David Lester

Good Morning,
 
Bill, those models look great. Just saw your post now; we've been away for a couple of days.
 
A Saturday morning update -
 
Lately I seem to have the attention span of a gerbil and have been working on all kinds of different things.
 
First, the four vent pipes:
 
They're made out of 1.5mm brass rod, bent into shape. I wanted to indicate the joints. First I tried some Evergreen styrene strips, .01" x .02" but it was much too large to be in scale. Then I tried some rigging thread. By trial and error I discovered that both .5 mm and .25 mm lines were too heavy. I settled on ordinary sewing thread and it seems about right.

 


Next, I was concerned that the supplied piece of dowel was not going to be quite right for the funnel. Taking measurements from the on-line 360 tour, I discovered that at 16mm diameter it was spot one. It was just a matter of flattening the sides to about 12mm. Finishing the funnel is probably next in my peripatetic approach to the details.
 


 
The biggest challenge for me has been the four metal ladders. The ones provided are brass and are not bad quality, but don't look anything like the actual ones on the boat. It took me several attempts, but I have come up with something that I think is acceptable and are a pretty close approximation of the real ones.
 
The three that mount on the deck house have curved tops, flat sides and round rungs. So I used some 1/64" x 1/16" brass strips for the sides. I made a small saw kerf at about the place where I wanted it to bend, and then just bent it using two pairs of pliers. It buckled a little, so using my best blacksmithing skills, I just hammered it flat. It's not very elegant, but once painted gray, it's going to work just fine. The rungs are .5mm wire.
 
I'm really bad at soldering, but I discovered that one of the secrets is to hold the parts very firmly. I made two parallel grooves in a piece of wood. Once I had the holes drilled and the wire rungs inserted, I just placed the sides in the two grooves and gave the whole thing a tap with a hammer to seat it. This worked really well, and it wasn't too difficult to solder each rung in place.
 
The ends of the rungs are snipped off and they've had some cleanup ready for paint. I think these will work, and besides, it's the best I can do, and once I know I've reached that point, I can live with it.
 
The fourth ladder that mounts to the wheelhouse doesn't have a curved top and I'll cut it to length when I get to that point.
 

 
The final item for today is the railing that extends out from the wheelhouse on both sides. These pieces were easy to make and I added the detail to the back side to match that of the real boat.
 

So that's it for now.
Again, many thanks for checking in, likes etc.
David

Good Morning,
A short update, but what appears to be a lot of progress. Really just a few minutes of gluing the components on the decks and it almost looks like the model is done.
 
What I found the most challenging so far has been the railings. The ones running along the rail are easy, but the ones on the roofs of the deck house and wheel house were much more difficult. In my naivete I thought I could use one piece of brass rod for each run of the railing, bending it in the appropriate places and feeding it through the stanchions. After about an hour I was about as bent out of shape as the brass rod! In the end, and after restraining myself from throwing the whole thing across the room, I used individual pieces, gluing them between the stanchions.

There's a small platform on the starboard side of the hull. On the real boat, the stanchions are very thin and end in an "eye" through which the chain passes. I experimented with a small piece of dowel, drilling a small hole in the end for an eyebolt. This worked ok, but looked far too heavy. The stanchions need to be no bigger than the 1/32" brass rod to look right and there was no way I could drill into the end of that, so I flattened a small bit of the rod at the end with a hammer and drilled through that. Not 100% accurate, but I think it works ok.
 


 

Just a couple more small details to attend to -the axe and fire hose and some paint touch-up, and then it's time to start working on the shrouds.
 
Many thanks for checking in.
 
David

All the best Bob!

Well I guess it’s a wrap. I completed my Charles W. Morgan today. It has been an educational and fun 2 year journey. Thanks to everyone here on MSW for all the support. Not sure what my next build will be. I will take a break for a bit. I still have a 9000 piece puzzle of the Battle of Algiers. That will be a good project to take a break with. 
 
Here are some final pics. I need to figure out how to make an album and mark the build log finished. 
 
Happy modeling!
 










 

Completing the final 8 Cannons for the Gundeck
 
While there is still open space to work on the gundeck I decided it was a good time to build and install the last 8 cannons.  I made 4 cannons that are under the Focsl Deck several steps ago.  at that time, I did not go into any details on how the cannons are made.  This time I thought I would write-up something for anyone who is thinking about using the Syren Ship Model Co. cannons and carriages.  I don’t know if I’m just slow or really anal, but it took me 50+ hours and the month of March to make these 8 cannons.  There are a lot of details involved with these beautiful cannons.  This post will only cover the assembly of the carriages and cannon barrel.  I am just starting on the rigging now and will provide another post  when I’m done.
 
I decided to make them in two batches of 4.  For the most part, I performed each step on all 4 of them at the same time.  When I get a technique and a rhythm going, I like to keep it rolling!
 
Here are all the carriage parts after removing them from the laser cut sheets.  Laser char has also been removed.  First thing I did was to deepen the grooves for the cannon barrel and axles with files.  This was necessary to make them fit the height of my gun ports.

 
Chuck’s instructions suggest scribing a cut into the sides of the carriage frames to make it look like an upper & lower half are bolted together from the top.  Below I drew a pencil line with the square to mark the line

 
I used a razor saw to make the cut along the line.  On my first four that are under the Focsl I thought the cut wasn’t wide enough to see.  So, this time I used this fine point punch to make the line a little thicker.

 
The axles come in two sizes.  The shorter one goes in front with the larger wheels.  The carriage is wider in the rear, using a longer axle.

 
The part where the wheel fits on needs to be sanded into a rounded shape.  Must be careful not to sand it too much.  I made mine with a tight fit.

 
Next is the “Quoin”.  The wedge-shaped block used to raise and lower the cannon.  I sanded mine smaller to accommodate the height issue.  The handle is supposed to be turned using a Dremel to give a piece of wood the shape of a belaying pin.  I didn’t like the way these turned out for me.  So, I just used a short length of annealed steel wire and painted it.  Another piece of this wire is used to hold the carriage sides together.  The bed sits on this wire too.  I substituted a 1/32” x 3/32” piece of stripwood to make the bed shorter.

 
I painted all the parts before assembling them.  Red for the carriage and black for the trucks & axles.  Here is the assembled carriage.  I placed a drop of thin CA glue into the hole to hold the wire in place before snipping off the ends.  A bit of the end is left sticking out to simulate a bolt.

 
I treated the brass cannons with this Brass Black metal finisher.  It took two applications to get them looking evenly treated. After wiping off the residue from the chemical (twice), I used a cloth buffing attachment in the Dremel to polish them to this finish below.  I think this looks more realistic than using black enamel paint.

 
Several finishing touches make the gun look pretty awesome.  A couple of more wire “bolts” are inserted on top of each side frame.  Tiny strips of black card stock are glued on to look like plates holding the barrel in place.  And finally, 4 eye bolts and 2 rings are attached for use with the rigging.

 
1 month later the arsenal is ready for rigging and installation on the ship!

 
Just for the sake of comparison, on the left is the kit supplied cannon.  Obviously, it’s not finished, but you get the idea.  Also, I’ve read that the brass black does not work on Britannia metal.  If you do decide to use the Syren cannons, build your gunports a little taller so they will fit more easily.  These are supposed to be the right scale, but you can see how the kit ones are shorter and squattier. 

 
Hope this information is helpful for someone out there!  Next up is rigging the cannons.
 
Thanks,
Ed

I see your problem. I believe that the bulkhead extensions needed to either be pared down to the same size as the false stanchions or else removed completely and a false stanchion put in its place. It's still not too late to do that, but, of course, the issue is this would leave gaps in your deck planking. I guess you could add a new plank on top of the existing planking and it would be like a waterway; slightly elevated from the rest of the decking, but that would entail cutting it around the false stanchions which would be very onerous. Another idea is to replace all of the railing with wider material and another would be to taper the bulkhead extensions so that they are full width where they meet the deck and narrower where they meet the railing. If it were me, at this point in the process, I think I would opt for this last approach. I think it would give the best overall result and shouldn't be too noticeable to the casual observer.
 
Your workmanship is really great and the model is looking really nice.
David

I see your problem. I believe that the bulkhead extensions needed to either be pared down to the same size as the false stanchions or else removed completely and a false stanchion put in its place. It's still not too late to do that, but, of course, the issue is this would leave gaps in your deck planking. I guess you could add a new plank on top of the existing planking and it would be like a waterway; slightly elevated from the rest of the decking, but that would entail cutting it around the false stanchions which would be very onerous. Another idea is to replace all of the railing with wider material and another would be to taper the bulkhead extensions so that they are full width where they meet the deck and narrower where they meet the railing. If it were me, at this point in the process, I think I would opt for this last approach. I think it would give the best overall result and shouldn't be too noticeable to the casual observer.
 
Your workmanship is really great and the model is looking really nice.
David

Some success! I re-made the beak out of scrap wood, retaining the plastic grating and support bits. All in all I am happy and it fits OK. I am noticing that the skinny rails that decorate the hull sides do not always line up well. I guess the beak location would have been the determining factor but was made last. The poor pictures in the booklet and lack of any kind of instructions didn’t help indicate what it should look like. 
 

 
thanks for looking. 
cheers,
Dave

Good Morning,
I have most of the bits and pieces ready to be added to the deck. Getting the size correct on these has been a bit of a challenge. The plans cannot be trusted. The drawings differ between the plan view and elevation view by as much as 10mm on some things!
 
There is a measuring tool on the 360 tour on-line that works very well, but it's difficult to get every measurement needed and not always easy to get the same measurement twice. So it's been a matter of trial and error and discovering what fits and looks about right to the eye.
 

I enhanced the kit provided windlass a little bit, relying on the on-line pictures and working only with the limited supplies and tools that I have.
 


I'm not sure that it's completely correct, but it looks complicated enough to be believable 😁
 
Thanks for looking it and I hope everyone has a great Easter weekend.
David
 

This solves a mystery for me. A few years ago I bought some "boxwood" strips from Model Expo and received this same rough yellow stuff. I was at a loss to understand why everyone raved about boxwood so much. I could see no improvement over the basswood strips I was intending to replace. Now that I understand I want to try some of the real thing.
David 

Thanks Thukydides.  I am trying to get over this brasswork hump which I feel has slowed my enthusiasm and progress more than I'd like. 
 
Probably because the pintles and gudgeons have taken way more work than I planned.  This weekend I spent a couple hours fine-tuning.  All the pieces fit mostly, but lots of slightly lengthening or widening mortises, slightly shortening and rounding off the ends of the strapwork, and chiseling holes to allow the rudder to be seated with the smallest gap possible.  Heres where I started; to me the gap was too wide and the top pintle a little too high.  Not much I can do about the high pintle at this point but I can work on the gap.

I also noticed all my handling and fitting of straps was getting the holly dirty.
 
After this final futzing I washed the brass in isopropyl alcohol for 20 minutes, then moved them with stainless steel tweezers to a aprox 1:8 brass black to water for 15 minutes.

Here they are drying, about 99% coverage.  1 spot on a gudgeon that will need paint.  I haven't handled them yet to make sure the blackening sticks but I am optimistic.

And finally I started with the hull's finish coat.  After sanding off any marks on the sternpost from fitting the brasswork  I applied the first coat of Polycrylic (water based polyurethane that doesn't yellow) with a qtip, the immediately wiped it down with a old cotton t-shirt.  Most of the finish comes off so its a thin coat, but the tshirt smooths quite nicely.  I'm guessing I'll do 3 or 4 coats.  I have to test some of my discarded blackened brasswork to see if it looks ok covered with this finish; if not I'll put hinges in after finishing.
 
Here's the hull after its first coat.  It looks almost identical to before I finished it, which is the point.

thats it for me.  Monday is fast approaching and its off to mentally prepare with some hot chocolate and a book before bed.
 
thanks for reading
 
cisco

Good Morning,
I have most of the bits and pieces ready to be added to the deck. Getting the size correct on these has been a bit of a challenge. The plans cannot be trusted. The drawings differ between the plan view and elevation view by as much as 10mm on some things!
 
There is a measuring tool on the 360 tour on-line that works very well, but it's difficult to get every measurement needed and not always easy to get the same measurement twice. So it's been a matter of trial and error and discovering what fits and looks about right to the eye.
 

I enhanced the kit provided windlass a little bit, relying on the on-line pictures and working only with the limited supplies and tools that I have.
 


I'm not sure that it's completely correct, but it looks complicated enough to be believable 😁
 
Thanks for looking it and I hope everyone has a great Easter weekend.
David
 

Good Morning,
I have most of the bits and pieces ready to be added to the deck. Getting the size correct on these has been a bit of a challenge. The plans cannot be trusted. The drawings differ between the plan view and elevation view by as much as 10mm on some things!
 
There is a measuring tool on the 360 tour on-line that works very well, but it's difficult to get every measurement needed and not always easy to get the same measurement twice. So it's been a matter of trial and error and discovering what fits and looks about right to the eye.
 

I enhanced the kit provided windlass a little bit, relying on the on-line pictures and working only with the limited supplies and tools that I have.
 


I'm not sure that it's completely correct, but it looks complicated enough to be believable 😁
 
Thanks for looking it and I hope everyone has a great Easter weekend.
David
 

This solves a mystery for me. A few years ago I bought some "boxwood" strips from Model Expo and received this same rough yellow stuff. I was at a loss to understand why everyone raved about boxwood so much. I could see no improvement over the basswood strips I was intending to replace. Now that I understand I want to try some of the real thing.
David 

Good Morning,
I have most of the bits and pieces ready to be added to the deck. Getting the size correct on these has been a bit of a challenge. The plans cannot be trusted. The drawings differ between the plan view and elevation view by as much as 10mm on some things!
 
There is a measuring tool on the 360 tour on-line that works very well, but it's difficult to get every measurement needed and not always easy to get the same measurement twice. So it's been a matter of trial and error and discovering what fits and looks about right to the eye.
 

I enhanced the kit provided windlass a little bit, relying on the on-line pictures and working only with the limited supplies and tools that I have.
 


I'm not sure that it's completely correct, but it looks complicated enough to be believable 😁
 
Thanks for looking it and I hope everyone has a great Easter weekend.
David
 

Brief update for this morning -
Bill, if you use the 360 tour and go to the extreme forward starboard side of the roof of the deck house, you can just get a glimpse of the rod arrangement running along the roof. It appears to be a complicated set-up and pretty hard, if not impossible to model accurately at this scale, at least without a better reference. So I'm just representing it with a simple single rod.
I'm not going to add sails. I tend to prefer my models without them, but this model would be an ideal one to show furled ones on. Have you seen Tom Lauria's youtube video on making furled sails from silkspan? It's quite good.
 
I've been working on the lifeboats. I don't like the fact that they're plastic, yet at the same time, I don't really like the idea of building new ones either and I can't seem to locate cast ones that are quite right. So my solution is to use the plastic ones and show them with their canvas covers.
 
I use some sail material from another kit. I was hoping to leave them unpainted, but did paint them in the end, because they looks just a bit too dirty by the time I finished.
 
I first thought I could make each one from one piece of cloth, but soon realized that wouldn't work. The real ones, of course, are constructed out of several pieces, taking the shape into consideration. So, my solution was to use three pieces for each boat like this:
 


I simple glued the side pieces on first. I used white glue which holds quite well. I didn't want to use CA in case I had to remove the piece and start over. I don't think the plastic boat would stand up to the acetone. (It may not have stood up to alcohol any better, had I needed to start over, but I thought the odds were better.) As it turned out, I didn't need to start over.
 
This seems to work fairly well and with so little of the boat showing, it's hard to tell what it's made of.
 
Next, I'm going to attack the windlass.
 
Thanks for checking in.
David
 
 

This solves a mystery for me. A few years ago I bought some "boxwood" strips from Model Expo and received this same rough yellow stuff. I was at a loss to understand why everyone raved about boxwood so much. I could see no improvement over the basswood strips I was intending to replace. Now that I understand I want to try some of the real thing.
David 

This solves a mystery for me. A few years ago I bought some "boxwood" strips from Model Expo and received this same rough yellow stuff. I was at a loss to understand why everyone raved about boxwood so much. I could see no improvement over the basswood strips I was intending to replace. Now that I understand I want to try some of the real thing.
David 

This solves a mystery for me. A few years ago I bought some "boxwood" strips from Model Expo and received this same rough yellow stuff. I was at a loss to understand why everyone raved about boxwood so much. I could see no improvement over the basswood strips I was intending to replace. Now that I understand I want to try some of the real thing.
David 

This solves a mystery for me. A few years ago I bought some "boxwood" strips from Model Expo and received this same rough yellow stuff. I was at a loss to understand why everyone raved about boxwood so much. I could see no improvement over the basswood strips I was intending to replace. Now that I understand I want to try some of the real thing.
David 

Brief update for this morning -
Bill, if you use the 360 tour and go to the extreme forward starboard side of the roof of the deck house, you can just get a glimpse of the rod arrangement running along the roof. It appears to be a complicated set-up and pretty hard, if not impossible to model accurately at this scale, at least without a better reference. So I'm just representing it with a simple single rod.
I'm not going to add sails. I tend to prefer my models without them, but this model would be an ideal one to show furled ones on. Have you seen Tom Lauria's youtube video on making furled sails from silkspan? It's quite good.
 
I've been working on the lifeboats. I don't like the fact that they're plastic, yet at the same time, I don't really like the idea of building new ones either and I can't seem to locate cast ones that are quite right. So my solution is to use the plastic ones and show them with their canvas covers.
 
I use some sail material from another kit. I was hoping to leave them unpainted, but did paint them in the end, because they looks just a bit too dirty by the time I finished.
 
I first thought I could make each one from one piece of cloth, but soon realized that wouldn't work. The real ones, of course, are constructed out of several pieces, taking the shape into consideration. So, my solution was to use three pieces for each boat like this:
 


I simple glued the side pieces on first. I used white glue which holds quite well. I didn't want to use CA in case I had to remove the piece and start over. I don't think the plastic boat would stand up to the acetone. (It may not have stood up to alcohol any better, had I needed to start over, but I thought the odds were better.) As it turned out, I didn't need to start over.
 
This seems to work fairly well and with so little of the boat showing, it's hard to tell what it's made of.
 
Next, I'm going to attack the windlass.
 
Thanks for checking in.
David
 
 

Brief update for this morning -
Bill, if you use the 360 tour and go to the extreme forward starboard side of the roof of the deck house, you can just get a glimpse of the rod arrangement running along the roof. It appears to be a complicated set-up and pretty hard, if not impossible to model accurately at this scale, at least without a better reference. So I'm just representing it with a simple single rod.
I'm not going to add sails. I tend to prefer my models without them, but this model would be an ideal one to show furled ones on. Have you seen Tom Lauria's youtube video on making furled sails from silkspan? It's quite good.
 
I've been working on the lifeboats. I don't like the fact that they're plastic, yet at the same time, I don't really like the idea of building new ones either and I can't seem to locate cast ones that are quite right. So my solution is to use the plastic ones and show them with their canvas covers.
 
I use some sail material from another kit. I was hoping to leave them unpainted, but did paint them in the end, because they looks just a bit too dirty by the time I finished.
 
I first thought I could make each one from one piece of cloth, but soon realized that wouldn't work. The real ones, of course, are constructed out of several pieces, taking the shape into consideration. So, my solution was to use three pieces for each boat like this:
 


I simple glued the side pieces on first. I used white glue which holds quite well. I didn't want to use CA in case I had to remove the piece and start over. I don't think the plastic boat would stand up to the acetone. (It may not have stood up to alcohol any better, had I needed to start over, but I thought the odds were better.) As it turned out, I didn't need to start over.
 
This seems to work fairly well and with so little of the boat showing, it's hard to tell what it's made of.
 
Next, I'm going to attack the windlass.
 
Thanks for checking in.
David
 
 

Brief update for this morning -
Bill, if you use the 360 tour and go to the extreme forward starboard side of the roof of the deck house, you can just get a glimpse of the rod arrangement running along the roof. It appears to be a complicated set-up and pretty hard, if not impossible to model accurately at this scale, at least without a better reference. So I'm just representing it with a simple single rod.
I'm not going to add sails. I tend to prefer my models without them, but this model would be an ideal one to show furled ones on. Have you seen Tom Lauria's youtube video on making furled sails from silkspan? It's quite good.
 
I've been working on the lifeboats. I don't like the fact that they're plastic, yet at the same time, I don't really like the idea of building new ones either and I can't seem to locate cast ones that are quite right. So my solution is to use the plastic ones and show them with their canvas covers.
 
I use some sail material from another kit. I was hoping to leave them unpainted, but did paint them in the end, because they looks just a bit too dirty by the time I finished.
 
I first thought I could make each one from one piece of cloth, but soon realized that wouldn't work. The real ones, of course, are constructed out of several pieces, taking the shape into consideration. So, my solution was to use three pieces for each boat like this:
 


I simple glued the side pieces on first. I used white glue which holds quite well. I didn't want to use CA in case I had to remove the piece and start over. I don't think the plastic boat would stand up to the acetone. (It may not have stood up to alcohol any better, had I needed to start over, but I thought the odds were better.) As it turned out, I didn't need to start over.
 
This seems to work fairly well and with so little of the boat showing, it's hard to tell what it's made of.
 
Next, I'm going to attack the windlass.
 
Thanks for checking in.
David
 
 

More progress on the eight fishing dories, using swiss pear which is very nice to work with, planks are .018" thick easily bendable with fingers.
Had a clamp which I glued bits of wood to, so that sanding to shape was easier. 

 
First planking done now have to work out shape for the second plank.
 

 
Until next time,
Regards
Richard
 
 

Brief update for this morning -
Bill, if you use the 360 tour and go to the extreme forward starboard side of the roof of the deck house, you can just get a glimpse of the rod arrangement running along the roof. It appears to be a complicated set-up and pretty hard, if not impossible to model accurately at this scale, at least without a better reference. So I'm just representing it with a simple single rod.
I'm not going to add sails. I tend to prefer my models without them, but this model would be an ideal one to show furled ones on. Have you seen Tom Lauria's youtube video on making furled sails from silkspan? It's quite good.
 
I've been working on the lifeboats. I don't like the fact that they're plastic, yet at the same time, I don't really like the idea of building new ones either and I can't seem to locate cast ones that are quite right. So my solution is to use the plastic ones and show them with their canvas covers.
 
I use some sail material from another kit. I was hoping to leave them unpainted, but did paint them in the end, because they looks just a bit too dirty by the time I finished.
 
I first thought I could make each one from one piece of cloth, but soon realized that wouldn't work. The real ones, of course, are constructed out of several pieces, taking the shape into consideration. So, my solution was to use three pieces for each boat like this:
 


I simple glued the side pieces on first. I used white glue which holds quite well. I didn't want to use CA in case I had to remove the piece and start over. I don't think the plastic boat would stand up to the acetone. (It may not have stood up to alcohol any better, had I needed to start over, but I thought the odds were better.) As it turned out, I didn't need to start over.
 
This seems to work fairly well and with so little of the boat showing, it's hard to tell what it's made of.
 
Next, I'm going to attack the windlass.
 
Thanks for checking in.
David