Ryland Craze

I may have primed the lower hull white (if so, that would have been an acrylic rattle can car-primer).

Top colours are Admiralty paint, based on a set offered by Cornwall Model Boats for the other Sherbourne kit.
(One each of: Dull Black, Ironwork Black, Matt White, Yellow Ochre, Red Ochre)

Think these are normal acrylics, very opaque, and a little thick for airbrushing. I hand brushed, but they might work thinned for airbrushing.
Where possible, I painted parts off the model, and touched up by hand after.

HTH

Coming soon.   Resin cast barrels.
 
I have three sizes of cast resin barrels that will soon be available on my site.  Currently I have the 11/16" tall and the 1" tall barrels.  I am waiting for my casting guy to make the third smaller size.  I may even make a fourth smaller size later as well.
 

 
I have the two smaller sizes and I am waiting for the last larger size not shown. They are cast in white resin or a light tan like my carvings for the ship models I make.   This makes it so much easier to prepare than building my laser cut versions.   Those will still be available but these resin versions will give you guys more options.   These can be prepared in minutes...
 
Just clean whatever flashing which is minimal.   And remove the small vent hole plugs with a sharp #11 blade.   
 
Then brush on some gel stain...in my case pictured,  I used General Finishes Fruitwood gel stain as usual.   I have one coat of stain on these.  You can add more to deepen the color as you see fit.  Then I just used a black sharpie to color the raised iron hoops.   You could use any color you want for those as well.  You could use a copper leaf pen for example.   It isnt difficult....and takes just a few minutes vs. a much longer time to build my laser cut versions.
 
Each size will be sold two per package.
 
Its unfortunately too late for me to add these in the hold of Speedwell....but when you need to make a dozen or more barrels for the hold its nice to not have assemble them one at a time.
 

 
And Buckets...crates...and other items will soon follow.   And whatever else I can possibly think of...please let me know if you guys fancy something in particular.

Perhaps I should take another sabbatical and wait to see what little pearls I can pick up from your build Glenn.😉
On balance, perhaps  I should just  get on with it, my kit sat for four years beneath the bench, plus another two the stocks.
 
Post 18
Cap rails and frames
The Cap rail now needs to be thinned down. Chuck indicates an initial 1/32” overhang on the outer side. I use a strip of 0.8mm x 4mm Pearwood strip as a template.

4684
The trickiest part is around the bow in the area of the bolsters, here I used a scalpel blade to carefully pare away the excess overhang down to 0.8mm whilst retaining the uniformity of the rail.
 
For thinning the frames as they move upwards to the rail I initially use a scalpel, the cedar cuts smoothly and uniformly, and for this aspect the blade is quicker and cleaner than sanding alone.

4685
The support base holds the hull steady for use of the scalpel and sanding. Some of the frames are thinned with the hull side down, others with the hull upright. Fine cuts are used to remove the timber.
As the frames are reduced the cap rail width is reduced until the required  width of 5/32" (4mm) is achieved.

4690
The ports side frame fairing and cap rail reduction near completion. I have left the inner bow area slightly oversize until I reach the stage of fitting the knee at the bow.
 
The starboard side shows the extent of the timber to be removed.

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So far, so good, I’m enjoying getting back to working on Chuck’s little gem.
 
B.E.
15/05/2024

Impressive stack of precious wood !!!
Yves

Ryland, thank you for the kind words! It was a pleasure for me meeting you as I've been a big fan of your builds. I just hope that I can do Speedwell justice!
 
Best Regards .... Rick

These quarterdeck railings are a fantastic.  But they are tricky to get right.  Here are some pictures of my progress.  I’ve completed the port side and have a bit more to do on the starboard.

Well fellas after a very unproductive winter on my fun projects I got started today on my little Dory. My wife and I have been dealing with aging parents on both ends all fall and winter and that's usually when my project time is the most abundant,...but anyway,..I promise I'm committed and here we go with today's progress. In the 5th picture I have attachments ( I know there is proper terminology but my plans are downstairs )  that have to be glued on both ends...didn't do that today, not sure how you guys keep everything centered. The last pic is a mock up, nothing glued yet except for the spacer pieces with a dot of glue to the plans. I enjoyed every bit of it 👍👊
 
 
 

What a nice beginning to a great model.  It was great seeing you and your Medway Longboat at the Northeast Ship Model Conference.  Based on the work you did with your Medway, your Speedwell will be a terrific model.

Beautiful build on your first model.

Very clean and neat!
 
Best Regards …. Rick

Love how clean your work is!

This was a fun week.  I finished the stern details.  These included building the second seat, which I'm happy to say is close to identical to the first.  I made the horse for the boom sheet out of 22 gauge annealed wire, with washers made from .062" diameter styrene rod with the center .028" drilled out for the wire.  I cut and formed the transom knees, and glued those on.  I then shaped and added the cleats.  These I had bought from Chuck a long time ago.  I see he currently offers cleats in 5mm, 7mm, and 9mm.  I have 9mm and 6mm on hand.  So for the cleats on the transom knees, I shortened the 6mm to 5mm, and used the 9mm and 6mm cleats in the other areas of the stern.  I see in these enlarged photos a couple of spots that need touching up, but I'm otherwise happy with the way these details turned out.
 
Erik

A reintroduction of myself, joined your group 4 years ago when I suddenly had the desire to build wooden ship models.   Watched the builds on here and youtube scared the <poop> out of me and went to the plastic world.   Armour, planes and eventually to what I wanted to do all along, ships.   Built the Snowberry, Huron and about to start the Fiume.   But that wood itch remained.   Building with PE helped build the confidence that I can do those small details.   A few months back a friend handed me a kit he was given as a gift and said "I will never build this" and I tossed it on the shelf.   Took a look the other day day and found it is the Lady Nelson, a beautiful and expensive kit.   Checked out a video on building her and quickly came to the realization that "no, I am not ready to jump straight in on that".   Lurking here and elsewhere, I have decided to start with the basics and the Shipways Dory arrives tomorrow.  Plan to do their 3 ships in the combo to see how I like building with wood and to build the basic skills that will be different than the plastic world.
 
If folks are interested in watching, when I am in the model room I stream building on Twitch.   I will be starting the Dory after 1 April (part of a group build - others are doing plastic) but in the meantime I am building other projects.   So if any new folks want to see me build my first wood ship or if experienced folks want to watch and bring their experience or if you like to just watch plastic builds or hang out while building yourselves, drop by whenever I am online - https://www.twitch.tv/bartbandy
 
Although a lurker these past 4 years, your builds and discussions have been in inspiration.   I hope to at one point get to the level to be a more active participant.   Cheers!
 

I was able to get a lot done this week. Firstly I finished added the bolt ropes and grommets to the topsails so I can now add the reef points to finish them up.
 

 
I also finished bending the topG sails to the topG yards.
 

 
The topsail and lower yards are now completed, with all the blocks, man ropes and studding sail booms installed.
 

 
I added the spritsail yard and rigging to the bowsprit.
 

 
And have the fore shrouds seized to length and the lanyards threaded.
 

 
I am in the process of adding the rigging to the boomkins, finishing up the fore shrouds, and starting to rig the main shrouds.

Thank you all for the likes.
 
Stern Post
 
While most of the keel parts were glued on a flat surface, this proved problematic for the stern post.  With the rising wood protruding and the stem taper, the assembly is no longer flat and it is difficult to proceed the same way. To keep the stern post perfectly vertical, centered and aligned to the stem, I rather used squares to keep the whole assembly vertical and aligned. See photo.
 

 
I applied a couple thin coats of WOP on the completed assembly.  I show  close-ups of the stern and stem below (note the knee of the head finally glued on).  
 

 
After application of WOP the wood got a bit darker than expected.  Does WOP have a limited shelf time when opened? In the past I have used nitrocellulose sealer.  This is great stuff. It does not change the wood color, gives a nice satin finish and dries almost instantly (70% of the content is VOC!). It is however a pretty nasty chemical and it is hard to find (banned in North-America?). I got mine from the UK many years ago but nowadays suppliers will not ship this abroad.  I find WOP a good alternative.
 
Building Board
 
This has been covered by others and I essentially followed their foot steps.  The MDF boards I could find in hardware stores were not flat. I resorted to a melamine board and glued my plan with repositionable spray glue.   It is now time to work on the frames. Stay tuned. 
 
 
 

A hello across the pond.
I would like to present my Lady Nelson to you here.
Unfortunately, I only discovered this forum after completing it.
During my apprenticeship 40 years ago, I built the Gorch Fock from Graupner for my boss, after that only motorcycles from your beautiful country.
To see if I am still able to build a ship as an old man, I bought this nice lady from Victory Models.
You won't find any great special features as the kit was completed within eight weeks, just to see if I could manage all the steps.
The short construction time is due to the excellent quality of the parts and plans. The existing video on YouTube was just as helpful.
All in all, I would say that this is a wonderful kit for beginners with dexterous fingers.
Greetings from the Palatinate
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Thanks BE, yes I did consider going with an aftermarket version, but I thought if I was going to replace them I might as well just draw up scratch ones in cad as then I could get the scale perfect instead pretty much right (I know a bunch of people with 3d printers).
 
In the end I thought this solution was good enough for the current build.
 
@jpalmer1970glad to know I wasn't the only one who had trouble getting the paint to stick. I am going to handle them very carefully from this point on.

Now you've got me wanting to make anchors.

The anchors look great Daniel. 👍
I'm pretty picky about fittings but white metal anchors were one of those items I was  fairly relaxed about. There were sufficient after-market versions to suit all sizes - from kedge to Best bower, if a full set was required.
 
B.E.

I would never ever use white metal castings in any of my kits again. The whole lot for Alert were thrown away and I was happy to take the finacial hit.

Log #85: The Anchors
Thank you to everyone for you kind comments and encouragement. I have spent the past couple weeks making a brief detour from the rigging, but before getting to that I did clean up a few lines. First up were some blocks with hooks for the topgallant backstay tackle and the topgallant yard halyard tackle.

I am getting much better at these now I have my process down and can produce them pretty quickly at this point. These ones only took about 15 minutes to make all in.
 
I then secured the topgallant yard halyard using one of these hook blocks and another block attached to the halyard itself. I belayed the falls to the bits and then ran the coil over the nearest cleate.

With that out of the way I decided to take a break from rigging and look at the anchors.
 
As I have one of the earlier versions of the alert kit, mine came with the cast metal anchors and I can see why Chris has moved away from these. They are easily one of the weakest parts of the kit. I debated for a while as to whether I should just chuck them and draft and 3d print some new ones, but in the end I decided to try and work with them. As I have previously noted my goal with this build has been to stay pretty close to the kit and I though with a bit of work I could make them look ok.

The main problem as you can see from the right hand anchor in the above picture is that they lack detail and the molding process has resulted in some flash and warping. I decided to try and file them down to remove the excess material and make them look closer to how they appear in the illustrations in Steel.
 
I also decided not to use the PE ring from the kit and instead made one out of paper clips which I wrapped around a drill bit to shape them. I then added the puddening to them with 0.35mm brown rope and seized them with 0.2mm beige rope. The seizing rope was a bit too big, but my only other option is the white fly tying thread I have and I thought the contrast would not look right.

You can see in the above image one of the biggest problems I struggled with, getting the primer to stick to the anchors. Despite washing and filing most of the surface off of them, I could not get the primer to hold well.
 
Then I was on to the anchor stock. The kit version did not look enough like the real thing so I scratch built some new ones out of the offcuts of the 3mm laser cut sheet.

I used the drawing in Goodwin as a template which I photocopied and resized (with some trial and error) and cut them all to the rough shape before carefully planing and sanding them to the correct size. Then I got to test out my recent acquisition of a mini drill press to drill the bolt holes.

With the holes drilled I used black monofilament fishing line to represent the bolts. I put these through before glueing the stock to the anchors to make sure I could get them through properly. Once everything was in place I just used a sharp craft knife to cut off the ends.

I then added iron straps using shrink tube and painted the straps and the anchors. I will not go into detail on the painting as I have previously described all these techniques when I did the straps on the boom jaws and when I painted the cannons.
 
Here is the final results. In the end I am pretty pleased with how they turned out and they look reasonably like the real thing.

 

Thank you very much, John!

Use a section of Flexi-file sandpaper to do the final cleanup of the openings. 

 

The introductory pictures of this kit are very promising (indeed, the instruction booklet reminds a lot the style of the WnW's). In addition, a Spitfire cannot be missed.
Cheers,
Dan

Very nicely done!