There are some very nice Black Pearls in this forum and I'd like to share my rendition of this build. I don't know if this was a Revell to Zvezda or visa-versa, but all in all it was a nice kit that kept me busy. Some modifications were made to the staircase, Captain's cabin doorway, helm, and the decking. The mods were as follows: staircase was widened out as seen in the movie stills; Captain's doorway was re-done to come close to looking like the movie version; the Helm had a modified scratch built floor plate with the steering ropes passed thru them, the ships bell had the 4 legged cover replaced and mounted on a two post arrangement, and the skylight over the Captain's qtrs was scratch built into a peaked skylight. Although the plastic decking had plenty of wood grain to it, it just begged to be replaced with veneer strips of Basswood and stained accordingly. The same strips were used for the railings on the staircases. I had illuminated the interior and 3 globe lanterns using flickering nano-LEDs powered via a 9v battery. Rigging was tedious and time consuming. I would definitely recommend start from the aft and working forward. Scratch made treasure trunks and aftermarket sacks and barrels litter the deck with plunder and supplies. All the painting was done via airbrush using Tamiya acrylics. Decking was weathered using a super thinned wash of Tamiya Flat Black via brush, artist sponge, and Q-tips. I probably would have saved some time by not going uber nuts on detailing inside the lower deck. You can't see any of it. Enjoy the construction photos as I will strive to put them in start to finish order. I will begin with the decking. Thin strips of basswood secured using Gorilla Wood Glue (yes, it worked) as the adhesive.
