Trending: But there's no time to rearrange the deckchairs...

It took 15,000 men two years to build the Titanic. I gave myself just three hours to raise the world's most famous cruise liner 100 years after its demise. My tools: A blunt craft knife; a tube of what turns out to be non-stick glue; and diminishing reserves of patience.

Taschen, the fancy coffee book table publisher, has published a build-your-own Titanic book. Its pages are printed with dozens of perforated panels to be removed, scored and painstakingly glued together. There was no way I'd complete the 1:200 scale model in a morning, but how far would I get?

It takes two hours just to prepare the base of the 135cm hull. The violins seemed weeks away (there aren't really violins, although there are little lifeboats, and a full complement of funnels).

After three hours I down tools with a renewed admiration for the men who built the real thing, and for anyone with the time and steady hands to craft it in paper. Turns out I'm really not cut out for model making. Top tips: Get decent glue and take a six-month sabbatical.