Book excerpt: Now available in paperback, Philip Reed's latest building guide tackles what many regard as the ultimate expression of the ship model maker’s art, the Navy Board model. His step-by-step construction of a miniature 1/192 scale model of HMS Royal George of 1715 demonstrates all the conventions of Navy Board framing and planking. With the aid of nearly four hundred photographs, he takes the reader through every building stage. He covers methods of hull and deck framing, internal and external planking, and the construction of the complex stern. Reed also shows how to render the multitude of decorative carvings on the figurehead, stern, and broadside. A section showing, amongst others, his model of Siren, explains how the techniques used to frame Royal George can be adapted for ships of a later date, using single and double frames closer to full-size practice. This is the first book in many years to cover the well-known and sought-after early eighteenth-century Navy Board models. Here is an invaluable manual from which any model maker can benefit from the lifetime’s experience of one of the world’s leading exponents of the art of miniature shipbuilding.