Moonbug

Echoing everyone here - that's really good stuff BE.  A real testament to your enviable patience.

For what it's worth - I completely agree regarding seeing the name. Accurate as it may be in some cases, it just feels as though something's missing when it's not there during this era. 

   I've been rolling along with a few things - and had to make a couple of repairs.  I didn't take any pictures in my frustration and eagerness to fix it - but I had something fall from a shelf onto the ship's wheel and it was destroyed.  *Sigh*  So I spent much of the weekend using Chuck's jig/templates to make a new one from scratch.  What a chore. 

   Along with that, I've finished up the swivel mounts and affixed them. 

   I've also been obsessing over the swivel guns themselves and I think I've landed where I've wanted.  After blackening and polishing them, I fixed them all to their brackets.

      So I hit them with a VERY light splash of this Vallejo "Nato Black" with an airbrush and low pressure, then polished them again. Here's a comparison of just the paint and then a really soft polishing with the dremel tool.

  Finally, I added a smidge of my favorite Tamiya weathering rust and brushed off the excess with a soft toothbrush.  Here's the end result. Overall, I'm pretty happy with them. Of course they'll be mounted on the swivels much later lest I snap a few off with a sleeve or other clumsiness. 

   Hey Chris - I spent 3 years in southern Italy and 3 years in Portugal, so I still keep my eye on football across the pond - mostly international, but I do check in on the Premier and Champions leagues, especially around tournament time so I'm loosely familiar with Everton. 

   A little bit of a chaotic weekend, but I did get some work done in between yelling at the television during the American Football playoffs.  Full disclosure: I've been a MASSIVE 49ers fan my entire life.  Here's me getting ready for the game in my bar:

  Anyway - on to the build.  Like many folks, my success with blackening has been hit or miss, and I always ended up having to do touchups or over-weathering to make up for the inconsistencies.  But with the success I had soldering the swivel guns, and how inevitably visible they are - I wanted to get the just right. So I went back to the basics on blackening by doing some MSW research and following Greg's (@dvm27) great tutorial post "Blackening Revisited" with all the steps.  Ordered some Sparex, stole my wife's crockpot warmer, and set up my station.

Needless to say, my results were MUCH improved. 

  The improvement was so good in fact (and I've had a good learning curve with silver soldering) that I decided to complete Re-do my Stove vent.  Here's a comparison with the old vs new:

17 hours ago, hollowneck said:

my new, screaming orange Aventador

   Ron - That's amazing!
   Where did you find it??  I'd been looking for one since they were released and have had NO luck what-so-ever.

  I do have this snazzy Rolls that I picked up at an Estate Sale a few years ago.  It's the top one in Grant's post.

...

  Nicely done BE - but more importantly, you just sent me down the rabbit-hole of VMS products - hadn't heard of them before being on this side of the pond.

Curses... I foresee some expenses coming my way soon.

Those straps are snazzy! 

   I promise you you’re not alone in the “just don’t see some stuff” area. Honestly, at this point I’m kinda nervous about taking photos because so often I feel really good about something, then I see the photo and go “What the heck?”   
  Except I don’t say “Heck”

  Anyway, my point is - I think you’re doing a solid job: don’t lose confidence.

  Thanks BE - It took some persistence and trial and error, but I think I got to something I'm pleased with as opposed to just "ok" with.  

  Sounds like the instructions are up for

some interpretation Jack. It’s been a while, but I seem to recall that being the case with the couple of Artesania kits I did.

I think I relied just as much on other builds and books as I did on instructions. 

I have a Proxxon - it’s very user friendly and works like a champ. 

  Thanks for the comment and encouragement Dave!

4 hours ago, gjdale said:

One idea you might try for the “knob” is a drop/blob of PVA

  Thanks Grant, BE, & Andrew.  I tried the drop of PVA initially and had a hard time getting it just the way I wanted. I have gotten it to work pretty well in the past - but this was just a bugger!

     But then @Blue Ensign gave me a pretty great idea by mentioning the rudders - for my rudder brace bolts I used the ever handy .020" mico-mark tiny nails. So why not take another run at the guns using the longer version of those?  Here is the result - I think I finally got close to what I wanted - as the handles themselves are more to scale with the guns.

It was  a real trick soldering them however - as the melting point of the little brass nails was almost exactly that of my softest silver solder. So often the nail would melt a little along with the solder and had to be fiddled with.  Then I shaped the handle after it was cooled. About 1/3 of the time, shaping the handle also meant snapping it off and starting over.

   I started cutting and shaping the swivel gun mounts out of 3mm x 3mm mahogany that I have lying around. I don't really want to paint them, and I want them to stand out a little bit but compliment the rest of the subdued color scheme I have going.  I shaped them based on FFM with the octagonal top and sized to fit my 'scale guy' once mounted.  More on that later.

But of course this got me thinking about how to handle the swivel guns themselves. First, I cut some brass brackets, shaped them and drilled out bolt holes. They're then mounted to pinheads that have been sanded down flat to form a solder-able surface. 

For the actual guns, I have these really sweet looking turned brass guns from Syren that I'm going to use instead of the molded die cast kit guns. 

  However - one of things that is accurate about the kit guns is the way in which the rear handle extends back.  I briefly considered hacking off the breach button from the brass one and trying to extend a handle back - but quickly realized this was beyond my capabilities without the entire thing looking like crap. So I opted for the secondary style that you sometimes see in which the handle extends from the rear of the gun.  I know it's not ideal - but it's what I think I can achieve. Here's a good representation from  @AON's Bellerophon build:  

   After a lot of attempts at trying to get the handle to "loop" around the button, it was just too small of a scale and everything I did once again looked like crap.  My first working attempt was to try and mount/solder it to the bottom of the gun instead:

  At first, I felt like this was acceptable. Mostly since at the end of the day, the combination of the very small scale and the bottom of the gun not being visible made this passable.  Then, of course the more I looked at it the more annoyed with it I got. So I tried again - this time, taking the wire handle, flattening the end, and cutting a small groove in the end with the smallest cut pin file I could find. That groove allowed me to solder it to the rear of the gun and kind of "simulate" the loop over the button.

  Here's a comparison of the two tries:

    Following the idea of my hatch railing stanchion tops, I created the "knob" at the end of the handle by taking a small amount of this ebony wood filler and rolling it into a ball.  Still have to work on getting the size acceptable, so I'm not sold on this technique.

  I still need to do some work on the blackening and finishing touches, as this doesn't look great for a final product (and the knob is way too big) but here's basically what the guns will look like.  

   I love Vallejo paints - very easy to work with, especially when mixing is involved. 

    And you're right of course about paints represented in photos - with most of today's automatic cameras (and phones) the color temperature is automatically and independently adjusted with every shot - so even photos taken of the same subject in the same light can have slightly different color temperatures - which changes the look of the paint in the image.  I'd say unless you're using a top-end SLR camera with manual ISO settings and looking at it on a VERY good (and calibrated) monitor - the eye is always the best judge. 

   Uh... nothing to see here... just flipping some catheads over...   🤦🏼‍♂️

Thanks again @Blue Ensign and @chris watton!

1 hour ago, Blue Ensign said:

angled end should be deck down

   Oh crap!  Ha!  Thanks gents -  I was so excited about the sheaves I totally botched that. 

    Love having this forum around.

   I took on the task of the catheads the last couple of days with some level of trepidation.  They seem pretty straightforward, but getting them to look like the submerge into the deck has been haunting me a bit.  Really, any time I go back and take a chunk out of the deck it makes me nervous.  As others have noted, the catheads that came with the kit seemed a little odd to me - they appeared to be under scale but a fair amount, and also there were no sheaves!

    First, I measured out the angles I'd need off the bow and identified where I'd need to cut through the bulwarks as well as carve out the deck.  Once again in the 'failed to look far enough ahead' category, this happens to line up right where my scarph joints on the margin plank are.  Oh well - hopefully that won't be super noticeable to most folks. 

    For the catheads themselves, I started with a couple of 5 x 5mm pieces of walnut, measured them out and a shaped them. I'm not so ambitious as to have created all the sheaves out of metal (I prefer simulating most of them with just drilled holes and carved lives between). But I felt it was necessary with the cathead sheaves as they are very visible, but also will need to be functional later when I rig the anchors.

  I drilled out a series of holes for the sheaves, then used this handy sanding string to size them out. The the metal sheaves I actually chose a brass TUBE instead of a brass rod and carved out the groove on the lathe.  I chose the tube because it's SUPER difficult for me to get a nice hole drilled through the brass. I just can't seem to get a strong enough drill bit that holds up without bending or snapping off.  The cutting the sheave from a tube means I only had to drill through the wood to place the bolt/pin.  

    Here are the assembled catheads and comparison between the kit version on the left and the scratch ones. I actually feel like I kinda nailed it getting the catheads to look like they go down into the deck.  Pretty happy with the result.  Incidentally, it was WAY easier adding that bolt on the side without having to drill out the brass.

  Obviously because the kit catheads were small, so were the knee / braces.  I cut mine out of a scrap walnut from the laser cut pieces and shaped it to the hull. I also tapered it from the cathead down to it's base as it will eventually need to become the decorative headwork on the bow. Final touches include scraping some grooves. 

     I'm having fun checking in.  There's a lot more going on with this endeavor than I anticipated (of course).  Very cool. 

   Hey there Ray,

      I'm a little late to the party here - but my opinion is that if the hull / decks are decent, it can actually be a pretty good re-build for a newcomer.  Framing and planking the hull is often one of the most difficult aspects of a build for a beginner. In this case, you can bypass that - do some research here on the forum to determine how deep down that rabbit hole you want to go - and go from there. Although the Victory is ambitious, I think it's eminently doable.

     The other thing to consider is budget - you'll find lots of sources here for research, materials, and no shortage of advice and encouragement.  Good luck with whatever you decide. 

Two cents from another retired MSgt.

  For the ladders in the waist I attempted the slight curve/twist that is reflected in the FFM.  Wow - what a challenge.  I started out using the pieces of basswood that I typically used for ladders.  However, this wood caused two significant problems.  First, it was too soft to shape/sand in the ways that I needed to create the curve that gradually diminishes from top to bottom.  And second - the lighter color just looked weird to me.  So - fail on try #1.

  For try #2 I went with Swiss Pear - same material as the deck. This solved both problems.  I was able to sand and shape the denser wood, and it looked much better not contrasting with the deck. I like the contrast for the deck furniture, not so much for the ladders.  But then this presented a THIRD problem - I had already done the hatchway ladders in the lighter color.  The only alternative of course was to re-do those as well. I think this second attempt also produced ladders & steps that are bit more to scale as well.

  Put the gangways and gangboards together.  Pretty straightforward stuff with only a couple of wrinkles.  I used the false deck templates, then extended the planking all the way across the waist.  Then I discovered an issue: once again because my deck planking is thick - the step up from the gangway to the other decks was not feasible for a sailor to navigate.  So I added an additional step up. The rest of the gangboards, etc, is nothing earth-shattering. 

Hey there Masa - off to a good start.  I will say - you can never have too many of those Dewalt clamps, I use them ALL the time.   🙂

  Thanks for the comments everyone, much appreciated.

1 hour ago, AJohnson said:

Is the way the ropes are attached to the tiller arm from the plans? 

  Hey Andrew, great question.  The plans show it differently (see below) - and closer to what you're illustrating.  But I took this simpler method (linked) from Dan Vadas' Vulture as he was more closely following Antscherl's Swan FFM books.  I'm definitely no expert either - so I have been erring on the side of what other Swan builder's have done; mostly Dan and @Blue Ensign.

   But I do notice on your plans what I mentioned before - how the heck could a helmsman fit in between that binnacle and wheel?  I'm guessing there were no fat helmsmen...  

     Continuing work on the wheel - the barrel is turned on the Proxxon lathe to form the base, a small ridge, and two ends that will fit into the wheel and the stanchions. The stanchions are carved boxwood - sanded and shaped, then given some texture down the center for a decorative flair. The funky looking "V" shaped piece in the picture below was the stanchion provided in the kit which does not conform to what I've seen in the Swan class documentation, however I used it to ensure proper scale. The assembled wheel is initially positioned on the deck to check size and fit.

 I ditched the kit tiller as I've ditched most of the plywood-esque pre-fab stuff because it's quite thin and delicate.  My tiller is a pretty basic piece cut and shaped from 5mm x 5mm piece of walnut and notched at the base to fit the rudder and eyelets on each side of a metal band at the head.  I shortened my tiller a bit to facilitate the space between the wheel and the binnacle (more on that later) and gave it a little curve for no specific reason other than aesthetics. 

  For the rigging I used .6 mm rope (since I imagined it needed to be pretty hefty stuff) attached to boxwood blocks from Dry-docks Models - they looked interesting so I wanted to give them a shot.  Honestly - I'm not thrilled with them, but they served their purpose here. The rope is wrapped around the wheel barrel five times then through the corresponding set of blocks on the other bulwark. The wrap is attached to the barrel with a bolt stopper - another TINY (.020") bolt from micromark that I used on the rudder.  Very difficult to get into place without getting glue all over the rope and discoloring it.

 

  Thanks BE - I think you'll find the Syren ship wheel kit very user friendly, particularly for a builder of your skill.