CharlieZardoz

The only thing that's missing are a few wood peg bolt indentations that I will add to the points where the belaying pin rack meet bit block using an awl pointed bit. I'll get to those details on a bit 😊

Before I decided on adding the railings I wanted to make a bit of ship furniture. So decided to make the belaying pin racks which as per usual 3rd times a charm. This was also done using the dremel drill press, strips of wood that are 5/64" by 5/64" and an aluminum sliding jig. I was especially proud of how I carved the top block. I also thought it time to add all the parts on deck so I could get a scale perspective. The height is about 7/16" and this rack was slanted to the degree of the mast! I also took the time to refurbish my little bilge pump and added a superior handle. Look at them all together now and also for scale you can see the boat on my palm. Only 9"!!

So once I made the jig I realized that the hull was not smooth enough for copper plates. After a years time heat and convention has separated and warped a few of the veneer planks. Wood expands and contracts that's simply a fact so I looked over the hull and decided to smooth out the rough patches and also fill in any spacings and gaps. The result meant I had to retail one whole side and also once putty and detailing was in place the model was not colored to the cherry wood so with a bit of paint and staining I did a little artistry to match. Since the lower hull will be coppered anyways it's no big deal but for my own sense of completion it looks like a nice weathering affect that actually came out nicely! Also of note is the masking tape. I ripped off my first toerail/upper bulwark which didn't set right and had taken some damage and repainted the black strip which is supposed to represent the top of the main hull. The strip had lost some paint over the years time. I also intend to add a little bit of black under the wale as well. Once that was done I made new upper bulwark strips using pear. Hence why they are of a reddish color than the sepia Cherry. These while shown in place will not be glued in just yet.

Ok so back to the USRC Active, the first order of business was the making of this very special tool as per Dan Pariser's direction. It was basically a tool designed to create the rivet patten for copper plates. It comprises of sewing needles warn down slightly and added to a jig. I built about 3 of these before it got precise enough for me to like the results. The matter of keeping the pins arranged in as uniform a pattern as possible required me to use my dremel drill press which has been the most amazing tool I could use right now! Once the jig was completed I felt a small sense of satisfaction that indeed building the ship would begin again! That said while I tested the pattern on copper tape, I have yet to add any plates but it led me to my next task. Refurbishing the hull! Kitten assistance not required by welcomed of course! 😽

Hi Mark! Glad to see you are well. 😊 Yes Mr Toad is indeed to blame. May he always keep life interesting. 😅🤪🔥

Returning after over a year! I thought it was time to finally return to my build log. Alot has happened since the last time I posted here feels like a few lifetimes ago. Firstly I grew to become a successful performing artist and became part of many highly successful productions. I found a place for my art skills in costume and head piece creation. This year was going to be the production of a Broadway play which I was to act as manager and would have begun production as of this month. Of course we all know what has happened since... 😣 The changes in my life came at a cost. My old partner and I separated after 7 years. She was not able to accept the changes and also there were problems brewing for many years. So for a good year I found myself in transition without a stable space mentally and physically to build the model. Eventually came a new partner, new perspectives and a new work space and alot of emotionally support and freedom I hadn't experienced in a long time. It was a wild ride and still going however making the most of the current situation, now is a time to stay in and create so here we go! 🎨 Also I'm currently in Virginia waiting out the storm. 😊🌈🙏🌳🌳🌳 So with all that out of the way, the end result led me back to building the boat which started back in December however I wanted to have enough actually completed before I posted. I wanted something to show so I waited until some progress had been made. After a year it was interesting to see how time affected the model. Some refurbishing was required. Partially due to a change in my perspective on how I wanted to proceed and partly due to how the wood set. I will explain all this in the next post.

One of the best I've seen. An inspiration this is a true ship model well done!

The plan I posted above from naval architechure 1805, isn't of cruiser but of another ship. I mean I would read the nrg journal and see what they say about it, buuuuut it really boils down to when was the Davis model created vs when was the Salvini plan discovered? If the salvini plan was found after the Davis model was made then it couldn't have been a reference for his Lexington.

Explain please?

Those are great Talos! Look at those lines wheewhoo! Do you posts these in a different forum I'd love to follow your progress. Consequently I have an image of the South's attempt to convert the Raritan as well. I guess they really didn't have the resources to convert these ships to ironclads, but poor Germantown and United States were taken into the navy as floating batteries and then scuttled. Neat stuff!

Thanks for the advice Dan. Was wondering if the coamings should be rounded a bit, I knew that if I did so there would be no going back so I've been holding back on it but now that the deck is being done Ill adjust.

Yeah you know what, that's a very obvious weirdness. I mean a plan of that time would always have the keel horizontal having the plan to the waterline is.... wrong. One day ill try and track down where these plans came from and IF they have any merit at all. I will want to see that plan Chapelle worked on at the mystic seaport library. He apparently did an unofficial conjectural plan (mentioned a few pages back). Id be curious to see what this plan looks like if for only research purposes.

Yep yep I would highly recommend your ready the NRG article if you can. That image I posted is from the issue, it's a British brig from 1804 which I believe was a template for HMS Wolf likely others, but the bows are almost identical. The Davis stern looks kinda Americanized but even that stern looks like neither era it's very extreme. There are many erroneous models from those era and plenty still on the shelves! If you want to build a kit try a newer kit they have less auspicious origins... otherwise scratch modelmaking will always lead to the result you wish like my Active!

Nice! Curious to see what you have in store. Also just to go back to past posts about the Enteprrize quarterdeck, that Constructo model shows a style from 1776 with the railing and cabin door which looks a lot like Fair American or Halifax. When the little deck was on Enterprise it was very likely similar to the sort of fore and aft decks that the cruiser class had. Again another example on how older models really had a lot of anachronistic issues.

Here it be! And yeah it looks that crummy in the book as well lol.

Let me scan it from the book and see if I can get a decent size of it.

Hi Ian, I haven't had a chance to scan from Davis's book to try and explain what you are proposing, however you want to read NRG journal 31 page 137 which critiques the Lexington he built which was also used as the basis for the Aeropiccola kit of Lexington from way back when. So bottom line looking at the hull lines both ships do look rather similar don't they? But from what I can tell Davis took a plan profile of a Brtitish brig from 1804/5 probably the HMS Wolf and then augmented the size to like 78.5' long? Which actually wasn't event the length of Lexington but whatever, I believe you are trying to insinuate that Davis's Lexington could be made to represent and somewhat factual representation of Enterprize? Here's my thoughts, I feel it wont because Davis's model is old and Davis in general was kind of not always the best with facts and back in those days there weren't many people doing this to make a generic early 19th century brig and then slap a name on it wasn't so hard back then there was less information. Millar's book, on Revolutionary war ships by contrast was great in that it really showed what colonial ships had in common back then, the Lexington having a quarterdeck and looking very much like a merchant conversion ship. The Enterprize by contrasted looked very much like a brig from 1800 which in turn consisted of ships like HMS Wolf, Cruizer and then the American Syren, Argus, Vixen etc. When I lined up the plans yeah there were differences but generally the same concept based on builder practices of the time. And in turn if you line up British brigs and then American ones youll see some distinctions between the two again based on builder practices. My point is What Davis did was take a plan of a generic British brig, change the dimensions and then add some American styled flourishes and decided yeah that could be Lexington... but that's not very good history. He didn't really understand what a brig from 1776 would look like so the ship ultimately looks like a british brig from 1804 with some American touches, and shrunk down several feet hence why it looks like a plausible Enterprize. He also didn't scale the masts correctly they are oversized. Near as I can tell the Salvini plans were not discovered when Davis made his model so any chances of their being identical is pure coincidence. So what did Enterprize really look like? Well if you take Salvini plan A and Vixen and line them up they are almost identical, save for some slight differences in tumblhome (which was historically referenced) but that's pretty much it! I am now of the opinion that Enterprize was never lengthened in Venice so she probably kept her 85' size up until the war of 1812 when she was significantly changed. So when I do make a model of Enterprise ill probably use Salvini plan A, line it up with Vixen, do a bit of tweaking and that's it. I would effectually be making a model of Salvini plan A and slapping Enterprize on it like I am the Active revenue cutter. It's making an inference but at least it's building a model from an actual legitimate plan, not a hodge podge of stuff like David's Lexington or Hahn's vaulted Hannah model (which has tons of issues as well). I will say though that the Davis Lexington is pleasing to the eye so I did try to decide if it could represent a ship of any sort but yeah 75' is too small for brigs of that time so I really don't know what else to do with it other that admire it as a noble attempt at -er something lol. :0

Thank you John! So yeah I am never one to leave well enough alone when something doesn't feel right. So atm Ive started working on some minor corrections to parts I though hmm could I do better? First and foremost are the gratings, the holes were simply too big. I realized the grating set is likely for a 1/48 model so I scaled it down and scratch made my own using the laser .75% to 1/64 scale. The new grating goes much better with the plans Ive seen and aside from some minor corrections of the hatch coaming, it fit in perfect. Now just have to make the smaller hatch but what do you think?

Thanks so much Mike! I am very excited for the next bunch of steps. As you can see I've already added some decking material and glued the hatches down once and for all. I added some extra parts on deck just to get a look at it all together. So now it's a question of what comes next... The plan is to finish planking but that means adding those waterways and edge planks and also means adding a toe rail. But alsoI plan on painting the too and bottom of the wale black. So it'll have a nice strip across. Then I also need to copper. As you can see the little sailor guys are exhausted just thinking about it all.

Happy autumn to you All! 😄 Been quite busy with the model so figured I'd offer a new update. First, the hull planking is all finished and treenailed. The first side took me months while the second side took me only a few weeks! While both sides look relatively identical I did make sure they had some suttle differences and secretly I do prefer one to the other. My plan is to finish all of the underside stuff so that I no longer need to flip the boat and potentially damage any deck fittings. So with that as my approach, next up is the wale which is getting metal nails giving that metallic look. And last is building the transom and counter. I must have tried this 20+ times before I got one I liked. For now it's unfinished and will be attached later with extra detailing but overall I'm quite happy with it. I was at a loss trying to understand the plans and what the stern actually looked like. Any models out there of the Doughty cutters are all simply horribly wrong. They all show a flat stern piece tacked on with no counter at all which would in real life fall off once it hit a harsh wave... Look at the images of the 3 Doughty cutter stern transoms all lined up you can see how they are distinct. Since I'm trying to keep to the historical plans as best I can this was my best interpretation and looks pretty much like a Baltimore clipper stern. The moulding around the stern attach to the wale and I will add some connecting decoration later. It looks simple but really there were so many subtle challenges like cutting the counter to match the curve of the stern (all the parts are curved and bent in certain ways). The stern piece is raised almost above the deck! I spent probably a good week just plotting it out in my mind lol. For my inspiration I used a few models I found online. One is of the Achilles and the other of a scratch model of the 51 ton cutter Alabama. You can see how they managed to build their stern with the proper incline and transom/counter so it helped me alot. Next up the decking finally! 😎

Hmm that's a bummer if they don't. I did message them though. I'm wanting to make a plank on frame of Hannah at 1/64. Alot of the newer companies do offer plans to buy I've been slowly collecting them and converting the scales so those templates on this model would be just what I need.

Hi! Do you know if they sell the plans alacarte?

Good morning! Decided to do a mini-update today I added all the treenails to the finished side of the hull. Basically I the process was poking them out with an awl then filling the hole with colored putty (which I darkened with paint) then used the colored pencil to define the area a bit more and here is how it looks! I know some of my steelers are a bit off location but that will be colored with copper anyways. I realize now that the nails are effectively showing where the ships frames are (an obvious concept but I now I see the logic behind it). Next step now will be doing the other side hopefully won't take me nearly as long

Hi all! I totally forgot I put this one together and thought I'd share. It's a Talos style size comparison chart of various small ships schooners etc. I was going to wait and add the HMS Swift as well but figured ah let me put it up now and see what you all think (Swift would be just a bit larger than Berbice). Look at how small the 31 Doughty cutter actually is!

Thanks Mark! Thats only because you dont see the pile of rejects I made could make a whole other boat with them