Landlubber Mike

Jason, your Snake looks great and I'm excited to follow your Jason build. Very cool to build a ship with your namesake, and especially one that is gorgeous like that one (I really love the look of the Artois class)

Tim, I'm in the DC area but am supposed to go to a wedding up in CT in the fall. If my family will let me squeeze it in, I'm hoping to make a trip to visit the Morgan, as I have the kit on my shelf. If I can make it, I plan on taking plenty of pictures that I can share with you and others on here that might be interested. Sorry to interrupt your log Gerald. Love your work - your Morgan is setting a very high standard for my future build

I see a lot of people have these benches against the wall with power tools on them, but I found that I needed more depth than what these benches give (I think it's 20") to safely use my Byrnes table saw and thickness sander (depth is ok for things like the disc sander, mill and lathe). What I ended up doing was putting two of these benches back to back, with one side against the wall - essentially, building out a workspace island where I could access the drawers on both tables, and access the machines on each of the tables. On the side against the wall, I attached a power strip to one of the benches, as well as a couple of swing arm lamps. That gave me more useable space than putting the two tables alongside one wall, or building an "L" configuration with the two benches in a corner.

Wow, very nice set up you have there!

Thanks Spyglass. For my Badger, I set up my pedestals very similarly. I think I centered the hull on the baseboard (not including the bowsprit, driver/boom and maybe not the stem too, I forget), and then positioned the pedestals 25-30% from the ends. I agree that you don't want them too far apart or too close together.

Thanks very much Spyglass, this is very helpful. I read through your Pegasus log the other day, which reminded me that I needed to start thinking about the mounting set up. For my Badger, I used the Model Expo brass pedestals. I forget exactly which I bought, but I think it was the 1.25" and 1.75", and then used grinding bits and a cut-off wheel to shape the cut out slot so that the model would sit with the waterline parallel to the building board. If I remember correctly, I cut down the tops of the slots a bit, and shaped out a sloped groove to accommodate the fact that the bottom of the keel was not parallel to the waterline. I'll have to try your felt approach for fine adjustments, that sounds like it would work perfectly. Taking another look at your log and Dan Vadas' logs, it looks like I can just drill the hole, rather than milling out a full slot. I'll have to think about this a little more - though, maybe I'm just over thinking things

Very nice brick platform! It came out fantastic. In the model railroading space, you can buy printed paper that simulates bricks, and they even have styrene brick patterns that you need to paint. Your approach looks much nicer in my opinion.

Really nice work Ben. I have the TFFM series, and while I don't plan on scratching a Swan class in the near future as I have the Pegasus kit, it's a real treat watching you execute the scratch build.

Frank, I was going to say that with the nice results you're getting now, you probably only need to single plank it. Maybe I should try it to save on buying tubs of filler like Augie

Thanks very much guys, I really appreciate it. I need to touch up the joints a bit, but overall, I'm very happy with how the stem came out (better than I expected). Another approach would have been to cut out the stem as one piece, and scribe lines into it to simulate the various components. That probably would have been a lot faster, but you probably have to make sure that your lines are very clean for it to look good. Another thing I need to do in the very near future is to install the pedestal mounting components to the keel. This build I'm going to epoxy nuts inside the keel and run stainless steel bolts through the pedestals and into the nuts like many others on here have done. I had made the mistake with my Badger of waiting until after the ship was double-planked to drill the pilot holes for the wood screws that came with the two pedestals. I forget if I drilled them by hand or not, but the holes must have not been perfectly perpendicular to the keel (or I screwed the screws in at a slight angle) as there is an ever so slight lean to the ship when on the pedestals that I could never fix. By pre-drilling holes now at this stage just working with the keel, and using nuts and bolts rather than wood screws, I should be able to get things much more square. What I'm still working out is whether I should use my mill to drill a hole for the bolts, or instead, to use my mill to mill out a narrow slot in the keel. I'm thinking the latter approach would give me more control and allow me to follow the line of the bolt's path, but I would welcome any thoughts on the best approach.

Looking great Frank. Very tight and neat planking! Is this a single-planked hull or double?

I made some more progress on the stem, building the five remaining pieces (main piece, bobstay piece, chocks, lacing, and the piece holding the main stay collar). I ended up following the general pattern/shape of pieces from one of the stem diagrams in the AOTS Blandford book, with a slight modification to not include a fore foot as part of the gripe. It seems like stems were constructed in all different ways, so I picked an example that seemed a little easier for me to execute given that I'm very new to the power tools I'm using. A few of these took multiple attempts on the scroll saw to get right. Thankfully I got the main piece on the second try as it is pretty complicated. I still have to add the holes for the bobstays and the main stay collar, as well as shape the top of the main piece to conform to the eventual head rails - I figured I would leave a little extra to work with as I finalize what the head rail configuration would look like. I also need to thin down the stem a bit where the figurehead will sit, as well as cut a slot into the figurehead so that it can sit on the stem. Either that, or I need to carve a new figurehead which I'm tempted to at least try You can see that I also decided to glue all the pieces together, but not to the stem/keel at this time as it will be a lot easier for me to shape the stem off the model, and probably to plank it as well. I ended up penciling in one edge of the joints to help better define the joint. In some areas, the joint was probably a bit wider than I would have liked. The trickiest is cutting scarpf joints against curved pieces - not fun! So, I put very diluted PVA into the joint and sanded the stem over the joint so that the sawdust helped fill it. I still need to make a few touch ups, but I'm actually quite pleased with how that all worked, especially as it toned down a bit of the pencil to make for more muted joint lines. So, adding the bowsprit and figurehead, the stem area should look like this: I think this is fairly close to Chapman's plans and other similar vessels, where the figurehead sits up higher and closer to the bowsprit, and sits on and within the stem as opposed to attached to the end of the stem as in the kit instructions. In the pictures below, you can see how the stem on my build differs from the kit stem. Next up is to start working on the bulkheads, and to modify the keel for the new angles to the decks and the scratched stern. Thanks for reading!

Hi Colin, beautiful work. I'm using the McKay AOTS book as a guide for my Unicorn build, and find it incredibly detailed and helpful. I thought that this could be a gorgeous ship to scratch, and I got my confirmation in coming across your build log today

Very much looking forward to seeing what you can do with this kit Denis. Beautiful ship, great kit, and skilled modeler all make a wonderful combination for greatness. I'm subscribed

John and Ian B, very nice models and artwork. I don't think my wife is as understanding about the decor. She kept asking me where I would put my 26" Badger - wait until she finds out that my next models are close to 50% bigger

Ian, I'm glad your Unicorn survived the intergalactic wars, and with no battle scars Thanks very much for passing along this information. That Flynn thesis looks like it has a lot of very good information, I'll have to print it out and give it a read. It's nice that he included the Pandora, which is a 24-gun frigate descendant of the Unicorn. I think I'm going to go with the 4-strake wale - or at least, make the width of the wale on my build equal to four of the strakes on the model. By bumping the wale out in thickness by an extra strake above and below the wale on the plans, the wale really sets up nicely with Chapman, particularly with the location of the cheeks. I spent some more time last night sketching out the shape of the stem. I think I got it fairly close in the pictures above, but I am going to angle the figurehead a bit more and push it back a millimeter or two from the sketch from a couple of nights ago. I'm still contemplating how to construct the remaining 5-6 pieces of the stem - mostly, to give myself flexibility on whether I ultimately use the kit figurehead or try carving one of my own. What I'm thinking I might do at this stage is to glue on all remaining pieces aside from the one or two pieces on which the figurehead will sit, this way I can do fine tuning of the pieces off the model to accommodate the figurehead. The nice thing is that there does not seem to be any set standard on how to construct the stem, as from what I've seen looking at plans for the Pandora, Blandord and Diane (among others), they have have slightly different approaches.

Very nice work Ian. I almost wish that I could spend an afternoon with you to learn from you on how to do metalworking. You really are a pro, all the more impressive given the small scale of the work. Is the spectacle plate for the rudder chains? On my Badger, I took the easy way out by bending a piece of metal strip, drilling holes into the strip and rudder, and inserting a small eyebolt on each side. Yours looks much much better

Very nice work as always Augie. She's coming along very nicely!

Hi Joe, very nice work. Looks like the gunport patterns are in the right position and with the right curvature. I remember having a few choice words for the gunport patterns on my Badger I'll be following your decision on the drill and fill method for the treenails closely. I went with the bamboo skewers through the draw plate approach on my Badger, which probably takes much more time than the drill and fill method. The Byrnes draw plate worked very well, but I can't tell you how many times the skewer wood broke at or just before the final hole in the draw plate. Toothpicks probably would have been a step easier. For the drill and fill method, I worried that the paste would flow into the wood grain leading to streaks in the planks, but it seems like most people don't have that problem.

Nice work Mundie. I also find it much easier to work in metric. Congrats also on your degree!

Hi John, looks really great so far. Am glad to see that you posted a build log on here. Look forward to following your progress!

Very nice work Kester, your work is so crisp and clean. I love the crew figure - the way you addressed the rope issue looks very natural, well done! Sorry to have missed your earlier reply from March. I think you have seen that I'm working on the Unicorn at the moment. Still not sure whether I want to tackle the Morgan or the Pegasus. I was intending on the former, but I'm thinking maybe of doing the Pegasus instead (though I wonder if I'll be bored of working on two similar ships that both have mythological creatures for namesakes)

Hi Kester, thanks for stopping by. This kit was supposed to be my stepping stone to build the Amati Pegasus. But now going through all the modifications, it's almost like I'm scratch building it, though modifying it off of independent research and guesses, rather than fully accurate plans. I think ChrisLBren is right when he says that kit bashing is harder than scratching off of good plans This clearly wasn't my intention, but I've sorta gone down this path with Ian as together we are helping each other build a more accurate model. It's been a great learning experience and a lot of fun working alongside Ian, so I'm not complaining at all. For my next build, I still maintain that I'm going to build the Charles Morgan alongside this kit, but who knows I don't know if I'm at the scratch building stage yet, but I have the Euromodel Friedrich Wilhelm zu Pferde on the shelf that I really want to build. The FWZP, along with the Charles Morgan, offer lots of opportunities to improve the kit through scratch building many details, so I think those will be good models to go through before fully embracing the dark side. I just wonder where the Pegasus fits in these plans, as you really can build a gorgeous model out of the box because of the great kit components, plans, and detail pieces. I might build it alongside the Unicorn just because it is very straightforward and will need a lot fewer modifications than the Charles Morgan, but I wonder about getting bored of working on two ships at the same time that are very similar (and both with mythological creatures for namesakes). I suppose there are some efficiencies in working on similar ships at the same time. Maybe I'll just flip a coin

Hi John, thanks for looking in. The Unicorn is probably more on the basic side of the kit difficulty section than the expert side, so I'm quite ok with some of the simplifications and other modifications to keep the kit at that skill level. The folks at Corel are actually very nice as well, where they sent me free of charge, a dozen extra portholes in response to my request to buy extras. I think where I'm most frustrated with the kit is on the plans, where the size of parts on the various plan sheets do not agree with each other, nor do they actually match up with the actual parts themselves (see my earlier post on where there are three sizes relating to the keel former between the two plan sheets and the kit part). That to me seems a bit sloppy and not too much to ask for, whether you are building an expert kit or a beginner kit.

Thanks very much Ian. I think the new position does give it a more robust feel - not sure about ramming other ships, but maybe to ram the walls of my house if it should happen to get thrown across the room in frustration Thanks also for the link to Dan's work. Well, I'm not sure whether to thank you or curse you for now giving me nightmares about adding the headworks to my build All kidding aside, Dan's log is going to be of big help to me at that stage (and others of course). One interesting note about the Unicorn that I've come across in my research regarding the relationship of the cheeks to the wale. In most models that I've seen, the upper cheek sits above the wale, while the lower cheek sits on the wale. From Chapman's plans of the Unicorn, the upper cheek sits on the wale, while the lower cheek sits below the wale. It's almost like the wale on the Unicorn sits considerably higher than other similar vessels. Ian, while I'm on the topic, one other modification I'm planning relates to the wale. The Chapman wale seems considerably thicker than the kit plans. It's probably a bit hard to see in the pictures two posts ago, but I'm planning on extending the height of the wale by the plank above and the plank below. In the pictures, I've shaded the area for the new wale in pencil. That seemed the simplest way of conforming the kit to the Chapman plans. Going that route, however, leads to an interesting question about what to do with the hawse holes. The area above the wale will be very narrow if I extend it, so the question I need to answer is whether the hawse holes would ever have been located on the wale itself. More to research I suppose