David Lester

Looking really beautiful Ken, David

Happy Wednesday Everyone, I'm still working away, although in for the past while it's been lots of work, but little evidence of progress. I'm using the LLS practicum and Chapters 10, 11 and 12 all concern the many details on the outside of the hull, on the deck and on the bulwarks. I'm grappling a bit with the sequence. I don't care for the sequence outlined in the practicum, but it goes against the grain for me to deviate. I tend to be "compliance oriented" and if it says to do it a certain way, then that's the way it should be. I need to be more like Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean, who interprets the Pirate's Code as "more what you call guidelines than actual rules." The practicum has us add much detail to the outer hull first, then all the detail to the centre of the deck and finally detail to the bulwarks. I'm worried about knocking gunport lids and davits and what have you off as I work on the interior stuff and I can't see cluttering up the centre of the deck before I have to drill holes in the bulwarks for the eyebolts, cleats etc. So I'm going to "live on the edge" and do the bulwark stuff first, then the more central deck details followed by the outer hull details and then finally to top rail. I'm currently working on completing all the many components - gun carriages, gunport lids, horse block, ramps, binnacles etc. etc. A few of them are included in the picture. David

Hi Greg, I've just discovered your build log. Your detail work is amazing! It's a very beautiful model. By the way, where do your Lesters hail from? My dad and I were both born in Canada, but my grandfather emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland as a teenager just before WW1. David

Hi Dave, Your filler blocks look great. It's hard to imagine that you wouldn't need them given the blunt shape of the bow. I'll be interested to hear how difficult the bow planking is to do. David

Hi Ken, That's a great trick with the drill bit extension. With the very small size drills, I find I often just slowly rotate the pin vise by hand anyway, so no reason why this system wouldn't work beautifully. As you may know I'm following the Bob Hunt practicum and he suggests making the stars out of styrene plastic. He recommends using a strip .010" x .188" Of course they could be cut from any width material, but the .010" thickness seems about right. He even includes star shaped graphics in the practicum which you can print out. You then glue them onto the styrene and just cut the stars out with a knife. If you have a graphics program or Microsoft Word on your computer it's very easy to make a star yourself. It's just a matter of experimenting until you have the right two sizes David

Hi John, I didn't know the Revenge was a container ship! Your decking looks great. David

Hi Ken, Looking great! David

Hi Everyone, As tense moment this afternoon when I removed the masking tape from the copper plating, but I was relieved to see that it worked very well. My red line is reasonably crisp. There were a couple of places where there was very slight bleeding, but I was able to scrape most of the paint away without damaging the copper. If you look closely enough they are still slightly visible, but when all the many details are added to the hull, nobody's eye will be drawn to them. I now just have to add the fenders to the starboard side, give them a final coat of poly and touch up the black in a couple of places and I will have Chapter 9 of the practicum behind me. Chapter 10 of the practicum deals with many of the outer hull details. In preparation I've been working ahead on some of the components - gunport lids, channels etc. There are sheaves set into the side of the hull and the practicum suggests simulating these with thin slices of dowel. It suggests a 1/32" slice of a 3'16" dowel for each one. I don't have a miniature table saw, so all of my efforts to slice them off with an xacto saw or knife only resulted in their crumbling into bits. My solution was to cut off a thin slice of styrene tubing that I had. (It's 7/32" but I think that's close enough to 3/16" for this purpose.) I then filled them with filler and polyed them. I think this will work, but I'll know better when I actually try to insert them. I included a picture of them below, but when I look at it I realize that I might as well have just photographed eight aspirin tablets - maybe I should just use eight aspirin tablets! That's all for now, and many thanks for comments and likes. David

Hello All, I brief update tonight - I have finished the copper plating, both sides as well as the rudder and all the annoying little edge pieces. It feels like a real milestone and I'm pleased enough with the results. When I removed the masking tape from the waterline on the port side, I noticed for the first time a pretty big dip in the waterline at the stern end. It was easy enough to fix by stripping back a few rows in the immediate area, replacing the masking tape to a better position and replacing the plates. Later today I applied masking tape to mark the red stripe. I experimented with it first and it lifts very nicely off the plates without causing any damage, so my concerns in that area were unwarranted. I took Ken up on his suggestion of applying a clear coat to the plates first which should have the effect of sealing the line between the plates and the masking tape. I did that, but simply used some polyurethane. I have now added the red paint, but it will need a couple of more coats before I remove the tape and find out how successful I was. The pictures below are of the finished copper, and I'll add some of the red stripe as soon as it's ready. David

Hi Tom I find that photographing models is pretty like photographing anything else. For example, I believe myself to be incredibly good looing in real life, but always look like hell in pictures. Nothing but flaws and imperfections. By what can I do? I guess I can take comfort in small mercies and be glad that despite my frequent and protracted periods of inactivity, I never appear as though I actually need to be dusted in my pictures! But seriously, I don't know what the answer to the dust issue is but your model is looking good nevertheless. David

Hi Ken, Thanks for your thoughts. Your approach seems like a very good one. My thought about painting just the first two rows freehand is ok, but only just ok because even though the rows are quite straight, they aren't perfectly straight. It would be nice to get a crisper line, but I was just trying to avoid the problem of the paint bleeding. I hadn't thought of your clear coat idea. I'll make up a test area with some copper plates on a piece of wood and have a practice run first. I think this might be the answer. David

Thanks for the comments, likes and suggestions guys. I've looked at several other build logs and thought about the red stripe and I think I've decided what to do. On the build log at knightdreamers.com he found that he was able to lift the masking tape off the copper without it damaging the plates ok which is good, but I noticed that he had quite a bit of paint find its way under the masking tape and the line isn't very crisp. So I think I won't mask it at all and just paint it freehand down to the bottom of the top two rows. There is a band of two rows of full plates going around the top. The stripe is supposed to be 1/2" and the total width of the top two rows on my model is about 7/16". That's close enough for me. I should be able to get a good crisp line using the edge of the plates as a stopping point. David

Hi Greg, Your windows look quite well placed to me and should look great when planked. David

Happy Tuesday Everyone, A bit of progress to report. I've finished plating the starboard side of the model. I followed the LSS practicum and found it to be quite helpful. The concept of dividing the hull into gores was easy to grasp and it worked out well. The results are acceptable, if not stellar. It looks fine from a "normal" viewing distance of 50' or so , but up close it's full of flaws. It isn't too hard a process in theory, and in most aspects it isn't too hard in practice either, but it is challenging to get the plates in consistent even rows. If you look closely at mine, you'll see a few sine waves!. The foil is very fragile and I'm a bit worried about protecting this side as I work on the other one. I think I'll thumb tack some padding along the bottom of the keel, run it up the side of the hull and tape it to the hull above the copper line. I have a soft pad to set the model on while I'm working, but even it will abrade the foil as the model moves. I think I need to have the padding stationary, tight against the foil and moving with the model. Also, does anyone have any thoughts on masking in order to paint the red section along the top of the copper. In his practicum Bob suggests that masking tape will tend to pull the plates off when removed and instead he uses frisket film. I have never used such a product and judging by the pictures in the practicum, it doesn't look all that user-friendly to me. I'm just curious how others have handled this. David

I think the bands on the pumps look terrific. D

Hi Ken, the transom is looking beautiful! David

Your workmanship is flawless! The pumps look pretty nice as they are, but I don't think black bands would be out of place at all. I would probably be adding them if it was my model. David

Hi Greg, Boy, you're really motorin' along. I can barely read your posts as quickly as you're progressing. Here's a picture of my model at the stage you're at now. For those top window pieces, I rough cut each one to length more or less and then just continually sanded the tops and ends until I had a half decent fit. I put a small brad in each piece to use as a handle to hold it in place as I test fitted it. Once I decided it was ok, I glued it in and when the glue was set, I pulled the pin out. You can see the pin holes in a couple of places. If I remember right, I left each one a wee bit too thick from top to bottom, then when the glue was set, sanded the bottom of each piece until the windows just nicely slid into place and fit snugly. I was interested in your finding that you needed to bevel the inner two transom frames. I didn't feel I needed to do that and I was quite happy with the flow of the windows across the back. They are an odd shape and it would seem they can be placed effectively with or without the beveling. I'm really enjoying watching your progress. David

It worked pretty well; I just wish I'd thought of it before I bought the dry transfer letters which I found almost impossible to work with. Any thoughts for the numbering that runs down the bow? David

Hi Greg, You're going right along beautifully. Everything looks pretty good to me. I don't see any reason why cutting the two notches in the deck beam won't work. I put support blocks between my bulkheads as well, though I didn't go so far as to completely fill the spaces near the bow. Are you going to paint your model or leave it natural. If you're painting it, you can just fill any nicks etc with filler; if you're leaving it natural it's a bit trickier to handle of course. (This is one of the reasons I like to paint.) A word of warning - you are almost guaranteed to break off at least one the bulkhead extensions before you have the planking done. Don't worry about it too much, just glue it back on. If it's a ragged break, sometimes the piece will fit back in quite snugly and with a bit of glue work just fine. If the break is a little cleaner, it can be hard to get the piece to stay back in place, so just cut the head off a small brad and use it along with some glue to secure the piece in place. One mistake I made on mine was the sanding of the insides of the bulkhead extensions. I didn't sand them thin enough at the deck level; they were fine at the top, but I left them too thick at the deck level. As a result my gunports seem too deep. I'm glad to see you've organized your wood. I think it's essential. It's also important to return your wood strips to their proper place once you've finished with a certain job and not leave them lying around; otherwise you'll spend most of your time measuring and re-measuring them. I used a series of 8 1/2 x 11 envelops with the flaps cut off. One envelop for each size and placed them all upright in a cardboard box and it works great. David

Thanks guys! Ken - The two rolls of copper match do match. They both remained sealed in their plastic packages until I opened them at the same time. A short length on each roll (the first "wrap around") was quite a bit darker than the rest of the rolls, so I didn't use it and I'm cutting plates from both rolls as I go, so I don't anticipate any trouble with colour. Keeping the rows straight and even is another matter though! Dave - I haven't started my Rattlesnake yet, but I do need to have a couple of things on the go at the same time, both to relieve the tedium of the repetitive jobs and also because sometimes it takes only five or 10 minutes to paint or glue something then you can't carry on with it until it has set up. On this model, I have been working ahead on the small boats - the four of them are about half done and I've also been working on the gun carriages. David

Happy Wednesday Everyone, I have a bit of progress to report. I've started the copper plating and so far so good, although there's a long way to go. The gunport lids are the next thing after the plating and since they're a multi-step process - sanding, several coats of paint both sides, adding hinges, drilling etc. I decided to get them going simultaneously so they'll be all ready to add when I have the copper finished. In the picture they're edged sanded with one coat of poly applied to the first side. Also thanks for all the likes. David

Looking good Tom - only 22 of them - should take no time at all! Dust and other flaws don't seem to show up in real life, but they sure do in pictures. I think the secret to dust control is to never photograph your model. David

Hi Ken, Sorry you've had so much trouble. I'm not sure I'd have tackled relocating the galleries, because they actually didn't look too bad even though they were sitting a bit high and I don't think they would have caused any further problems down the road. However, I also understand the urge to get it right too. It's a lot of work, but it will all look great in the end. That's the beauty of working with wood - it's possible to change almost anything. I don't quite understand where you went wrong. I didn't have trouble with my vertical placement, but I sure did with my lateral placement. It took quite a bit of fudging to get them right (or I should say at least looking acceptable) front to back. I had to add pretty big filler pieces to the "roof" and "floor" of the galleries. David

Hi Greg, I've been away for a couple of days; just catching up on the forums this morning. Your work looks spot on. I made the same adjustments on some of my bulkheads too. They sand into line without much trouble at all. David