cobra1951

Hi

My two cents worth. Pre soak the parts in white vinegar first for 10 min to make sure cleaned of ectching process gunk. Then into blackner. The pitting is caused by the blackner being to strong and acting to fast due to the heat and eating into the brass rather than oxidizing it. Use diluted and wait a bit longer.

It will never be perfectly black. The only was for that is to paint it. Using it to strong can cause the parts to become brittle.

My brass is thoroughly cleaned first with hot soapy water then rinsed then dried. It is then cleaned again in Actone then rinsed again a few time them it is left to dry.

My pitting occured using the Birchwood Casey diluted to 50/50 and it was used cold and the blackening never worked just some crusty black bits which fell off.

But to give the Birchwood Casey the benefit of the doubt the second lot of brass on my Gun section was not very good as i could see it looked like it was left lying around somewhere damp for years.

The reason i use the Krick warmed is because it says so on the instructions and it always works for me

Never quit or your tools will rust and that's not allowed

Fine build you have achieved

Looks great Bryan   nice tidy build so far. As for the tree nails they look good and as you say they need to be seen to give a better planking effect.

If you build the canons don't follow the sizes for the wedge assembly part, if you do the cannons will only have a downward trajectory.

Mr Pucko tipped me off about it when i was doing mine, I showed what i did in my log,

I use a baking tin for my blacking.

 

But Glass sounds good.

 

I have yet to find a good brass chain blackner.

 

Tried the German one, begins with a Z I think, It say;s water down first but found strait from the bottle is best,'well sometimes'.

 

Frank. 

Hi Frank

            Do you mean Krick the one that CMB and Jotika sell. If you do it works fine diluted as long as you keep it warm, otherwise it takes ages to work

I put my stuff in a glass container then place that in another container containing boiling water and keep it hot, the process is really speeded up then   

I use little glass ramekins for smaller parts and a glass bowl for larger ones. I find if you use a certain kind of plastic it taints the process but you don't find out it was the wrong kind until it's too late

Glass is best

Another stage of the build nicely finished

Good job

I don't envy you the next few jobs, I hate the fiddly bits. But all part of the process to make it great, as I am sure yours will be

I agree with you Mike . I think it also depends on the quality of the metal you are working wirh. When I did the two section decks all the brass in the first one blackened great, the second lot went all crusty and pitted. Took me a few days to get it correct.

Looks very tidy

She's looking mighty fine

I like your method of doing the spiling

After that snow those potatoes will take an extra hour to boil

Looks great and will be even better once it's capped

Really very impressive! I'll try my best to do this kit justice. Looking forward to start working on it.

 

but...I finish the bireme before I start.

 

Robin

If you don't get overrun by temption :)

Some very nice detailing added to your build

Paul is correct about the wood quantity there is enough. When I did 2 of them I tried both ways the longer one like you are doing looked the best to me

Nice neat start Bryan looks good

You are right about the top beams best to sand the paint off now because it will help in gluing the top deck planks.

The link i gave above has them as small as 2mm

Here's another in Canada https://castyouranchorhobby.com/index.php?sid=4q54qx8y6beya1d8273dlfivtl0m76l0&app=ecom&ns=prodsearchp&ecom--prodsearch--string=sheaves&SUBMIT=Go

only as small as 2.5mm though

No problem Bryan if you hit a snag just ask, one of us will help out i am sure

You are correct your mind is intact

The benches are two planks wide but if you recall the drawings on the plan show the table 4 planks wide and the one in the booklet shows it to be 5 planks wide, i went with 4 as per the plan drawing

I used one of the pictures on the box and took my height and length measurments for the table relative to the size of the cannon and made the benches half the height of the table

Cornwall model boats has a good stock of sheave pulleys etc but they are in the UK

http://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/index.html

I used the search term, brass pulley in their search box

Be careful with the plans and the booklet, in some instances they give different measurements for some parts worse still sometimes there are no measurements at all, the table and benches are an example of that, so refer to both and use the build itself to work out which is best for you.

Thanks Popeye

Hi Frank thanks

The stain on the decking is light oak. There is a blackener on your side of the pond made by Jax it's available on eBay. Not tried it myself but Zoltan reckons it's ok

Looks great  

Back top edge of the beam gets my vote for the cleat

Bronzing looks great on that copper sheet

Looks like some hard repetitive work coming up on those oars