Landlubber Mike

It might help knowing what ships you're thinking of. I've bought directly from Caldercraft and Model Expo before with no problems whatsoever. I also have ordered parts from Cornwall Model Boats in the UK, and have had a very good experience with them as well.

Hey Ian, welcome back. Thanks for all the tips on the small boats. Interestingly, the AOTS Pandora shows the ship with five small boats - a 28' pinnace, a 24' launch, two 22' yawls and an 18' jolly boat. Going from port to starboard, the ships sat three abreast in the following order: (1) 24' launch with 22' yawl nested inside; (2) 28' pinnace; and (3) 22' yawl with 18' jolly boat nested inside. Looking at B.E.'s log, if I scratched 5 small boats I would probably be looking at an extra five years to my build The other issue is that having three small boats abreast like that substantially covers the entire area of the waist, so one would not be able to see all the details.

Higher quality lamps are definitely not cheap. I spent a little more money and bought Electrix brand lamps off ebay to save money (I think the 7122 and the 2246 models). One is just purely a 100 watt bulb, the other has an incandescent and circular fluorescent bulb with a built in magnifier. I really like them, and haven't found any of the clamp issues that are reported on Amazon with mine. When I did research on lamps with extending arms, the biggest complaint was that the cheap ones wont stay locked in position. To me that was annoying, if not potentially dangerous when using power equipment.

John, thanks for the very kind words. The Chapman plans may seem a little confusing and wrong, but I have a feeling he might have been accurate. His other drawings are very complete, showing railings (see the ship above the Unicorn) where there were railings. It makes me think that there may not have been any railings on the Unicorn, as Chapman likely would have added them. I think what you see is a solid bulwark extending all the way. The bulwarks are fairly high up at the fore end of the quarterdeck, and maybe there less of a need for railings. I took another look at Gardiner's "The Sailing Frigate" -- in Chapter 4 on "The 'True Frigate' 1748-1778", it sounds like the Unicorn might not have had a quarterdeck railing as it was substantially designed off of French lines at the time: "...French designers had achieved an important advance by a subtle alteration in the layout of 'two-decked' cruisers. British 24s had a heavily framed full height lower deck, necessary to fight the guns and to allow rowing with standing oarsmen . . . . By contrast, in the latest French ships the lower deck was little more than a light platform, with much reduced headroom, and the deck itself, at its lowest point, positioned just below the waterline. This compressed the height of the topside, while the forecastle and quarterdeck were unarmed and had virtually no barricades or rails to catch the wind; combined with fine lines and light framing, this made for fast and weatherly ships. . . . This formula was eventually adopted by all the major navies, and was dubbed the 'true frigate' form, in retrospect, by naval historians." (emphasis added) For the Lyme plans, I think what you see are the portholes mostly existing in the open area between the top of the solid bulwarks and top of the rails. They are almost the reverse of the Unicorn, where the porthole outer circumference opens up at the bottom, whereas the Unicorn's open at the top. The portholes were probably somewhat decorative, and were framed on either side. Here are a few ships shown in the Gardiner book from the NMM that I think exemplify what the Lyme's quarterdeck portholes might have looked like: I think I am going to go with the Lyme. The plans I have are very detailed, though I think I could use them without issue for the Unicorn. The differences as I can tell are (1) the Unicorn was a beakhead ship, (2) the Unicorn had a Unicorn figurehead while the Lyme had a lion figurehead, (3) the Unicorn's railings were a little more decorative at the ends with the curls versus more straight ends for the Lyme, (4) the Unicorn has an extra railing at the stem which seems a bit different from other ships, and (5) the rudders and shape of the lower stem are a bit different. For me, it just boils down to the fact that I like the looks of the Lyme a little more than the Unicorn the way the windows are sized and shaped, and the stern decorations. Unfortunately what I can't tell from Chapman is whether the cathedral windows were full windows, or were square windows with decorative arches at the top. The Lyme's middle window on the stern galleries is a full cathedral style window, so maybe the Unicorn actually had those windows throughout the stern?

Beautiful work Mobbsie. It's coming along very nicely

Thanks Ian. I was wondering about that as the bar does go to 120, which happened to match the length of the ship.

Yes, I'm not sure what Corel was modeling this ship off of. I'm just impressed that Ian made the call that the tiller had to be on the quarterdeck without the benefit of all these high resolution plans! The plans are probably close to three feet in width. I'm not sure of the scale unfortunately - that will make transferring dimensions to the Corel 1:75 scale a bit tricky until the scale is determined.

I am confused half the time with some of the lingo as well. There was a long time where I was interchanging bulwarks and bulkheads. Even worse, I just realized I have been misspelling "bowsprit" the last five years What I love about this hobby is not only the craftsmanship/building aspect, but also the learning aspect - history, technology, mechanics, etc. Your Bounty is very nice! I should probably take my own advice, but don't get overwhelmed by all you have to do - just break things up into small discrete tasks. The decision on the sails is yours alone - do you want to build a model with sails? If so, where there is a will there is a way You'll have to spend some time researching - I probably spent two months of reading and planning things out. But, I wasn't in a rush to finish the model as I got more out of the journey than the destination. In the end, I think everyone wants a model they can be proud of, so if you like ships with sails, add sails! I may be overstating, but standing rigging is fixed. It includes all the various stays to keep the masts in place and the shrouds (which are probably a form of stay). Running rigging is a working line - the lines enable one to raise and lower sails, move the spars, hoist or lower things, etc. Do you have the Lennarth Petersson book "Rigging Period Ship Models"? If you're like me and learn more from pictures than words, it is an invaluable resource to learn all the rigging that goes into a ship. The book is entirely composed of pictures, and no words. It is fantastic.

Mike, the Badger was my first ship. If I can do it, you can do it You don't need all the running rigging if you use furled sails. I did the clew lines, buntlines and sheets. The leech lines would be hidden I think, so I didn't bother with those. There may be another set of lines that I also didn't add. The clew lines, buntlines and sheets should be in your kit plans for the masts. The bowsprit takes a little more work with the jib sails, as you need to add jib stays and halliards. You also need chocks, a jib traveler, suitable belaying points. Take a look here - this might help: http://sailing-ships.oktett.net/square-rigging.html Good resources are Lees "Masting and Rigging" and the TFFM volume 4. I recently bought Marquardt's "Eighteenth Century" book which also looks pretty good. Hope that helps.

Looks like perfection to me

Ian B, I hope it helps. I had searched but really couldn't find too many in-depth sail tutorials, so I thought I would share my approach. I think sails, furled or not, add a very nice look to the model and are well worth the extra time. I'm probably going to go with a mix of furled and unfurled sails on my next builds, as you are thinking - just be aware that if you are using full sails, there are a number of other lines that may need to be installed. If you come up with new techniques, feel free to share them on this thread - I'm always looking to improve my work. Good luck!

Hi again John. I just posted some pictures of the NMM Lyme plans on my Unicorn log. I thought you might find these two pictures helpful, as they show the quarterdeck railing.

After spending a little time on the plans, I'm leaning heavily towards building this kit as the Lyme rather than the Unicorn. I like the stern area a lot better. The windows make a little more sense, as opposed to the Unicorn with what looks like cathedral type windows. The transom decorations are a lot nicer to me as well, though I was hoping that human figures weren't part of the decorations And, the quarterdeck portholes and railings make a lot more sense to me than the Unicorn's open portholes in the Chapman plans. This means that I'll need a new figurehead, as the Lyme had a lion figurehead. I might try carving or sculpting one, but I'll probably buy the figurehead for the Euromodel Mordaunt just as backup. Ron's Ardent uses the same figurehead I believe, which I think is pretty nice: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/gallery/image/8226-arbowdetail01lr/ I'll sleep on it a couple more days before making a decision on what ship to build. Maybe wait for Ian to get back from his vacation so I can pick his brain as well

The Lyme plans from the NMM arrived! Like the Pegasus plans that I ordered a few weeks ago, these plans are gorgeous and show a lot of detail. I ended up ordering J8267 and J6152. Each seemed to have very different details that would be helpful for the build, so I figured that I would buy both - and I'm glad I did. Not the cheapest transaction, but well worth it for the detail, and I can frame J8267 after the build is completed as well You can find both sets of plans at the following links (note: I only found the second set of plans by scrolling through the NMM catalog for 18th century ships, you can't use the simple search function to locate them for some reason): http://prints.rmg.co.uk/art/494855/Lyme_1748_alternative_spelling_Lime http://prints.rmg.co.uk/art/533689/Lines_and_profile_plan_of_Lyme_1748 Here are some pictures in case folks are interested: J8267: J6152:

Mike, if you're thinking about furled sails, I set up a separate thread/tutorial on what I did for my Badger. Maybe this can be of some help: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/3944-landlubber-mikes-technique-for-furled-sails/ Sails are a personal decision. There are the purists who leave them off because of scale. For me, these are sailing ships and like someone said here once - a ship without sails is like a car without tires. In any event, good luck with whatever you decide. Adding sails added considerable time to my build, but I really enjoyed the process of going through and learning what all the lines, etc. were for. It gave me a greater appreciation for these gorgeous ships.

Wow, very cool!

Maybe I'm using my sausage fingers for reference. I couldn't wrap a line around my pinky and have it to scale

B.E., thanks for this information. I considered pre-cutting the extensions from the outside (probably, subconsciously remembering it from reading your build log), and am glad to see it works. That veneer saw is really cool. I was thinking of using a dremel, but the saw looks like a much safer bet. Thanks!

You're right Alistair. It all sounds great in concept, but then you start realizing the execution is a lot more complicated That's for checking on the extensions for me. Replacing the pair sounds a lot more doable than replacing two dozen or so I'm happy to swap, but it might be a little more tricky for you

Hi Martin, Yes, the extensions are going to be a pain. I agree that the planking goes between the bulkheads and doesn't cover them. I'm thinking that it might be easier to cut the extensions out now and install new ones, rather than wait until later. Are you going to replace yours? Boxwood is very nice Maybe I'll go with pear as the wood of choice on the Unicorn, and boxwood for this build. The only issue is that boxwood doesn't take stain very well, so I would probably need to use pear for the black items.

Yeah, I was thinking that facing them might be the best option. What a pain though

Thanks for the reminder SpyGlass. Before gluing, I do plan to cut the rabbet, sand the bearding line, and add the mounting points For the bulkhead extensions, don't the ones on the upper deck serve as supports for the beams for the quarterdeck and forecastle?

That's very interesting SpyGlass. It almost looks like the blonde 5mm sheet (I don't think it is ply) that I got might be for the Fly (assuming that the Pegasus and Fly have the exact same parts). The quality of the 5mm sheet looks very good relative to the other two types of ply sheets. For whatever reason, I think the other ply sheets are all 1.5mm thick - makes me wonder why Amati mixed and matched color tones with my kit? Looking at your last picture, I'm surprised how well the colors matched up. Tonight I will put the planking strips against the 5mm sheet. By the way, the MDF keel, lower deck and bulkheads fit together like a glove. I dry fit the assembly last night, and I almost feel like I can dry fit the bulkheads and glue the lower deck on top and call it a day - the assembly really fit perfectly and solidly, almost to the point that you don't need any glue at all. One thing I'm beginning to realize might cause me some angst in painting with wood is dealing with the bulkhead extensions. I am going to have to cut them off at some point and replace them with different wood. The question is whether to do that now, or wait until after the exterior is planked and then break off the extensions and replace them. I'm thinking that the first option would be easier in the long run.

Thanks very much guys. I took a closer look at the walnut strip last night, and it actually looks pretty good - much better quality than the walnut strip I used on the Badger. Since I plan on coppering the hull, I can select the strips I want for the upper hull so the variation is less of an issue. What is annoying is that the 5mm sheet (upper left corner in the first picture) contains the stem post and rudder, each of which have exposed wood sections that won't be colored or coppered. The wood is so blonde, that it would need to be replaced. But in replacing it, I might then need to replace the upper hull planks so that there is a match. Thanks very much for the kind words Clare. I agree that pear is very nice! I'll have to look up your Higaki Kaisen - did you post photos of it? BE, thanks for your thoughts. It's good to hear that the walnut held up well. The strip wood looks very good in my kit, so maybe I'll just stick with it and replace the walnut pieces on the sheets that are the off colors that I intend to leave natural. I'm still working out the color scheme on the masts. I'm thinking of maybe using boxwood for the lower sections and maple for the upper sections. It looks like the lower masts on the ship might have been painted yellow, so boxwood might work out nicely. The alternative would be to use walnut or pear (whichever is used for the upper hull planking), and then maybe maple for the upper sections.

If you wrap it around your finger, the coils will start out way too big. That's why I used a pin when making my coils. In terms of the tie offs, I think you have to remember that for running rigging, the line was a working line so I imagine that you would want extra line so that you could properly secure it, have extra lengths for when you need to release the line, etc. That being said, I think I tied off some of my rigging to the strops at the mast tops.