USS OLYMPIA

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Every school boy knows (or used to know? - Just what is it school boys know these days?) the famous phrase "You may fire when ready Gridley." And - thus - they've had it WRONG all this time!

When Admiral Dewey was ready to commence his engagement of Spanish forces at Manila he actually said - in quite calm and matter-of-fact tones (described as forceful yet generously, as if over-the-shoulder) "You may fire when you are ready Mr. Gridley."

This is the Olympia... but as you can see we are still in dry-dock.

To give an idea of scale I placed a regular-sized glue bottle behind.

(note: back railings still not attached in this picture)

Picture's not so hot but this is the Maine (left) and Olympia.

Next ship project will be the USS Brooklyn of Santiago Harbor fame.

These models are resin and photo-etch. In particular the kits for both the USS Maine and the USS Olympia shown here can be obtained through Commander Series models.

Another good source in the world of scale model shipbuilding is at Steel Navy.

___________________________

Compared to a lot of the guys I've seen out there my stuff is still at beginner-level. I'm not quite at the obsessive level to want to go make sailors out of glue and then PAINT then on the decks - but maybe someday (do I want that??).

But the biggest thing I've learned is that your first decision in this is deciding what incarnation of the vessel you are re-creating.

I found this out the minute I started researching photos to help in the construction. Different time - different paint job. Here and there an added canopy, a slightly different configuration of the life boats, and so on.

I know the true experts at this will probably point at this that and the other error even on these pictures - and I could point out a few things I could have done better myself. But I'm considering this a process.