ccoyle

Welcome! Excellent work on the pinnace!

Welcome aboard, Drew!

So, sweet Keeva is off the hook now. To effect the repair, I first needed to get the main hull plate and profile former assembled. Here's the plate with its beveling completed. After gluing those two pieces together and letting them cure, it was time to 'fix' the broken bulkhead. It turns out the damage was not as catastrophic as it looked at first glance. The main part of the bulkhead was broken in half; after beveling the two halves, I glued each in separately. The bulkhead had a long stem that fills most of the remaining slot. The original stem was munched beyond repair, but it was a simple matter to make a replacement from scrap plywood. All done! Now there remains a lot of beveling and gluing of the remaining bulkheads. I probably won't post another pic until that task is done.

Well, I haven't got Phoenix fixed yet, but I did assemble my new office chair -- a late Christmas present to myself to replace the abomination that was the old chair. Note: That is not my modeling desk. 😅

My dog has earned her way onto Santa's naughty list -- forever.* *I may feel differently about this tomorrow, but not right now. 😑😑😑 I'd be less angry if her depredation didn't mean having to cut out a replacement from the thickest plywood in the kit -- 4 mm. 😑😑😑 Hmm . . . looking at the picture just now, I realize there might just be an easier way to fix this. Stay tuned.

Good luck with your project! At 1/48 scale, this makes a very striking model.

Welcome aboard, Ron!

Welcome aboard, Dave!

Welcome aboard, Ian!

Hopefully this one won't take 17 years! 😅

Unboxing Part II: Parts and Fittings After all of the paperwork is removed, one sees an intriguing collection of plastic bags and boxes. Let's explore! First we have the ship's boat and binnacle mini-kits. The pumps and windlass are also separate mini-kits. The other bags contain small billets of wood containing laser-cut parts for things like gun carriages and headworks. Then we have a small compartmented box. This will do nicely for storing spinners for trout fishing after the model is built. 😋 Inside the box we find metal fittings, resin cannon, grating strips, laser-cut cleats, and push-pins to use during planking. Separate bags contain brass nails, brass belaying pins, resin quarter badges, stern lantern parts, and deluxe blocks. The blocks are very nice and definitely a cut (or several cuts) above the usual kit-grade blocks one usually encounters. Rigging line. If you have read my cannon yawl log, then you know that the line used in MK kits is, um . . . not good. It neither looks like miniature rope, nor is it easy to work with. This, sadly, is the one thing that detracts from an MK kit. I plan to replace all of the kit line -- yes, all of it -- with after-market rope from a source such as Syren. But that will be quite a ways down the road. Several more individually-wrapped items include finely-detailed resin stern ornamentation, dowels for masts and spars (each already cut to the correct length), printed flags, and laser-engraved wooden name plates. Unlike the yawl kit, this kit includes a name plate in English in addition to one in Russian. There are also several small frets of PE brass parts. Some of those parts are the original brass versions of the head decorations that are now provided as laser-cut wooden parts. And lastly we have the many sheets of laser-cut parts. I didn't want to unwrap these right away, but I can tell that these parts are up to MK's high standards: great wood, clean cutting, and minimal char. Parts that require fairing have laser-engraved fairing lines to indicate how much wood needs to be removed. And that's it. Look for first cuts to start soon, but I do need to start by checking that I have all the necessary stuff on hand for working with wood -- it's been a while since I've worked on the hull structure of a wooden ship. Cheers!

Unboxing Pt. I: Instructions & Plans There's a lot of info on the box lid, both in Russian and in English. It probably goes without saying that in the current geopolitical climate, the supply of kits from our friends at Master Korabel (MK) has more or less dried up. I was fortunate enough to snag this one before they disappeared completely. An important item of note on the box lid is this: As you can see, there are two available versions of the kit: the basic MK0401 kit and the deluxe MK0401P version. The deluxe version includes a ship's boat and deluxe blocks. One thing to be mindful of if you are shopping for this kit is that it has been out for some time now, and the contents have evolved over the years. Newer examples provide, among other things, high-quality resin parts in place of some of the older cast metal fittings. Happily for me, I received one of the newer kits. The first impression one gets upon opening the box is that everything is nicely packed. The yellow booklet is a set of photo instructions that cover construction of the hull. There are two complete sets of written instructions, one each in Russian and English. These instructions complement the photo instructions and cover the entire build process through masting and rigging. The instructions also include keys to all of the various wood parts billets . . . . . . and 1:1 sail patterns. A suit of pre-sewn sails can be ordered separately, but I will not use them, since they suffer from all of the out-of-scale issues that normally plague such sails. I haven't yet decided whether to add sails or leave the model bare-poled (it looks good either way), but if I go for sails, I will make them myself. Several pages of the instructions are devoted to illustrations of the various types of rope work needed to complete the model. Separate instructions cover the construction of the upgraded binnacle and windlass. There are four sheets of masting and rigging diagrams . . . . . . as well as four sheets of full-sized plans. And lastly there's something that I think is a nice touch -- a spreadsheet that lists all of the various rigging lines along with the blocks they require, the plan sheets they can found on, and the alphanumeric designation used for each. In the next post, we'll look at parts and fittings.

Introduction Welcome to my build log for Master Korabel's Phoenix (styled on the box as 'Brigantine Phoenix'). Photo courtesy of Master Korabel I'll start this log off by sharing a brief history of the ship, my reasons for choosing this particular kit, and some thoughts about how I'd like the model to look like when she's finished. This is Master Korabel's description of the ship (edited): "Cruiser Vessel 12 gun brigantine 'Phoenix' became part of the Black Sea Fleet in 1787. The crew included 52 people. It participated in the war with Turkey in 1787-1791. In 1788, as part of the squadron of Rear Admiral Count M.I. Voinovich, it went to sea in search of the enemy and took part in the battle near the island of Fidonisi. In 1789, as part of the detachments and squadrons, repeatedly went to sea in search of Turkish ships. It then participated in the war with France, 1798-1800, where it was used as a transport ship. In November 1798, this ship went to Sebastapol to Corfu with the provisions of the squadron of Vice Admiral F.F. Ushakov." There are several build logs for this kit already resident on MSW, which you can find listed here; at least two have been finished. I chose to add mine to this group for the following reasons: I like the subject -- that's always important when embarking on a build that may take several years to complete. Having built their cannon-armed yawl ('Canon Jolle'), I really like Master Korabel's kits. Their materials and plans are very good (with a few exceptions, which I will note in an ensuing post). One feature that I particularly appreciate is the laser-cut planking, which eliminates the need for spiling, a chore I do not enjoy. At 1/72 scale, the finished model will not be overly large, an important consideration in my household. Plus, that's the same scale as for the yawl, and it is also a common scale for card model sailing subjects. And finally, this kit will be my attempt to build the model that HMS Fly was supposed to be -- my one effort to pull off a nice-looking, square-rigged ship before retreating back into the shadowy world of building card airplanes. There's still plenty of time, of course, to decide on how I'd like the model to be finished, and I have done a lot of browsing online to see how others have finished theirs. Most builders opt to have leave their models largely unpainted, and that is certainly an option thanks to Master Korabel's use of very nice woods in their kits. However, one finished Phoenix has singularly caught my attention: I wish I could give the builder of this model the credit he deserves, but shortly after I found this photo, the website on which it was hosted disappeared, which is a shame, because there were more photos of this beautiful model that I would have liked to use for reference. The thing that really strikes me about this model is that despite what one might think at first glance, the model's hull is not coppered. Nope, that's just the natural tone of the walnut veneer used in the kit. It's like the best of both worlds -- both a fantastic paint job and some lovely bare wood. Anyways, that'll do for an introduction. In my next post, we'll take a look at an unboxing.

Your before-and-after nails pictures remind me of removing the wires from my stitch-and-glue canoe project.

Back when I was a member of the Ship Modelers Association, a local club based in Southern California, I knew a member there (Randy Biddle) who built wonderful models without using any power tools. A lack of power tools doesn't make any modeling task impossible -- the tools just reduce the amount of time needed to do them.

Fred, I finally hit on a technique that works reasonably well for me. All of the anchor points have a small hole in them made with an awl. I glue one end of the line into its hole using canopy glue, then let it set until the glue cures from white to clear. I then trim the other end of the line so that it is about 1 mm short of the second anchor point. After daubing a tiny amount of glue into the hole, I stretch the line to insert it into its hole and then hold it for 40-60 seconds. By that time, the glue has normally set enough so that I can release the line slowly. Because I have to stretch the line slightly to reach the second anchoring point, the finished line will be taut, but because it is only just shy of being the exact length between anchor points, it doesn't exert enough tension on the glued joint to pull itself loose. This works on the first try about 80% of the time -- enough to keep me from going completely insane.

Congratulations! That is a beautiful model in every respect.

I've noticed the rounded coaming corners in Chris' kits before and wondered whether they mirror actual practice? Knowing Chris, I'd be slightly surprised if it didn't.

The Big Reveal! After pretty much an entire day spent modeling, the Pup is complete! The most labor-intensive task was adding the rigging -- if I counted correctly, the rigging amounted to 38 separate lines. Whew!! Sqn Cdr Dunning's Pup had some 'handles' of some sort attached to the rear fuselage -- I suspect that these were used by the crew of HMS Furious to maneuver the Pup about the flight deck; in photos, the handles appear to be made of rope and look like they may have been wrapped in leather or perhaps tarred. Mine are made of wire and painted black. Also in the photos, I just now noticed that similar rope handles were attached to the underside of the lower wing -- these were not shown on the kit plans, so I will not add them. Getting the Lewis gun onto its mount was a little tricky, and of course the mount had to break during the photo session (🤬🤬🤬), but it's fixed now. As was pointed out to me earlier, the starboard lower wing is canted aft a degree or two -- fortunately, the finished Pup now sits on the Shelf of Fame with her more photogenic port side facing the viewer. Enjoy the pics!

I completed it that way because I wasn't completely happy with how the hull had turned out, but hey, I'll take 'brilliant'! 😁

And that's all for tonight.

Work continues. Before finishing the bracing for the cabane struts, I needed to make the Lewis gun mount. The mount is made from bits of styrene rod. You can see it's located in a bit of a tight spot. While I waited for bits of glue and paint on the gun mount to dry, I built up the propeller, using the optional parts intended to add depth. With the gun mount in place, I could then finish off the cabane strut bracing. I'm now working on the inter-wing bracing, which is six lines per side -- pics to come later.

First off, Keeva says "Merry Christmas" to all my MSW friends! Now for the modeling update. I got all the struts put on. Then it was time to add the top wing. I was thinking that this would be a straightforward task, but I forgot that the Pup, despite being a single-bay aircraft, did not have any V- or N-struts, meaning that all eight struts were individual parts. This made putting the top wing on kind of like lassoing an octopus, but I got it done. Next up will be the wing rigging. The Pup had a lot of rigging! 😑

https://www.mr-beam.org/en/blogs/news/was-ist-finnpappe

That is really not too shabby a planking job, especially for a first model -- and a difficult one as well. A lot of first-timers don't even get this far, so you're doing great!