After taking a little break after my Albatros I am back in the shipyard. I purchased the Swift 1805 by AL and had originally planned to build this as my first wooden ship build but for some reason I worked on the Albatros first. My goal with this build is to continue to build skills in planking and rigging and to add some experience with painting a ship. I purchased the current Swift kit which does not include the open lower deck or provide for a second planking. While I could have second planked I wanted the experience of painting a wooden ship vs staining it for future projects on the shelf like Bluenose and Rainbow. A few pics follow of my start. This kit is fairly straight forward and much simpler in design than the Albatros was re rigging. For some reason AL has decided to ‘save’ use of paper by replacing printed instructions with a CD version. While I appreciate their desire to be efficient certain things are best on paper vs electronic media and detailed instructions would be one of them. I do like some of the tools AL provides in the kit in particular small sanders and tweezers - can always use more of these!