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Sixteen years ago, members of the Tulsa Ship Modelers Society completed a 1/48 scale model of the USS Tulsa, a Navy gunboat that was in service during the years between the world wars.

On Wednesday, they unveiled a 1/700 scale model of the new USS Tulsa, an Independence-class littoral combat ship under construction at Mobile, Ala.

“When we built the first one, we had 13 members,” said the now-smaller group’s leader, Ron Thomson.

And, he said, “it took us four years to build.”

For the current USS Tulsa, the modelers had neither 13 members nor four years. Nor did they have the space to assemble what would have been a nearly 8-foot-long ship if built to the same scale as the earlier model.

The original model, now displayed at the Tulsa Historical Society, is 5 feet long and made almost entirely of custom-made wood parts. It was built according to the actual ship’s plans and specifications.

That’s something else the modelers didn’t have when they began making their replica of the current USS Tulsa. The ship and its design are too new, and plans are not available to the general public. So they had to make-do with a model — two of them, actually — ordered online.