Landlubber Mike

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

Happy Father's Day to all my friends out there! I did a little more work this weekend. The keel looked a tad too thick to me, so I shortened it from about 10mm in height to about 7mm or so. I think it looks a lot better, particularly since I plan on adding the false keel which is at about 2mm in thickness. I also did some more thinking and planning on the stem. The figurehead seems to sit a bit low on the Corel plans, not only relative to Chapman's plans, but relative to most other similar vessels. So, I started sketching the new position for the figurehead as seen in the pictures below (the second photo shows the outline of the figurehead in red): Chapman has a different configuration for the hair and lower cheek brackets (which I've tried to outline in blue on the diagrams), as well as the headrails. The configuration in Chapman is consistent with the configuration for other similar vessels like the Blandford and the Pandora (from the AOTS books I have), so I'm going to go off script and try to construct them the Chapman way. I need to study plans a little more to figure out what shape the stem should take. I looks like the countours of the top edge (and edge that runs into the back of the figurehead) of the stem should match up with the hair bracket. I think the hair bracket sits along the edge of the stem? Also, from what I can tell, the stem itself will also need a slightly different shape, with a slightly more rounded section just under the figurehead (extra material seen in the blue shaded area just under the plan's figurehead). I need to sleep on it a bit, but I think this is generally on the right path. The lower cheek bracket probably needs to come down a bit, as the gammoning slot fits in between the lower cheek bracket and the hair bracket.

Hi Gerald, thanks again for posting this log. I have the Morgan on my shelf that I plan on building alongside the Unicorn. I'm also thinking of weathering the ship, so your log is a real inspiration!

Hi Ian, thanks very much. A few options that maybe you can think about for your build. One would be to insert a pin at the end of the bowsprit, and pre-drill a hole into the bulkhead at the right angle. Another option might be, in lieu of using a pin, to turn down the end of the bowsprit to a width of 2-3mm or so, and then pre-drill a hole into the bulkhead at the right angle. Both options would add more stability and help with alignment, with the latter option probably a bit stronger (though, it would take a little more work to execute). I did the pin method on my Badger and it worked fairly well. I had no problems with the bowsprit, either with alignment or with it subsequently getting loose. The difference there, however, was that the bowsprit was run through the stem section of the hull, so you had a point further along the bowsprit that provided a good amount of lateral and downward stability. For the Unicorn, I don't think you have any other contact points aside from the end where it sits against the deck and bulkhead 1. Given the number of times I banged into my Badger's bowsprit and popped the rigging off, I was a bit concerned that not only would I pop the rigging off, but that I would run the risk of the bowsprit detaching. The model gets considerably longer when the bowsprit is attached, and it doesn't help when my sausage fingers, elbows, etc. get in the way For what it's worth, I also used the pin method for the spars, where I was attaching the cylindrical end pieces to the octagonal center pieces. I experienced some issues there, where the pieces got loose at the pin connection sites, or the pieces didn't line up perfectly. For the latter issue, it was probably because I wasn't careful enough drilling the holes for the pins, where the holes/pins were probably not centered perfectly (drill bit may have walked, etc.). That probably could have been avoided if I had the right components for my lathe, rather than trying to do it by hand. So, going forward on spars, I probably will shape them from a solid piece of rectangular stock. As I'm writing this, another thought comes to mind to help with stability issues. Have you considered adding a stem extension? You could always build one and pin it to the deck. That would give you a second point of contact. You could also make the stem extension wider and taller, so that it forms more of a cradle around the bowsprit to provide lateral stability. See SLR0461 and SLR0475 from the Royal Maritime Museum below for an example of where this was done for frigates with beakhead bulkheads: As another option, you could add separate knighthead looking pieces just behind the stem extensions like in SLR0397, another frigate with a beakhead bulkhead: Hope those ideas help!

I've made a little more progress. I sanded in a bearding line, and chiseled out the rabbet by building off the rebate from adding the thin piece of strip wood along the outside of the keel former. I also glued on the keel pieces, and constructed the gripe (lower left part of the stem area) and the stern post (not glued yet). Ian and John, you can see how adding the stern post and pushing out the angle of the fore side of the stern post seems to help align the stern area a little better for consistency with Chapman. In Chapman's plans, the stem extends above deck level to serve as a post for the bowsprit to sit on top of. I went ahead and did that, as well as drill a hole into bulkhead 1 and sand the corner of the keel just in front of bulkhead 1 so that I can run the bowspirit through the bulkhead. Two reasons for this - first, I think the joinery of the bowsprit will look a lot better than trying to shape the end of the bowspirit to sit flush against the deck and bulkhead in the beakhead area as the kit instructs. Second, with three points of contact (the stem, the bulkhead, and the deck/keel just behind the bulkhead, I hopefully will have an easier time aligning the bulkhead properly For what it's worth, I think the bowsprit was at about a 28 degree angle from the bottom of the keel. I spent a little time tonight plotting out the remaining items of the bow area. I think the figurehead sits a bit too low, so I'm planning to raise the figurehead a bit so that it is sitting closer to the bowsprit. All this is easier said than done, particularly since I'm planning to add rails more like Chapman's plans, and I'm not sure yet whether I will use the cast bronze figurehead, or possibly construct my own. I'm thinking that I will build the remaining six or so pieces, but not install the piece the figurehead sits on - that I can easily add later, with the advantage of customizing it off the ship to fit the figurehead. Thanks for looking in!

Joe, the deck turned out very nice. The maple in the kit is beautiful - I would have preferred that over the tanganyika in my Badger kit.

Hi Ian, Painting the decoration a "boxwood" color would work out nicely as well. I thought about that after my earlier reply. ChrisLBren has a good demonstration of the technique on his Confederacy I believe - I recall that he painted the brass Caldercraft ship's wheel and I believe the figurehead using Chuck's technique. Thanks also for the information on the hawse holes and for pointing out the various items on the Chapman plans. I am glad the ship's stove is on the lower deck, as if it was one deck higher, I would have embarrassed myself putting one together next to your stove On finishing the exterior of the ship before installing the cannons, I tended to work with my Badger in my lap often times, which accounted for a lot of my cannon issues. If one is a little more careful around the model, then one probably wouldn't have as many issues

Hi Ian, I really like the modifications that you made with the arches, pillars and sills. The stern looks very much improved. I like how you covered up the top arches on the middle windows. I'm thinking of doing something similar on my build On your question about whether to paint or gild the transom decoration: I think either would look very nice, but if it were me, I think the answer would depend on how much paint you used in other areas of the ship. If you are not planning on using paint on other areas of the model (or use it very sparingly), I would gild the decoration for more consistency. If you plan on painting the figurehead and use paint throughout other areas of the ship, then painting would be a nice option (for example, if you were going to paint white stuff on the hull, the figurehead, the cannons and some of the deck items). Just my thoughts, and I bet whichever route you choose it will come out nicely.