part 3: Painting the Hull

As the title says, this is the point where lots of paint starts getting sprayed, brushed, rebrushed and otherwise applied.  So, how do we get from this:

Full disclosure: This is not the one I am painting.  I forgot to take a
picture of it unpainted.

to this:

Perhaps I should have taken this off the painting stick so you could see the
hull a bit better?

I use a black spray paint undercoat for my hull and my masts.  While it does mute the colors that go over it somewhat, it has the advantage of hiding any small areas that my paint job misses.  A white or grey undercoat, on the other hand, makes those areas stand out even more.  What you can't do though, is just use the undercoat as your base coat and paint around it.  Even though the model is on a painting stick, the undercoat will still rub off from handling.  So yes, the black undercoat then gets a coat of black on top of it.  😒  Of course, it doesn't have to be black.  I've also used Payne's Gray on hulls, and it gives a different, shinier look than straight black.

I had originally thought about doing the ship based on the painting of HMS Euryalus in The  Trafalgar Companion, which shows her looking like this:

I later chose against it, mainly because I was tired of painting a scheme I've come to refer to as BBB (Basic Boring British).  Instead, I pulled out my Anatomy of the Ship: The Frigate Diana and decided to go that way instead.  If you're not familiar with that book, HMS Diana looks like this:

A bit more colorful than HMS Euryalus is portrayed, to say the least! So, why did I choose this paint scheme instead of the previous one?  My rationales go like this:

1. When I get to play the Battle of Trafalgar, the smaller ships likely won't be on the table,
2. It is still an authentic historical paint scheme,
3. The earlier paint scheme of Diana will give me more use out of the ship, and 
4. I was tired of painting black and yellow (Did I mention that earlier?  I feel like I might have.).

 When I paint a hull I do the deck first, then the sides, and then finish up with the bow and stern.  I don't use washes because I have never managed to get a good hand on using them.  They either come out too dark, or with no effect at all other than muddying up all the colors.  So, what you see on the upper deck is the end result of painting and then careful touch-up work.  It is probably slower than using washes, but it's also the only way I know how to paint.  The bow and stern are painted the same way:  Paint, touch-up and re-touch until it looks right.

If you look at the hull, you'll see that the gunports without covers are painted in either a dark gray (in the hull) or a lighter gray (on the upper deck).  I do this so that it gives the effect of light coming through the gunports on the upper deck, or the shadows of the gundeck.  The hull gunports on this ship are particularly dark, because I figured that the boats on the skid beams will block out most of the light coming into the lower deck.  The light gray areas around the upper deck are hammock storage, and the dark brown lines on them represent the stanchions that support the netting.  The Langton manual on painting suggests painting light brown or gray criss crossed lines to represent the netting, but I can't do that neatly.

I don't have a specific time breakdown for each part of painting the hull, because it's not really that simple.  I know I said deck, hull and then bow/stern but it's not quite that simple.  When I'm painting the hull, if I see something I missed on the deck then I go back and fix it.  The only thing that I can say with any certainty is that it took 50 minutes to paint the stern and quarter galleries to my satisfaction.  Overall though, my notes show that it took 185 minutes to completely paint the hull.  Given that my timing isn't totally exact, I'm OK with saying that it took 3 hours to go from bare metal to finished hull.  In the next installment, I'll paint the masts and get them ready to glue into the ship.

What Is My Time Worth, Part 2: Fitting and Filing

Before doing any painting, I think it's necessary to fit everything together and see if it works, or more likely, does not.  Mast holes in the hull might need to be drilled out ever so slightly, or the masts might need to have the bottom trimmed so that they will fit securely and the fighting tops will be in the right positions to each other.

The fighting tops on this diagram of Constitution are circled in black.  Note that they are at different
heights to each other.

Along with drilling out the mast holes ever so slightly, I decided to grind a little of the hull down at the waterline.  For whatever reason, this model has the gunports sitting about 12 feet above the water, which is just too tall.Fortunately, some coarse grain sandpaper followed by some finer grain took off the small amount I needed quickly enough.  Cleaning and grinding the hull,along with fitting the masts to the hull took 1 hour and 2 minutes total.

I don't normally glue sails to the masts at this point, preferring to wait until after the hull is painted.  For this model though, I had to drill a hole for the bowsprit which meant that I needed to make sure that the headsails on the bowsprit would fit correctly against the sails on the foremast.  The best way to do that was to glue the sails to the foremast.  Well, with that done we may as well assemble the whole sail set.  It took about 22 minutes to assemble the masts and sails.  While doing that, I managed to break the headsails off of the bowsprit.  I have figured out how to fix this using a piece of wire, so I will make sure and show some pictures of that at the appropriate time.

So, where are we now?  I've spent 1 hour and 24 minutes on this frigate, and not a single lick of paint has been applied.  The next entry in this series will cover painting the hull.  As a reminder, to buy this frigate already assembled, painted and rigged would cost about $86.00.

What Is My Time Worth, Part 1

There's no doubt that 1/1200 scale sailing ships can be very labor-intensive compared to other miniatures.  Even if you don't rig them, you still have to paint the hull with all its tiny details.  Then you have to assemble the sails and masts, paint them, and glue them into the hull.  Once that's done, then you have to make a base for them, or buy a pre-made one which will still have to be painted. If you do decide to rig them, then that's even more work.

So then, it's not a surprise that there are few places or people that will paint and/or assemble them for you.  When you can find one, their services don't seem very cheap.  For example, a rigged British 36 gun frigate from ModelJship.com with white metal sails and a base costs 73 Euros, not counting shipping. At this writing (early August 2017), that is approximately $85.96 US.  A three-deck ship of the line like HMS Victory costs 138 Euros/$162.47 US.  By comparison, that same $85.96 will get you anywhere from 42 to 85 to 122 painted 15mm infantry figures from Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka (http://www.miniaturelovers.com/15mm.html).  The wide variance in the number of 15mm figures is because Fernando Enterprises offers three different painting levels to choose from.

I now realize that I have no idea how long it takes me to build and rig one of my models.  What this series of posts are going to do then, is to try and figure out how long it takes to build one ship, and how that compares to the prices above.  I'll build a British 36 gun frigate, and record my progress in this post.  When it's done, we can see what my time is worth by comparing it to the ModelJShip price.  I suspect (and am a little afraid) that I won't like what I find out very much!

First up is the miniature itself.  A British 36 gun frigate hull from Waterloominis.com costs $6.50, the sails costs $7.25 and the ratlines costs $3.00.  I've used the same spools of threads for years, so won't count that.  I can make many bases from the plastic sheet I buy, so to price that we'll use the cost of a resin base which is $3.50.  That makes the total cost for the raw material $19.25.  In the next post, we'll take a look at how long it takes to paint the hull.