usedtosail

Thanks George and Greg, and the likes too. Greg - there were enough horizontal lines between the white strip and the planks that I could keep them level by eye. I was going to put another strip of tape down the other side before I started gluing them, but found it worked out better for me without it.

Some final work on the outer hull is done. I secured all of the support rods for the aft bumpkins into the hull, using eye bolts that I looped the ends of the wire around. A few of them I had to do in place by gluing the eye bolt in first, then wrapping and cutting the wire, instead of the easier ones where I could do the wrapping before gluing the eye bolt to the hull. There was just not a lot of room around the rail in the stern corners. It is hard to see in this picture, but the support arms are there. I then added the steps to the sides of the hull. I did this my first making a tick strip of the step locations from the waist rail. I placed a strip of masking tape down the sides at the location of one end of the step, then marked off the locations from the tick strip onto the tape. I ended up using the step that was close to the top of the wale as the reference, since I didn't want this step to be half way across the wale. I then used the tick strip to space the other steps off this one. When I glued the steps in place I lined up the edges with the masking tape, then removed the tape when they were all glued on. I was careful not to let the edge of the step overlap the tape. Here is how the port steps came out: And here are the starboard steps: That finishes the outer hull, except for the fastenings for the bowsprit rigging, which I will add when I rig the bowsprit, the channels and the stern and quarter boat davits, which I will add later. There are probably some other things that I will discover later too. Now I am going to work on the spar deck details for a while, starting with building and rigging the 20 carronades and 2 long guns that go on that deck.

Thanks Bill. Between those and all the guns sticking out I know something is going to happen sooner or later. I just try to move around the hull very carefully these days.

Greg, I had the same issue. My fix was to take a slice out of the sides of the carriages.

I like that brass gauge you used. Nice finish on the planks around the gun ports.

Thanks Greg and the likes too. I glued the bumpkins in place, as well as the anchor shelves and the anchor supports. The fore bumpkins seemed very vulnerable to me, so after the glue dried I drilled a hole up through the bumpkins into the middle rails, then pushed a small nail coated with medium CA into the hole. When the glue dried, I cut the nails flush with the bottom of the bumpkins and touched up the black paint at the spot. They seem much sturdier now. I then started to hook up the other ends of the support rods. I did this by bending the rod at the right length, then adding an eye bolt and forming a loop. I cut off the excess wire, drilled a hole for the eye bolt and glued it into the hole. Here is the port fore bumpkin with the supports in place. I still have to do the starboard side. The aft bumpkin supports are a bit harder, as the space is much tighter and the rail overhang makes it hard to get the support in place. I had to bend the one support I was able to get in place then try to straighten it out in place. The rear support could not be done this way at all, so I glued the eye bolt in place and made a hook on the end of the support, which I will hook onto the eye bolt when it is dry and make the loop in place. While things were drying, I made the small detail I lost on the transom from Sculpey and glued the new one in place, then touched up the gold paint on all the transom details. Hopefully I can keep from getting damaged again.

I made the four bumpkins, carving the ends like on the plans using a scalpel. I tapered the front bumpkins using the small plane my wife gave me for Christmas. It made short work of that task. I used black paper for the band around the ends and 28 gauge wire for the support rods. I made loops on the ends of the wire and hooked them to eye bolts which are glued into holes through the bands. I am hoping that I can do the same on the other ends after I install the bumpkins. I painted them black. I then made the boarding steps, using a simplification from what is shown on the plans. These are only 1/16" high, so getting three strips of wood to make them up was not an option. What I did was to make a holder for 1/16" square stock using a V gouge to make a V in a length of wood. I then placed the square stock in the groove and used the small plane to plane off one corner, giving me a profile similar to the steps on the plans. I then cut steps from this strip and sanded in the 45 degree angles on the ends. These were painted white. I also made the two "shelves" that go under the anchor ports, again using the small plane to remove two corners of a rectangular piece of wood. I also made the two anchor holders that go mid ship on the starboard side, using a manila template and the scroll saw. I added two pins to pin them to the sides of the hull and two eye bolts for straps that hold the anchor. These were all painted black. Installing the bumpkins and support rods is next up to do.

Thanks George and Greg, and the folks who pressed the like button. George - the bottom hatches would have had a draw line straight into the gun deck, but I decided not to add it. The top lids did not have a draw line as they were removable from the inside.

Really nice clean work, as usual with you Bob. Congratulations.

I just finished the lids on the port side, so here is how they came out. Now it is on to the bumpkins. I have a few weeks off as I am between jobs, so I am looking forward to having a lot of time in the shop. Luckily I have another job lined up so I can enjoy myself.

The gun port lids are just about finished. I have all the lids glued in place and the starboard side rigols are all installed too. I have some touch up to do on the port side and some rigols to still install. Here is how the starboard side came out, with the different lid types. I went with white edges on the open port lids, so they are more pronounced.

I'd be happy to help, Greg. Do you have a build log going yet?

Greg - ask away. I will always answer if I can. I made the sides of the gun ports parallel to the bulkheads, so they were always straight up and down. The tops and bottoms tilt according to the curve of the deck, but it was never by very much if I remember.

You want those back pieces to be vertical, or else your barrels will be pointed to the sky. Use a thicker piece for the bottom then the top like it shows in the picture from the instructions that you posted. And I did have to shave those pieces down for the first ports in the bow.

That's what it looks like it does, so that makes sense.

That is a funny story Nenad. Your stand looks beautiful, too.

Thank you George, the Popeyes, and Greg, and the likes. Thanks Henry for the name of those things. Rigol sounds so much better. Do you know if these pieces were purely decorative or did they have some other purpose?

Yep, that's what I saw too Ken, there is a good side and a bad side to those grates. I just didn't realize the bad side was supposed to be the good side. I did use the better looking side for all mine.

Thanks Boyd. I am certainly in no hurry with this build and I enjoy looking ahead, but I can't look too far ahead or I get depressed. Work on the gun port lids continues. First, here are the two full port lids on each side with their draw lines installed to open them. I went with a modified version of the lines on the current Conny. I glued the top lines onto the back of the eye brows after threading them through the holes. I then glued the eye brows in place, and tied the other end of those lines to the lines running into the bottom corners of the lids. The remaining eye brows (there has to be a better term for these, no?) are all going over half ports or canvas covered ports which do not have draw lines. So I first primed them, which involves a pickling step in white vinegar before painting with primer. I then filled the holes with wood filler and smoothed the filler out after it set for a few minutes. When the filler was fully dry, I gave the parts two coats of black paint. Here they are with some of the half port lids currently being painted. These are the remaining port lids for the starboard side and are ready to install. I already installed four of these on the starboard side. These use the L shaped hinge brackets I made which worked really well to support these half lids. They provide supports like shelf brackets while I was still able to glue the back edges of the ports to the hull. Between both attachments, these seem very sturdy. I will have pictures of these installed in a future post. I went ahead and made all of the hinge brackets for the port side and blackened them. I also cut all of the wood pieces for the port gun lids and have started adding the hinges to them and will start painting them soon. I have been going back and forth on the canvas coverings for those gun ports near the galleries, as you can see by the previous posts. I tried making the frames last night from manila folder material, but could not get them to look good, especially the circular sections. I then tried some thin styrene strip, thinking I could use that for the straight sections of the frames and come up with something for the circle later. I removed one of the canvas covers from the model and glued styrene strips to the four edges to see how this might look as a frame before adding the diagonal pieces. I placed it into the gun port opening and was not happy with the look at the joints of the frame pieces. I then thought to try turning the piece around with the frame on the inside of the port hidden by the canvas, fit into the rabbet around the port. I was really happy with this look, and removed all of the canvas covers and framed them this way. Here is how they came out and here is how they are going to stay. I think this is a nice compromise between what may have been and what I can make look have way decent. The edges look much better than the raw fabric edges that I first had. I do really appreciate the suggestions so please keep them coming, even if I don't always follow them. They do push me to do better.

Ah, I see you did get some work in yesterday. I feel better now. I am confident you will come up with a very convincing solution for those windows.

Thank Nenad. I have taken great inspiration from your Cutty build. Dan, I am going to try to replicate that framing but it may be beyond my abilities, especially that circle in the middle. I am going to reproduce it on the computer then print it out on some manila, and hopefully be able to cut out the middle sections. Then I can glue it to the stiffened sail cloth. We will see... Popeye - I saw all your likes yesterday and could not believe you where going through it all at once. You should have been using your valuable time on all the models you have going at once . Thank you though and I am glad to have you on board. My daughter is working at Dartmouth Hicthcock Hospital so she moved to Lebanon, NH. It is a good distance I think - not too far but not too close either. We are going up Saturday to help her buy her first car that will be in her name. She is very excited.

Oh, that picture is worth a lot. I totally misinterpreted the original. That said, here are the other two pictures referenced. The first one here looks just like the picture you sent with no gun. The bottom one looks like it has a gun in it. So I guess that hole would allow a gun to poke through. I like the frame though and will attempt to recreate that look. Thank you very much.

I got mine from MicroMark: http://www.micromark.com/magnetic-gluing-jig-10-1and4-inch-square,7038.html

Thank you Dan for the details on the flag. I like that method a lot and will be trying it in the future.

Ken and Dan , thank you for the encouragement. It means a lot to me. Ken, I'll have to look for the Admiral's iron to try that. It doesn't get used much these days. Dan, here is one of the pictures I have been working off for the canvas covers. You can see a hole in the center with the gun sticking out. The others show the same thing. In the text it says this: The canvas covers in the captain’s great/forward cabin gun ports would have kept out some water when sailing in general or light weather, but more important, would have allowed diffused light to enter the cabin during all daylight hours, no matter the weather. If the weather was really inclement, likely half ports could have been fitted into the ports to secure them from heavy seas. No mention if they could be rolled down, but with the gun there it might have been difficult. These guns may have been stowed inside, but I am depicting this just before battle with some of the guns run out so I am thinking they would maybe in this position.