davyboy

Stbd side channel wales done today, except for the forward upper plank. After I get a few more planks attached to the front I will pull the forward jigs and fair out the forward portion of the inner hull and then permanently install the beam and finish the last two planks. 
 

Log #28: Framing the Gun Ports Part II
Thanks to everyone for all your encouragement and feedback. In particular thanks to @druxey and @Pirate adam for your insight on the wales question. Barring any significant evidence showing up I am planning on going with the double strake of top and butt and the single of butt for the wales as per what can be seen on the Sphinx planking expansion.
 
Over the past few weeks I have continued my work on the gun ports.
 
One happy coincidence of my plans is the fore side of all of the gun ports (except for the first on each side) lined up with a bulkhead, so my task with the ports was made much easier than it could have been. I made some jigs to allow me to place the other side of the port in the correct position aligning with the frame. The sides of the port are always perpendicular to the keel, but the angle of the top and bottom of the ports changes depending on the sheer of the deck at that location.
 
The jig was essentially two pieces of wood which I precisely cut to the width of the ports (28 in according to the contract or 7/16 in at our scale). These were then aligned on a spacer bock and then a small piece of wood to hold the jig off the floor of the port to allow it to rotate to the correct angle for the bulkhead. You can see the jig below aligning one of the gun ports.

As a general rule I used more material than was necessary as I would sand it all off later. You can see below what things looked like once all the ports (except for the most forward ones) were sided. This also represents the first time I have taken the ship off of the build board since I started construction. The hull is now rigid enough with all the bracing pieces I have added that it shouldn't twist anymore. I still keep it on the build board for storage, but faring is much easier if I can hold it on my lap.

This brings us to the faring. I don't think much needs to be said about this as this topic has been covered by many logs in the past, but I will note a few things that I encountered which may be useful to keep in mind for other first time scratch builders.
Slower is better - Faring is such a lengthy laborious process I am tempted to rush, but it is very easy with a few misplaced swipes to take off too much material. Thankfully I caught all of my mistakes along this line before they went too far, but something to keep an eye on. Having the marker on the outside of the frames so I could judge easily how much of them I had sanded was invaluable for this. Keep an eye on finished areas - The masking tape I have on to cover the keel and knee of the head needed to be replaced a few times (particularly around the bow) as it was easy for sanding to rub the area. Use the right tool for the job - Something I found helpful in avoiding oversanding was to make sure I was using the correct shape of sanding stick / block for the area I was working on. At midships you can use a large block and sand in all directions as the curve is convex, but in concave areas you need to carefully choose the size of your sanding stick and sand in very particular directions to get the correct run of the lines. And here is Perseus with one side preliminarily fared. Once I do the framing of the stern then I will do a final pass, but I don't expect to have to remove much more material. You may also notice that I filled in the gaps between the port sides and the next frame to strengthen the areas after one of them got a bit loose.

That is all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Evening sun :

Today’s  progress on Portland. I got the first belt completed on the stbd side and the friezes on and sealed with WOP.  Think the planks may have turned out better on this side, especially the bow. Overall I’m happy with it. On to the channel wales tomorrow!
 

I had a lot of fun building this model.  This model will be displayed with one of my half complete models when it is done, the HMS Pallas, which is in the back ground of the next few pictures.
 
Mike R

Speaking of wood imperfections - I was visiting the Naval Museum in Karlskrona (the naval base city in the South of Sweden).
It had a fascinating bit of naval archeology on display - parts of the hull of an Age of Sail ships (1678 and 1717) excavated in the area.
I did not realise how massive these timbers are in person! Impossible to convey on a photo, but these knees are a size of an adult human and likely heavier. 


The famous hull cross-section drawings look much more impressive when you can touch them...

Speaking of the wood grain - note some knots and imperfections, as well as a non-ideal grain direction in the knee. 
Here is the deadwood - also far from the prime cut of a tree. That was the real life, a crude build reality rather than a work of art. Unfortunately knots and grain do not translate well in scale... 


 
And here is the rudder next to it:

Sorry for the offtopic, just wanted to share.
It's not often you get to see such structural pieces are on display, and not yet another salvaged cannon that museums like so much!
 

Now back to the pillars!
Pink Ivory put my planing jig to the test. It is not easy to work with - burns when sawing, very prone to tearout, one must be very careful with the grain direction at all times. That made it unrealistic to plane multiple blanks in one go without messing up grain the direction.
The other downside of that jig is the requirement to keep the plane straight, without rocking it side-to-side (this photo is exaggerated to illustrate the point).

But in the absence of a proper thickness sander it gets the job done, cheap and silent

I decided to cut real mortise and tenon joints into the pillars, mostly to help myself with the alignment. I doubt I can drill precise holes join them with a pin, and without some mechanical help to ensure alignment - gluing those together without making a crooked mess would be impossible.
Mortise would allow for some adjustments in the very end - if I need to move the end of the pillar a tiny bit - I will just shave off one side of the tenon!
And you can't imagine how satisfying the dry fit is, it is held nice and tight without any glue!

It is hard to make such a tiny mortise deeper than 0.5mm though (due to the angle of the chisel), but it is enough to firmly register the beam in place.

To help mark up the mortises I made a small styrene jig. It has a friction fit to the beam, a bit lower than the beam, and scored marks align with the centerline marked on top of the beam:

On the underside a square opening is centered around these scored marks, and the chisel fits nicely in it. Not much pressure is required to mark it.

But then I overestimated the strength of the beam, cracking it all the way through along the grain imperfection A clumsy builder can break even a boxwood beam!  

Luckily the crack is quite clean, so should be easy to glue back like it never happened.

I was trying to imagine the process of marking up the deck inside the hull. Even with carefully prepared notches in the deck clamps it's not an easy work - the downside of Hahn's method is that working deep inside the hull always feels like a surgery, working through an narrow opening on top.
So I decided to make my life easier and do it off the model instead  Luckily that hull has a very modest tumblehome, so getting it in and out is geometrically possible.
Beams are spot glued to boxwood strips and the entire deck would be assembled on them. Later strips would be removed using some alcohol or water. It would require a bit of a cleanup, but much easier overall.


It fits perfectly into all notches, very satisfying! Now I can work with it

The deck has a very gentle curve along the hull, so I will take care to glue carlings and ledges on the model to avoid loosing that curve.

Thank you all for your encouragement and the likes!
 
Today, I first need to address an issue, namely my incorrectly constructed window in the upper side gallery.
I had a window here that was actually intended to have double glazing bars, but I inadvertently constructed it with a single central glazing bar, which resulted in horizontal window panes that should otherwise all be vertical. The problem is that the window is glazed and curved under tension. So replacing the entire muntin bar was out of the question. I would never have been able to fit the new window cross neatly into the curve. The only option was to carefully cut out the centre muntin bar and insert new muntin bars. Here is the result:
 

 

 

 
Next, I turned my attention to the gallery railing, a task that I had been puzzling over for a while and which, at least on the starboard side, has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.
The gallery railing consists of a balustrade, similar to those often found in stone on elaborately designed Baroque balconies or staircases. The individual gallery balusters feature multiple coving, thickening and tapering. To make matters more difficult, they are tilted, in the case of the side gallery backwards and inwards. At the rear, they are later tilted backwards and outwards. One could make things easy and make them all the same and tilt them accordingly. This is sometimes done in architecture for staircases. Then, in the transition to the inclined contact surfaces, wedges are simply placed underneath and above. To illustrate this, here is a drawing from the 17th century:
 

 
However, since the TRE KRONER model has a tilt here, I have to try that too, of course.
 

 
I then drew and cut out the tilt towards the rear.
 

 

 
The profile was roughly pre-cut on the circular saw and then finished with a file.
 

 
The inward tilt was also worked on as best as possible at the front ends with a file and a carving knife.
The railing rail was drawn on a template.
 

 
A hole was drilled and fitted with a small wooden dowel to secure it to the contact surface. Finally, everything was inserted, aligned and glued to the upper railing rail.
 

 

 

 
Some of the inclines are not quite right. If you build the whole thing two or three times in a row, it will probably get better and better. But I'll leave it like this for now, as it's a lot of work.
Best regards,
Matthias
 

General overview :


 

The second jeer-bitts is now shifted to starboard, behind the fore mast, following the plan : 


 

Before moving on to the next stage I realised I had not added the catharpins to the fore and main tops masts.
 
I have refined my method in this respect which should ensure they are all made to the correct length, 2 off required for each topmast.
 
I started the process by making a loop in one end of the thread. The thread is wrapped around a 1mmD copper bar, held in the quad hands and the seizing is then added.

I then made a jig, using two lengths of 1mmD copper bar set to the required distance. The catharpin thread is then placed over one of the copper pins. The other end of the thread is wrapped around the other pin and then held in place using the quad hands, as can be seen below.

It is then a simple task to add the seizing so the second loop is formed. It did not take long to make the four catharpins. I did add a small amount of ca clue along the length to stiffen them.

The final task was to secure these to the shrouds. A length of thread was secured to each catharpin loop using a simple reef (square) knot. The thread were then passed around the futtock stave and toed off, once again using a reef knot.

The excess threads were then cut off.

The contours of the model gradually take shape.

Thank you all for your kind comments and likes!!!  

Today I got the channel wale on, the planks are just under 1/8” thick so there’s plenty to work with when you’re finished. These are very tricky at the front and take quite a lot of bends and tapers, they end up looking like an “S”, if that Isn’t enough they also need to be tapered down to .050” at the stem. You could sand them when they are in place but making all those bends in a 1/8” thick planks is a nightmare!


a lot of eyeball testing took place as well as some adjusting once they were in place but I think I got them with a decent run.


The upper plank is missing, there’s a reason for it and it involves removing the beak head bulkhead support beam one last time to remove the jig pieces to fair up in the inside of the Hawes pieces. By the time the last planking belt is on it will be safe to remove the inner jigs, nothing will move at that point. So I will just fair that inner forward area and permanently install the beam afterwards. More to come. 
I tapered the planks to fit the guides and made sure there was a nice curve to them, from there I would mark where they need to be cut for the gunports, this keeps a nice continuity in the taper once the plank is cut up and allows the next plank below to fit nice. 
Once I got all the planks down I block sanded them out with 150/220 and applied WOP to protect them. Tomorrow the poly will be dry and I can clean up
and repaint the gunports on the upper deck.



Tomorrow I’m going to turn the model around and repeat on the stbd side. 

Adding reinforcement straps on the main jeer-bitts and around the great capstan head :

 

Jeer-bitts of the main mast, and I have not lost the top decorative ball :

Reconstruction of the aft wall of the upper deck.
Drawing of what remains.

Result.
Swivel guns may have originally been placed here. That's why two holes were provided in the beam on each side. Whether these were still present after the renovation...?

The supports in the middle are a guess. 

The drainage channel of the deck above; once painted, you won't notice the wire anymore.

Malcom Darch cooked up his Eggs’n’Bacon with research assistance from the NMM - a nice recipe to try!
 
Gary

What, not even with spam spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam and spam? 🤔

Silence over the several weeks make one worry a bit in these disturbed days - however, high-quality sheet-metal work as usual! 

6. and now I am putting all the parts of the chimney together

5. soldering the ventilation visor in the upper part of the pipe casing

4. soldering the ventilation visor in the lower part of the pipe casing

3. soldering side panels