Chidokan

nice boat, far better than the sergal one! I have just put that together and it looks strange... nothing like the book! Do you plan to do the smaller one as well? I was thinking of making masts, sails and oars and storing them on the boats, but then thought they may be stored somewhere else.... anyone know where they keep them on the current replica ship?

hi Klimi, I am just starting the Sergal kit, and got the book today... One thing I spotted is that the wheelhouse is very different in the kit to the book (which is what you have made). Do you think the rudder can move enough with the wheel house from the book, as it seems a little restrictive from the drawings? I thought as you have made it you will be able to see better how well this would work! The kit version gives a wide angle, but that looks too much... Nice work, I hope I can do as well as you!

one thing I found useful was to blacken the scribe lines that indicate degrees etc on the handles...my eyesight is not what it was and this helps a lot. I also made up some jigs for the saw, so I could do multiple plank lengths for decking etc. I dont have a large work area, to get the larger tools in, so a little time fiddling about getting the relevant assembly made up is fine by me... You definitely need a small support board to pin the tool down, I made up one using some cheap angle brackets, its about a foot wide and two feet long and does the job.

Just found this, looks good! I've just bought the Sergal Bounty.... however am banned from building it until I finish the viking ship I am on with.. (shields to paint and its finished, so not long!) I started to look at the overall quality of the kit, just checking I have it all, honest! The bulk is fine, however there are two ply sheets that have the tops of the cutters and other parts laser cut... these are bent and split, so am guessing I will have to replace them. The instructions are irritating, as the languages are split all over the pages, it makes them really hard to follow. I think I will scan them in and then combine all the english bits together. I think I may bash mine a little to get the holds a bit more exposed, like yours above...... the Sergal frames are solid, so will need some cutting out where I want to cut away the hull. I think this will need some thinking through or I could end up with a twisted frame.

I got one of the unimats and find it quite useful for making straight lines for cannonball racks etc. They are a bit of a fiddle to set up, but that is part of the fun. I wish I had got the top of the range CNC controlled version looking back now, but the one I have is useful for the odd times you need it. I rigged up a little jig for cutting planks to length for decking etc. If you do buy one, make sure you get a set with the adjustable tables, which is the most useful part of the system...

I find the oscilloscope probe with the locking hook is useful for getting into awkward places... you can get just the probe section at local electronics shops like Maplin... http://www.dx.com/p/40mhz-oscilloscope-probe-with-x1-x10-switch-max-600v-34221#.Vstpq9AlRlR

I wonder if I can prove a link to one of the sailors on the brit side, and claim some of it belongs to me as it should have all been divided up between the capturing crew?

tweezers. I hate them. they either fire the part I want half way into oblivion or dont grip/pick up where I want them to. I got passed a loom a line and yes they are useless...the pins need threading and the lower plate should be steel, then it might work... any tension and the pins just pop out. As an engineer I sometimes have to deal with kilograms per square inch.... don't ask.

I am building the Victory centre x-section and have ran into a few issues with it...nothing I couldnt fix, but a bit disappointing. The main hull section was distorted and needed filing and filling to square up. I bought the 'anatomy of the ship' book on Victory, did a bit of browsing on here, and found some errors on both the drawings and the contents. If you google for victory x-sections you can find the same notes. Other than that I am now cracking on with the rigging and have learnt a few pitfalls along the way that I can avoid on the next build... next is Santisima Trinidad, which to be honest seems the better buy.

I do not think you could replicate the slight variations on the surface in a small scale from an adze... If you can ever get the chance at looking at say the mouseman furniture, you can feel the variation and see it in the right light, but it still surprises me how flat a finish you can get with these hand tools! Its an interesting point, (made me think about my MR decking!),but I am guessing if there was a plank standing proud above the rest, it would have been levelled to match to get rid of the trip hazard...

I think I would prefer the sellers to tell me what was in the box, rather than a potted history of the ship.... take for example HMS Victory.... I know what interests me about the ship, am looking for a kit, so how do I tell why one manufacturer is better than another apart from the price and scale??? A photo is nice, maybe a few zoomed shots as well, but I cannot tell if, say, cannon barrels are brass, cast white metal, or if I have to turn them myself by looking at a photo as it could well be blackened. On a rating of one to ten, how good are the plans/instructions? should I choose UK over Italy as my source of model? what wood has been used in the kit? Is it plank on frame, or bulkhead, or solid body? beginner/or expert level? its a bit of a minefield without the forums here.... !!! anyone find answers to the above on a shop site?? I would not like to just walk into my local model shop and ask, as he specialises in train sets, even though he sells the usual ranges from the big suppliers...

I have decided to buy the knarr from here to take a look at the quality...(and to rob the crew for something larger!) I dont think it will replace scratch building, but would certainly be a help for really complex items like carvings on the bow or stern... I could see AL and the other big kit makers dropping their metal castings in favour of these once the detail is fine enough at a reasonably low cost. http://www.medievalmodelships.com/#!products/cjg9

I did spot that width wise they were oversize once the bows were painted...I was about to add the strings ( and no, I am NOT using flemish knots! ) and realised that the figures hold the bows incorrectly.... (as an archer, I would never hold a bow like that.... when strung it is impossible, and resting on it would mean the bow would have to be turned slightly unless it was unstrung). I think I will have the crew 'at ease' in preparation for battle , rather firing cannon etc. I plan on getting some halberdiers/pikemen to fill up the top deck so it looks crowded. John's chess group looks great, and they also do a little boat that looks like I could pressgang some more crew!

not come out too well with the camera in regards to actual colour... maybe I need daylight? (the background is actually white) I now see I have a little bit of touching up to do before I cut the bases off and add bow strings. I have decided to discard the supplied ramrods etc as a bit too thick on the shafts, and make my own from wood and filler. A quick check showed my scale needs to change slightly in order to fit some of these below decks.Glad I caught this before I built the hull! I am now tempted to buy a few more to really fill up the top deck, and maybe get a couple of the chess players etc John found as more 'dressed down' crew. It would be nice to get one climbing rigging or pulling ropes etc...

I was actually looking for a 'Wars of the Roses' model, as that is really the period I am interested in... A lot of piracy going on in the channel around that time apparently, as well as the odd boarding battle. MR is the closest I could get that had some decent plans! I was originally going to make it as its initial build, rather than the final version that sank, but it is difficult to translate what is in the books to determine later additions, the notes are scattered randomly about what upgrades were carried out.

yes,thats the one! The carriage sides are just roughed out.. will finish them shortly. I tapered the barrel today, but messed up when I tried to get the fluting. If I had a CNC milling machine I know how I could do it, but rotating the drill chuck by hand while cutting with a dremel just didnt work. Looks like a long time using a file VERY carefully...Whilst typing this it occurred to me to try using some filler and flatten whilst hardening... I need some for the dolphins anyway, and it might make sense to have these done as part of the main barrel rather than trying to add very small lumps of filler and shaping it.

I think I have worked out how to add pictures at last! These are a sample of the figures I am using. I will paint them up first, remove the bases and add wire through the legs in order to avoid spoiling the decks. What I did not realise is that there were laws on colours people were allowed to wear, depending on status, which limits the pallette a little. I am glad I bought an 'admiral/captain' figure to put on the top deck! Next to do are some random objects like buckets, as I know if I start the hull I will forget about making this stuff until its too late to add it in...cross section starts at 8 and goes to 5,(scan below is from the book mentioned in the previous note) and works out around six inches long. The demi-cannon I have just started gives a rough idea of scale on the 10mm cutting mat. Barrel is from an arrow shaft I broke last week...I will be carving it down shortly.

hi John, I've already started to paint up my figures as I thought I would probably need to install them as the cross section decks go in and they might be difficult to add in later. Just installed Mozilla in the hope I can add pictures.... good luck with the build!

The figures arrived today... I have uploaded a few shots into my trincomalee photo album on here, (for some reason it wont let me load them up on this blog, I get a URL screen but it just sits there no matter how often I press the ok button.... ) I now feel comfortable that they will fit between decks and I have the scale right. The demi cannon 'barrel' (from an arrow shaft ) is there to give a sense of scale on the usual 10mm square cutting mat. Cannon carriage is the start of a copy of 81A3003. There is a lot of detail on the barrel, so am thinking of tapering this then adding filler and carving.. The keel is hexagonal over the section I am building... That has been.... interesting... to make.(i.e. 'messed it up five times') Next up is getting some frames and ribs. These seem extremely thin in section compared to what I expected, so may make a few in ply first to see how they look. I have suggested to tarbrush we do a joint build blog...he is braver than me and doing a full hull!

hi Keith, its the reason I am avoiding the forecastle, it seems a bit of guesswork is involved... a friend of mine dived on MR and still follows what goes on, so need to have a quick chat with him about it. Anyone want to buy this book at the knockdown price of £800?? I could get a sovereign of the seas for that! unbelievable! glad I got it from the museum when I did... wonder if they have any left?? I had a quick look at the shop to see if they had anything new, and saw a poster that gives me a clue on the section size...if I go from the ladders to the ovens, I get ten cannon, some storerooms, and enough deck to get a few archers etc on. I am even tempted to do what the poster shows to be honest! I wonder if I should display it at the tilt and blame Baldrick for the sinking? Starting the frames today..

turns out the figures are white metal, not plastic. My apologies to the manufacturer! Just realised they have a Tudor Blackadder, Baldric and Percy as a set.... must... resist...

I have been chatting with John (tarbrush) about whether or not to do a scratch build log of the Mary Rose, which I fancied doing as a cross section.... so here goes... my first attempt at a blog. A bit of background first. I saw MR towed in to dock after she was raised, and have been fascinated ever since. We get random tv programmes about how they found it etc, but what finally got me going was a volume on the MR weapons I found at Leeds armouries...'weapons of warre' which was closely followed by buying 'Mary Rose, Your Noblest Shippe'... (best £50 I ever spent on a ship book!) This has 15 sheets of 1:100 scale drawings as part of the volume along with numerous scaled illustrations... if anything I now have too much information... I wanted to crew the model but struggled for anyone other than Henry 8th at first... since then I have found some border reivers (40mm tall, Perry miniatures) but finally hit on some nice 28mm figures from the assaultgroup.co.uk, which also includes gun crews. They have fixed the scale. (plastic, but you cant have everything! ) I have just finished scaling up the plans from the book, deciding to go from just behind the forecastle to around the midway point. That area gives me an accurate piece to work on without making up/inventing the bits of ship they haven't found yet... Once I work out how to size photos on here I will post up the keel etc. I don't get a lot of time to spend on model builds, so this is going to be a loooong blog time!