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CharlieZardoz

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  1. Well they mainly hunted pirates and were small but you make a good point. It was after the war so there was less need to be covert so for me im leaning towards the last few images similar to lively which also gives the best of both worlds as far as color scheme and planking skills/painting
  2. The next options get interesting, this would be black below the wale and the railing while the wale and below the railing is in wood with various colored stripe. This is very similar to the lumberyard's model of Lively and I also gave options for a black wale as well? Feedback is welcomed.
  3. Some contemporary drawings show ships with only 1 or 2 very thin strips among black hulls this could be a choice as well though I cant help but feel it's a tad dull?
  4. Next we have brown/wood hull with a black wale. This is similar to other models of the cutter I've seen and looks nice but I sort of feel that by 1818 so much bare wood wouldn't have been likely? PS that Dirk's gorgeous model of Alert there.
  5. Ok so lets look at our options. The coast guard site offers little help only that old ships were black with white interiors. Most of the models of these cutters I've seen are broken up into 2 categories, black hull with brown or yellow wale or brown (wood) hull with black wale. Then you have various red or yellow stripes. This design matches up closely to the mamoli kit color scheme and also makes the ship look much like privateers of the time.
  6. Thanks Doc! Welcome aboard So let's have a moment discuss names and color schemes of these ships. The nameing is somewhat easier than the color scheme but the information on Doughty's ships is somewhat vague. What I do know is that these ships were built to prevent piracy and replenish the coast guard after the war of 1812. Of the 3 classes, according to the coast guard website and Donald Canney's book which are the most recent and up to date source the Eagle and Crawford were very likely of the largest type. Of the mid sized type two ships Alabama and Louisiana are pretty much confirmed to be 51 ton ships, there is also confirmation via the site that Dallas and Surprise were of this type as well. This is in contrast to Irving King's Coast Guard Under Sail book and infor in Howard Chapelle's book which has Eagle and Crawford as the mid type and Dallas and Surprise as the larger however that book was dated from 1989 and the information within it looks out of date to modern sources. Alert while a larger type, also had 4 cannon ports per side so if she is a Doughty design she was significantly modified. So were Search and Detector which were an in between size about 65 ton? The real issue is the 31 ton ship, I am not even sure if any were ever built. However I want to name her something and of that there sort of 2 options. One is Gallatin which was also the South Carolina probably renamed. This ship has no info from what I can tell and accomplished nothing historic so I could just utilize the name for the sake of it. The other is Active which is supposedly a purchased vessel, however it had one gun, was 38 tons (the smallest confirmed tonnage) so I could close one eye and just let it be. Chapelle states that this ship which he incorrectly called Alert could have very well been built from the Doughty design though King claims it wasn't. Meh ;P So in conclusion the models will probably be 31 ton (Active or Gallatin) 51 ton (Dallas) and 79 ton (Eagle). I'm more inclined to use names rather than States seems more personable (less battleship-ish). How does that sound to all of you I'm open to thoughts As for color schemes give me a few moments....
  7. It was important for me to check the accuracy of the AL kit's templates since some revenue cutter kits have rather significant innacuracies. This didn't seem to be the case for the old Dallas kit the bulkheads all lined up perfectly with the plans when I printed out the resized templates on pieces on paper.
  8. I did the same with the bulkheads. After converting the parts I then put them into the laser program and now they are ready to be brought to the laser cutter. Ezpz!
  9. So here's how to convert a plank of bulkhead kit and if I can convert this one I can convert any kit (though remember this kit is discontinued). I scanned the skeleton pieces then worked the contrast to get rid of the color, then resized them using a formula and checked the size using scanned copies of the Doughty plan from the book. Converting from 1/48 (not 1/50 like the kit suggests), to 1/64 which converts the kit hull 17.375" to about 13" a difference of about 74.82% or the multiple .7482. So after scanning a part just times the pixels let's say 3000 by .7482 and you get 2245 the size of the part at 1/64 scale. You can see that a printed image lines up with the plans perfectly now.
  10. So now for confession time. I saw a deal on ebay for the old Dallas kit for $50 so picked it up. The kit is 1/48 scale so the parts won't be used however she is modeled after the 80 ton cutter so decided to convert the kit to 1/64 in a similar manner to how I converted the 50 ton kit. This model will be done last but I started some of the process so you can see how it's assisting me in the other two. The use of this kit helps me in understanding the changes between each cutter how the shape changes/gets bigger yet planking seems to have stayed the same (width of planks), and other parts helping me understand camber, etc. for the other 2 models. I just needed to see all 3 in perspective as they are sort of connected and don't fully trust myself as a scratch kit builder just yet. It also means that each cutter is going to be built in 3 different ways, block of wood, bread and butter slices and plank on bulkhead! Learning a lot with these 3 and will apply that to Sultana when I get back to her.
  11. Here are the final images of the 30 ton hull as she is now about 9 and 1/8". In comparison to Sultana which took me a few months to shape, this one took me like 1-2 weeks, so definitely getting the hang of this. I still want to sand a little off the bow and the keelson area to make way for planks but overall it's good to go!
  12. So the last part was perfecting the stern which you can see what the transom for each cutter looks like on the screen. Look how they get longer and also note the dotted line where the deck ends. I cut out all 3 and then fit them on and fine tuned the sanding.
  13. Fine tuning the shape was done with acrylic templates made at the laser shop which don't bend like the cardstock. Also the deck camber was accomplished using an image from the plans of Lumberyard's Lively which was very generously emailed to me. Making a little curved wood piece I added the camber to the deck. The deck itself was a piece of 1/'8" and 1/16" basswood sheet glued onto the top of the wood sections. It worked out great!
  14. Here is some images of the 2 Doughty cutters lined up together. You can see the differences in the shape, the bow much more pointed and triangle-ish on the 30 ton, and the angel of the draught is more extreme. Look at the plans of all 3 you can see the flattening out of the shape, the 50 and 80 ton similar but 80 is longer.
  15. Shaping turned into an interesting and informative process, I used a rotary saw attachment to the dremel to cut the angle for the keel, sanding uncovered a few issues, mainly that the wood had a grain which sanded a tad unevenly also the glue sections did the same. My solution was to fill the uneven parts with the Durham water putty. It ultimately became a casing around the hull that I would comtinue shaping and sanding and while that lessoned the effect of the painted lined within, the effect worked out reasonable well.
  16. So I made shaping templates in the style found on modelshipwright, basically a half with the deck level added that way I can just wedge them in to see how much material needs to be removed from the sides, top and bottom.
  17. There were about 9 pieces. The parts were glued together with paint and glue mixed so that way they would have natural lines built into the wood that would help with the shaping and lining up with the templates. Red for the half lines and black for the main lines.
  18. Hey all! So here is an update on my progress. I put together the hull for the 30 ton revenue cutter by using a few sheets of wood and gluing them together (as per Dan's suggestion). The sections on the plans are about 15/16" to 1" so the wood plank is about that length. I then drew the sections and cut them out with a band saw.
  19. A shame she was never preserved. For a time she was one of the oldest surviving ships aside from Constitution and I just find her lines made her such a beautiful frigate.
  20. Maybe the model expo orche. Either that or leave the strip unpainted in boxwood w miniwax
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