GLakie

Thanks George. I have never tried Blacken It on britannia castings but I think others on this site have with some success. I do use it on copper and brass and like the finish very much. I might have to try some experiments to see how it works on the white metal, as I have a few dummy barrels that I won't be using on the model.

First of all, thanks for all the likes. It sure makes this hobby more fun to have folks like you looking in on the progress and the encouragement. Criticism and suggestions are more than welcome too.
 
I finished up the starboard side wale last night. Here are the wale planks before sanding:
 

 

 
This side came out much better than the port side before sanding. I guess I took my time more the second time since I knew how much work it was to get it to look good on the other side. Here it is after sanding, with no filler added:
 

 

 

 
I did end up adding a little filler along the stem and near the stern, but that was it. I will try to be more patient with the rest of the planking to cut down on the sanding and filling.
 
I have been working to clean up some of the metal fittings that came with the kit. I drilled out the bores of the dummy cannon barrels that came with the kit and the "real" cannon barrels that came with the extra cannons that I bought. I used a drill press to clean up the initial hole in the barrels, which were too small and not very circular. I then used a slightly larger drill bit in a pin vise to make the final hole. These are just a tad bit over 2mm in size. I then used a small file to clean up the rest of the outside of the barrels, mostly removing lines from the casting process. I want to drill the holes for the berth deck air ports and the scuppers now, so in case I mess any of them up I can replace that section of wale if I need to. I was not sure about the supplied metal fittings for these, but after I examined them I was pleasantly surprised how detailed they are. Now I just need to be able to paint them without hiding that detail. I am going to paint these black unless some one knows better what color they should be. I had to remove a little flash on some of these, but mostly they were in good shape. I used some scrap planking to test the drill bit sizes for these and found that the posts on the back of the scuppers are oblong, not round, so the hole was not hidden completely by the scupper. I fixed this by filing each of the posts down on them to make them rounder and thinner.
 

 

 
OK, here is a question for you historians out there. Were the berth deck air ports just a hole through the hull or was there some sort of glass inside them? I found on the Constitution CD a drawing of a cover that went on the inside of these, which leads me to believe that they were just open in the 1812 era, but if anyone has any other information please let me know.
 
I have made up some templates to help locate and drill the holes for these, which I will show in the next instalment.
 
 

Interesting question. While I have see noter ships with sails attached to the spirit sail I can find no instance of the Connie with one. Her Sail Plan from the Navy site also has the spar but it is bare. George may be right in it being used for stiffening the rigging rather than actually having a sail attached. I would assume that even if it did have a sail, this one would be rarely used.

Did the Constitution ever have a spirit sail, I wonder.
 
Rich, your bowsprit and yard look great.

Hi Rich:
 
That's your spritsail yard.  It's configured quite-a-bit different than the one on my MS plans but you're right, it doesn't have a sail. It should go just behind the dolphin striker on the jib boom. I think it's for the fixed and traveling guy lines. Just mainly for support of the boom assembly.
 
Cheers
George

Just completed my first spar. This one attaches to the bowsprit. Does anybody have an idea what its function is? It doesn't hold a sail.

Spar is now attached to the bowsprit. I now have to run eight lines from the bowsprit through the eyelets on the spar to blocks mounted on the anchor davits. I still can't imagine what the function of this spar is?

Hi Warren. Thanks for looking in. As to your question, I also used the first free chapter when I started this build and found it helpful. I have built six ships before this one, starting with the Phantom as you did and working my way up to this one. This is only the third plank on bulkhead model, though. I wanted some planking practice with smaller ships before tackling this one, and I could probably have used more practice. The first two models I built had very good practicums and I was very nervous to build the third without one. But, I found that the steps are very similar for most models, and I managed to do it. The fourth was a more complicated model that had mostly Italian instructions and I was able to build that one (Beagle) with the help of the Anatomy of Ship Beagle book. I have not seen the other chapters of the Hunt practicum for the Constitution and I am sure they are very good, but I think if you take your time and follow along with the builds that have been done and the ones going on now you should be OK. A build log is the best way to get help as folks here can see your progress and offer suggestions to avoid too many mistakes, but as you can see from my log, I make a lot of mistakes, but so far they have been easily correctable. That said, I am still only on the planking for the Connie, so I have no idea what sorts of problems may await me down the road, but I have yet to find one that is insurmountable with just doing something over until I am satisfied with it. One thing I do is to make a list of the steps to be performed, using the instructions and plans, so I have a very good idea of the order to do things in. I try to work out all the possible steps that can be done before others to make the job easier. For instance, when I built the Phantom I did not paint the hull black until after I put the copper plates on. If I had done it the other way around I would have had a much better line between the tape and the copper. Of course, this list is not complete at first but I add to it and change it as I go and I have found that this has mostly eliminated forgetting to do something before it was too late or too hard to do. So I would say press on and good luck, and don't be afraid to ask questions.

I did some checking, and after taking a long hard look at Chuck's cannon and carriages, I think I'll go ahead and order the cannon kit from Model Expo, and get Chuck's carriages to put the cannon on. The brass ones sure are pretty, but I just can't justify spending $120 for brass cannon only to blacken them later. But the carriages are nicely detailed and would be the right size, or at least real close, as his 12 pounder is only 1.1mm shorter than Model Expo's 24 at 38mm, and actually, side by side, they look almost identical to each other. 
 
Cheers  

Hey thanks guys for the welcome and getting back so quick.
From what I've been able to gather, originally, she had the 30 of the 24 pounders, 16 of the 18 pounders, and 14 of the 12 pounders until she was put into reserve status in 1802. Everything's subject to change, but my plan, so far, is to build her as close to that original launch state as feasibly possible. On the other hand, I might just use MS's cannon kit and ream the ends of the barrels a bit and put larger wheels on the carriages to make up for the difference because this will be my first wooden ship build, and I should probably keep it as simple as possible. Not my first model though by any means. I've done the Revell Connie and Cutty Sark each twice with full rigging and sails, but it's just not the same as the satisfaction I'll get from building them in wood. Spent all my life in the trades, doing cabinetry and finish carpentry, this shouldn't be too much different, except in a way smaller scale. We'll see. Can't wait to get started, but until I wrap up a couple of immediate projects, and finish my little workshop, it'll have to wait.
 
Thanks again and fair winds
George 

Thanks Al and Patrick. Yes, I have so many pictures already, more than any previous whole build. These will make a nice record of what's been done and what may be hidden. Still thinking about the gun carriage color, but I have lots of time to decide. In between framing I have put together 5 of the 16 gun carriages that I need for the gun deck, although these are still pretty rough. There are a lot of steps for creating each carriage and more later when they are rigged.
 
I have been working on the dummy gun ports. These will have the dummy barrels in them with the gun port lids closed. The main concern here is to have the barrels exactly in the center of the ports and at the same angle as the real cannon barrels. I first made up the tops, bottom and sides of the ports, using different widths of 1/8" strips. I glued these in so that the rear edges of the tops and bottoms held the backs at the correct angles. Each gun port was just a bit different. I then sanded the front edges flush to the bulkheads, making sure that there was a slight curve between bulkheads to match the fairness of the hull. This is especially important near the bow, where there is a sharp curve between bulkheads.
 
Here are the sanded frames with the backs being glued in place:
 

 
And here is a simple tool I made up to center the backs. It is just a thin piece of wood that is the same shape as the gun ports glued to a piece of dowel that is the same diameter as the dummy gun barrels. The dowel fits snugly in the hole in the backs, so I inserted the tool into the gun port and slid the back piece on from inside the hull and pushed it tight to the frames, after applying some glue around the edges of the back pieces. I held it in place while I removed the tool and placed the two clothes pin clamps in place.
 

 
Here are the three ports at the bow. The one in the middle was the tricky one that needed thick tops and bottom frames to get the curve of the bow into them. The first ones I put on were too thin so it made the frame too flat. I also had to trim the back piece at an angle to fit close to the bulkhead. The front gun port needed some work too. This was actually added weeks ago when I framed the bow area. Unfortunately, the plans either were not right or I misinterpreted them. First off, in the current configuration this is not a gun port but an anchor port, but in 1812 this was a gun port from what I have read. On the plans it says that this opening is the same shape as the other gun ports, which is how I should have built it, but from the shape shown in the detailed plans, this opening comes out square. Also, the top and bottom of this port were too low in the detailed plans, so it did not line up with the other ports. So, I removed the top and bottom pieces and glued them in at the right heights, then used a file to widen the sides to the correct width. I am thinking that I will have the gun port lids on this front port but no cannon barrel sticking out, mainly because there is no room behind it to get a back piece in and to hedge my bets on what type of port this is. I did add a thin piece of wood as a backing just to block any light from coming in from behind.
 

 
Speaking of light, I got to looking closer at the ends of the gun deck and realized that some of the other bulkheads may be seen through the openings. I first thought to just paint them all black, but then came up with a simpler solution, which was to just close up the ends with some black construction paper. I think this will look better in the long run.
 

 
These are all pictures of the port side gun port frames. I am still working on the starboard side frames.