HMS Atalanta by tlevine - FINISHED - 1775 - 1:48 scale - from TFFM plans

[tlevine]

Tom, the ship is being made per the as built plans.  Maury, your eyes are too d*** good.  I didn't notice it until you mentioned it.  Well, it is too late now.  Removing it would cause a whole lot of damage.

 

I have finished the anchor except for the ring.  Hope to have some pictures to post in a few days.

[tlevine]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments and the likes.  Next on the build list is the anchor.  I am only making the port side anchor since the starboard side is only in frame.  Previously I have made my anchors out of wood, painted to look like metal, but I wanted to make this one from brass.  My options were to make the shank and arms from one sheet of brass (as Ed Tosti did for Naiad) or made separate arms and shank and then solder them together.  I decided to to the latter as cutting out the anchor from sheet brass seemed overwhelming.  My first challenge was finding the correct thickness of brass.  I was unable to find any brass sheet or square rod of the approximate dimensions required.  I found it necessary to purchase round rod and mill it flat to the correct thicknesses.  Although not difficult, I found this to be very time consuming (probably because of my inexperience with milling brass stock).  I was able to obtain brass sheet of the correct thickness for the palms.  When looking at the pictures, keep in mind that this anchor, without the ring, is 3.25" long.

 

 

After I was satisfied with the final shape, the next step is to solder everything together.  These pieces of metal are huge compared with the rest of the metal work on the model.  Since I planned on blackening the metal, that meant silver soldering rather than soft soldering.  I know some modelers get good results with Tix solder, but I have never had any luck with it when the pieces are to be blackened and not painted.  My fist step was to solder the two arms together.  This is when I discovered just how much heat was necessary to get the solder to flow on these large chunks of metal.  Then I attempted to solder the shank onto the arm assembly.  I put the solder on the arm joint and applied the heat to the shank but could not prevent the arm joint from falling apart just as the solder began to flow into the shank/arm joint.  I do not own multiple melting points of silver solder so I pinned all the pieces together on a ceramic block and soldered all the joints simultaneously.  Although not perfect, I think it looks reasonably good.  If I were to do it again I would not file the edge on the top of the arm until after the soldering.  The joint would look tighter and I would have been able to have a smoother transition on the outer edge from the arm to the shaft.

 

 

 

The anchor was pickled, blackened in 1:3 Birchwood Casey.  Unfortunately you can see the difference between the brass and the silver after blackening.  After I saw this I filed everything down where the silver flowed and although it is better, a discriminating eye can still pick out the difference.  Fortunately, it looks a lot worse in the photos than it does in real life.  After blackening, I applied a coat of matte clear finish.

 

 

 

The stocks are relatively straight forward.  There is an air gap between the two halves to prevent rot.  In following David's drawings I noticed that the two halves are not mirror images.  Only one half has the internal taper, the other half is straight internally.  The two halves are bolted and treenailed together.  The hoops are simulated by paper dyed with archival ink.  I still need to install the ring.  

 

 

 

 

[mtaylor]

Lovely work on a tough bit of soldering.  My hat is off to you.

[druxey]

Silver soldering multiple joints is a challenge. Your solution of a one-shot deal was quite creative! Well done, Toni.

 

I was taught to use different melting point solders for such situations. For the first joint or joints use 'hard' (highest melting point) solder, then 'medium' for the next and 'soft' (with the lowest M.P.) for the last joints. I believe that there is an even 'softer' grade now available. The other trick is to paint on yellow oxide (powder in water) over the joints you wish to protect; this inhibits the solder from re-melting. My jeweller friend showed me these techniques some years ago. Thank you, Shannon! You've saved my sanity on many occasions.

[AON]

Druxey

these are the wee bits I watch for and have a special place they are saved in.

Thanks for sharing!

Alan

[tlevine]

Druxey, where were you with that suggestion Sunday!

[dvm27]

Very nice job, Toni. I am currently using the three silver solder pastes available from Beaducation https://www.beaducation.com/pc/393-jewelry-making-tools-soldering-fusing-tools with three different melting points. Also, consider their set of soldering pics. They work very well. There are some excellent videos on silver soldering on this site. I also found that using Sparex or white vinegar/salt soln to etch the brass after silver soldering creates a more uniform blackening.

[TomShipModel]

The anchor looks fine in the pictures.  Very nice.

 

Tom

[tlevine]

I guess I need to buy the high melting point solder.  I have already purchased the yellow oxide suggested by Druxey.  Greg, I let the anchor sit in Sparex #2 for about 15 minutes prior to blackening.  I did not heat it, so maybe that would have helped.

[kurtvd19]

Toni:

I heat my Sparex in a small crock pot that I got from the thrift store.  You do not want to boil Sparex and the crock pot doen's get that hot.  If you want to try the heated Sparex I have an extra crock pot you can pick up next time you are here.  It does work better when it's heated.

Kurt

[tlevine]

Thanks, Kurt.  I might actually make the July meeting.

[druxey]

I use an electric coffee-cup warmer for heating my Sparex.

[ChadB]

Very nice work Toni! May I ask how you milled the brass?

 

Chad

[tlevine]

I chucked 1/4" round brass rod onto the rotory table of my Sherline mill.  Then I slowly milled down the rod to the correct dimensions.  The rotary table assured that the corners were at exactly 90 degrees.  One of the problems I had was that towards the end, especially when the metal got thinner, the flattened rod would deflect away from the mill cutter.  I used my finger to hole the end up to help prevent that.  The minor defection was then filed flat after milling.  The shape of the arms was made with an abrasive bit on the Dremel.

[Maury S]

The anchor looks great from here. Sorry about the comment on the bend!

Maury

[tlevine]

Maury, we are our own worst critics!

[tlevine]

There are a lot of small projects to complete at this point.  The first project was to start the cleaning process.  After five years, the hull inevitably gets a little grimy, especially since it travels with me weekly on the back seat of my car.  I started with compressed air to remove most of the sawdust.  This was followed by moistened Q-tips and bits of paper towel held in a needle driver.  This process took about three hours and will be repeated a few more times in the upcoming months.

 

One of my punch list items was to insert the nails into the ribbands.  I had pre-drilled the holes at the time the ribbands were installed but deferred adding the nails so the blackening would not wear off.

 

 

I have put the ring on the anchor and applied the puddening.  There is a first layer of rope with four seizings on top of that.

 

 

The elm tree pumps were installed earlier but I did not make the handles as I knew they would be damaged.  Needless to lay, this picture was taken before cleaning.  A bracket was shaped to the side of the pump tube and a slot was cut for the handle.  The strap is from black paper.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I shipped the rudder at this point and drilled out the aft plexiglass support to accommodate it.  I discovered that the top of the rudderhead was taller than the rudderhead cover and so this had to be remade.  I prefer the looks of this one as well.  I also installed the binnacle cabinet and secured it to the deck with two ropes.

 

 

 

 

There is netting in the waist which is secured to the stanchions for the hand rail.  This was made with tulle.  The ropes are threaded through the netting and the entire assembly is spray painted.  It was then trimmed and tied to the stanchions.  As you can see, the cannon barrels are not even.  Several of them have been jarred loose and need to be reglued.

 

 

[druxey]

Coming into the finishing straight.... Good going, Toni.

[AnobiumPunctatum]

Just beautiful, Toni. Do you rig her?

[tlevine]

Thank you everyone for the likes.  Christian, I will not be rigging her.  I did a restoration of a four masted clipper ship last winter and that was enough tying ratlines to kill any desire to mast her.

[ChrisLBren]

Looks really good Toni - you have my admiration in completing such a challenging project.  

 

 

[Martin W]

Much there to be admired (and studied!).

 

Plans for the next one?

 

Cheers,

 

Martin

[tlevine]

Martin, I have a few ideas for the next build.  Let's finally get through this one first!

 

Since I will not be moving the model very much anymore, I decided it was time to make the swivel guns.  There are a total of 16, eight per side.  Five are on the quarterdeck and three are on the forecastle.  I used barrels from Syren to make my life a little easier.  There is an aiming handle mounted onto the cascabel.  It is L-shaped, extending below the swivel gun.  In order to solder this to the gun I wrapped a loop of brass wire into the neck and filed a flat surface into it on the bottom.  This gave me good surface area for soldering.  The ball at the end of the handle is brass tubing slipped over the wire.  That will be filed down after soldering.

 

 

There are two types of swivel gun mounts: a simple yoke and the one used on the contemporary model of Atalanta.  The yoke bends forward.  According to David in TFFM, this gave additional clearance to decrease risk of damage to the shrouds.  The first step was to make a paper template of the yoke.  I then cut out a brass template (the smiley face in the top of the picture.  This was made undersized to allow me to trace around it with a file to get the correct size and shape.  Shaping was done with carborundum wheels, a cut-off wheel and files.  Holes were then drilled for the trunion and mount.  The mount was shaped on the lathe.  The mount and yoke were then soldered together. 

 

 

The pin was placed through the hole for the trunion and soldered onto the yoke.  Next came blackening and finally mounting.

 

 

 

 

 

[dvm27]

Really nice job on those swivels, Toni! I also very much prefer the second version of your rudderhead cover. But is it missing the fore face under the tiller?

 

 

[tlevine]

There's a fore face?  How high does it go?

[druxey]

Nice yokes for the swivels, Toni. Well done. They are a beast to make!

[dvm27]

1 hour ago, tlevine said:

There's a fore face?  How high does it go?

If you look on page 280 of TFFM (forward elevation) the fore face has a top and bottom lip as well as quarter round molding. Perhaps it's different with just a tiller but it seems like it would prevent small objects from falling through the deck opening.

[MEDDO]

Wonderful swivels Toni.

[tlevine]

I have spent the last few weeks constructing the lantern.  I used the brass photoetch from Admiralty Models for the carcass.  Rather than post a step-by-step construction, take a look on their website.  http://www.admiraltymodels.com/Tips.html  The document is at the bottom of the page.  The exterior was painted to match the wood and the interior was painted red.  The candle is a roll of paper and the glazing is mica.  The crank is brass which was cut and filed to shape.  All metal was blackened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

Superb workmanship at an unbelievable level.

 

OC.