usedtosail

The outer hull planking has started, working up from the keel and down from the bulwarks. The planking material is pretty thick but bends well with some water and heat. I am planking as if the first layer is the final layer and not using the instructions that show all kinds of gaps filled with pointy planks. Since the upper pat of the hull will be painted and I am going to cover the lower part with copper I may stop with one planking layer, depending on how it turns out. I also received blocks from Syren that I am going to use to replace the kit supplied blocks. They are much nicer.

I completed planking the inner bulwarks and gave the planks a coat of oak stain and wipe on poly, like the decks. I can now start fairing the hull to get it ready for outer planking.

Sorry I forgot to post the picture of the completed bulwarks on the hull. Since then I have been adding the inner planks to the bulwarks, using the same wood strips that were used for the deck planking. I started with a full length plank, then used individual strips between the gun ports. I then used more full length strips to the tops of the bulwarks. The top strip is about half a plank width, but I glued on a full width strip then trimmed it down with an X-Acto knife and sanded it flush with the bulwark. I am in the process of opening up the gun ports and sanding the inner planks for finishing. I will use the same stain and poly treatment I did for the decks.

I painted hinges and knobs onto the doors. While that was drying I glued the upper decks in place, not thinking that this would make adding the doors more difficult. I found that I could use a small loop of masking tape as a handle to glue the doors in place, so it wasn't too difficult. I then bent the bulwarks to their shape. First I fit each side, adjusting the slots so they both fit nicely. I then soaked one side and clamped it to the frames to dry. The next day I did same for the other side. They held their shape nicely. I did manage to break the small bow section off the port side piece but I was still able to bend it to shape separately. When these pieces were well dried I trimmed the bow sections so they met well at the stem. I glued them on one at a time again starting with the port side. I started gluing from the aft and glued just about a third on each day. I just finished glueing the bow section on the starboard side, so I will take some pictures tomorrow of the bulwarks attached to the hull.

David you are doing such a great job on this build. This is very true. If you go by the rigging plans there are over 30 lines that attach to the bitts, which is what I did. I then in a separate thread asked how to show the tails for all these lines, and was basically told that no lines would be tied to bitts in the first place and I should have added more belaying pins somehow... So I think you are right about thinking of tying them off at the rail somehow.

I added treenails to each upper deck the same way I did on the main deck. Since there were no plank joints in the bow deck, I just made three lines of treenails alll the way across the deck. I then stained the two upper decks and gave them two coats of Wipe On Poly. When they dried I glued them in place. I tried using some Brass Brown on the doors and window grates but they came out more black than brown. I left the window grates as they came out but painted the doors with flat brown paint. Since I did not want the planking to show through the window grates, I glued them to a piece of black paper then cut them out and glued them to the bulkheads. Next step is the add some knobs and hinges to the doors then glue them in place.

The aft deck shown in the AOS Beagle book does not show a margin plank, but instead the planks near the edges are cut into the previous planks, as shown here in this out of focus image. And here is my version of this. The left side is not yet sanded so you can see the plank edges easier. These planks are longer than 60mm so I added them in 60mm lengths. I will be adding treenails to both the fore and aft deck planks, then staining them.

No problem Ross. I'll bet it came out great. I finished planking the bulkheads and gave them a coat of oak stain. I then test fit the fore deck to the bulkheads and frames, and had to widen a couple of the slots to get it to fit. I want to joggle the planks on the fore deck as shown in the AOS Beagle book. I first made a margin plank in two pieces to fit around the front of the fore deck. I tried using basswood sheet for this but it kept breaking while shaping it, so I found some per wood from the edges of a laser cut sheet from a previous kit that provided just enough for the two pieces. These stayed together nicely so I glued them to the deck and sanded the outside edges to be flush with the deck. The pear was thicker than the planking strips supplied with the kit so for these planks I used some 1/32" basswood strips that I had. I fit and glued three planks on each side of the center of the fore deck. These were just cut straight and fit to the inside edge of the margin plank. I then started joggling the planks by lining them up to the back corner of the previous plank, then made a mark about half way across the plank and another mark where the plank came off of the margin plank. I cut that piece off the side of the plank then marked the shape on the margin plank and cut that out with an X-Acto knife. I then fit the plank to the cut out and glued it in place. For the last plank on each side I used 1/4” basswood strip that I trimmed down to fit the gap, since it was slightly wider than the 3/32” strips I was using and I did not want to have a sliver plank along the side. Since all these planks are less than 60mm long I used full length strips for them, but I will add treenails after sanding these down. I will probably do something similar to this for the aft deck planking.

Thanks Ross. Do you have a build log for your Beagle build? I tested the fit of the upper deck bulkheads, then glued the deck to the frames. Instead of trying to glue it to all the frames at once, I started with the middle frames, let that dry, then the front frames, then the back frames. I then glued the bulkheads to the deck. Next will be planking the outside of the bulkheads with the same material supplied to plank the deck.

I finished preparing the deck and it is now ready to install. I trimmed the excess planks, sanded it down, then used an awl to make indents for the treenails. I filled these with wood putty, then sanded the deck again. I then finished the deck with pre-stain, Golden Oak stain, and wipe on poly. I also checked the fit of the upper deck bulkhead pieces in the slots in the deck before finishing it. I was happy that I used individual planks instead of using full length planks and drawing in the plank ends. I was also a little worried about the thickness of the supplied planking wood, but it did sand up nicely.

I finished adding the planks to the deck, so I now need to trim them to the edges, sand the planks down and cut the slots back out. Then I will add the treenails around the plank joints.

I agree with Eric - adding the sails on the bench works best for me.

All the bulkheads are glued in so the next step is to fit the deck. The slots in the deck were narrower than the thickness of the bulkheads so I used a burr in the drill press to widen the slots until the deck fit. I then removed it and marked it for planking ( a few times). The instructions have you use full size strips then mark them to 60mm but I am cutting the strips to 60 mm and gluing them in end to end with a 3 butt shift. I did use longer strips for the center plank. I am using Tacky glue to glue these down with.

I started gluing the bulkheads to the keel, using Legos to align them while the glue dries.

Thanks Eric. I downloaded those pictures a while ago when I bought the kit. Thanks for posting them.

Thank you Chris and Dan. Dan, I think your Speedy will be great.

This will be the second Beagle model that I will build. I built the Mamoli Beagle model many years ago and gave it to my son. Since the OcCre kit is fairly new and is supposed to be a better representation of the real ship I was intrigued enough to buy it and build it. I am a retired engineer and scientist so besides the fact that this ship was so important because of Charles Darwin, it was also a survey and hydrographer ship which I think is really cool. I have the Anatomy of the Ship (AOS) book for the Beagle, which I used for the previous build and will use for this one too. I opened the box today and at first glance the contents look OK. After building a few modern kits from companies like Vanguard, I realize how these kits from older European companies are really lacking in the realism of some of the smaller details. I will try to improve them as I go along. This kit comes with sails that are way too thick but I haven't ruled out using them yet. Maybe I'll use them as patterns for more appropriate sails. I may be starting this model this week, but don't expect to really get into it until after the holidays.

Just a couple of last photos of the model going into its case and the final result. I will hold onto it for a few years until my grandson is old enough to care for it and then move it into his room at his house.

Those are bow lines.

TBlack - I couldn't agree with you more. Chris? Gregg - If you haven't figured it out yet, that is one of the magnetic arms removed from the yellow base and stuck to a 123 block as a base.

Here are pictures of the completed model. I will set up a gallery with more photos in it.

Welfalck my model is finished. I could do all the research I want now but I can't change it without undoing almost all the running rigging and I am not going to do that. SO future builders of the Vanguard Speedy kit, don't do what I show, but completely redo the belaying plan that comes with the kit and build new a whole new fore bitt with lots of belaying pins or add a lot more pin rails along the sides or put many lines on each belaying pin that is there now. Or just cut the lines at the bitts and be done with it. Your choice.

Gregory - these bowlines are from the main sail so they go forward to blocks on deck before the fore mast then back to the fore bitts on this model.

Thanks for all the great responses here. First of all, I agree that this whole arrangement of lines on the bitts is not historically accurate. BUT if one follows the plans as they are shown, can we still come up with a more realistic representation of the lines on the bitts. I set up a simple test rig and tried some different ways to add rope coils. Here is the test rig. I first added rope coils like you would put on a belaying pin to each line before tying the line to the bitts. I alternated the sides that the lines were tied so the rope coils on adjacent lines were on opposite sides of the bitts, providing room for more coils. You can see this on the two right lines of this picture. My rope coils suck so don't judge me on them, but I think this looks pretty good. It does require that the coils are added as the lines are tied, not after like with belaying pins, so some planning is needed before rigging is started. Then I tried adding a rope coil to a line that was already tied to the bitts, which is the line on the left in the above photo. I just ran the excess line through the rope coil and tied another knot. This worked OK too but would probably have to be done before fixing the first knot so the line is still flexible. I then looked for a way to add rope coils after the lines are all tied on the bitts and maybe even cut off flush with the bitts. I tied a single line to one end of the row of lines, then wrapped it around the bitts between each line. For each wrap I slid a rope coil onto the line. Then when the wrap was tightened, I adjusted the coil to one of the sides of the bitts, again alternating sides with each wrap. I tied off the last wrap back to itself. Again I think this looks OK but could be pretty tricky depend on how accessible the bitts are. I am not going to try these on my Speedy at this point but I hope this whole discussion helps future modelers.

In the rigging plan for this model, which is spread out over 4 different plan sheets, there are 23 individual lines attached to the fore bitts. I'd have to go back to the plans to identify all these lines, but for sure they include all the sail lines - buntlines, clewlines, some of the bowlines, sheets for the topsails and topG sails, and braces. There are no belaying pins associated with any of the bitts and there would not be enough room for 23 pins on them anyway. So I'll break this down into a couple of questions. If, as many models do, there were just 2 lines tied to the bitts, with no belaying pins, how would the working end of the line be shown? Maybe a coil that hangs on the ends of the bitts? The other question is what to do when the instructions for the model show many lines on the bitts like this one? What is more incorrect, showing the lines cut off at the bitts or showing rope coils on the deck? Both seem wrong to me. If the model tried to include enough belaying pins along the rails for all these lines there would not be enough room by a lot. Would having multiple lines on individual belaying pins be acceptable? There would have to be three or four on each pin for this model to fit them all. Getting philosophical here, I guess it all comes down to resolution and fidelity of the modeling process. We can only show a depiction of the real ship at whatever scale we are working on and have to make choices about what to show and how to show it. The model designer gives us a starting point, but it is up to us to work out the best depiction at the modelers skill level and comfort zone.