Hi Shipwrights,

I'd like to jump into the high seas with the Tamiya Fletcher and some Photo Etch. As a result of watching your great builds I am inspired to put a serious effort into this project. More than reviews and builds of the kit and its aftermarket options, I am interested in your research methods for learning about and then building these famous boats.

Where do you start?
What do you focus on?
What information is really necessary for the project and what is enrichment?

Much Appreciated,
Bryan

I tend to build for one of two reasons.
Historical interest
Visual interest

I can be susceptible to good box art (visual interest) or random photos I come across (again, visual interest). In the first case, it's usually an out-of-box build with no research done (trying to keep a few simple projects going on so I can have something light to do).

The stuff that I research.... ahhhhh that's a wildly varied process. It might be as simple as going to a Navsource page, but it might develop into something more serious. I bought the Trumpeter CV-13 Franklin kit and started checking for tweaks and improvements I could make online. One thing lead to another and I started buying books... then found out I lived near a regional archives branch where records of one of her overhauls was kept.

Now, sometimes a build starts with a trip to one of the various branches of the National Archives to see what I can find. That is a much more extreme and rare form of research though.