IgorSky

Good Morning All,
 
 I have a small update to show, the planking of the deck. Before you start wondering what I am doing not staggering the planks properly this is the first layer of planking. There is another layer of .5 mm planking going on top of the walnut planking you see here. Normally I would not have posted this until it was completed but I needed a break from the sanding and scraping, this layer (1,5 mm) needs to be sanded down by .5 mm so I thought I would post what was done so far. As she sits now I have about half the deck done and will hopefully have that done today. Then second planking then deck furniture.........Finally.
 Planks were glued using Weldbond on the edges and a spot of ca on each bulkhead to act as a clamp.
 

 
 Alright back to sanding and scraping .
 
 Oh some real good news for, those interested, Rick Shousha at Modellers Workshop is now a distributor for MarisStella. Check it out at http://modellers-workshop.com/category/maristella-wood-ship-kits/.
 
Have A Good One

Good Day All, Thanks for all your gracious comments, likes and checking things out. Not much has changed other than scraping, sanding, planking and painting  . I did a little cheating when I planked the bulwarks, rather than using the planking strips I cut and shaped veneer strips. I did this as I knew I was painting and to go from five planks at the bow to three at midships seemed like a lot of work that was not necessary. With the painting and stanchions placed every 15 mm the illusion of separate planks would have been hidden at any rate.
 After bulwarks were planked the scuppers then needed to be re-cut. I did this using a 1 mm end mill bit in my rotary tool followed by some filing with a needle file and the other thing I can't remember the name of right now      .
 Next up is the final planking of the deck :)      on top of the .5 mm planking goes a central plank and after that I will be happy to see that all planking on this ship will be finished.
 Not much to see but I hope you enjoy
 



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Mystery tool is the second from bottom
 
 

Unbelievable, Igor.  Your work is amazing.

What great use of an odd shaped bottle.  Your diorama is lovely. 
 
Bob

You can see it now Carl!
 
:cheers: :cheers:
 
Done! Finished! I finished the model finally!
 
:cheers: :cheers:
 
The flags were the final touch.
I re-painted them with acrylic paint in order to let be "less shiny".
Now it will take some time to pack all the tools and accessories used during this year...
I made a bit more photo than usual, just to show better the final appearance of the model.
The last photo shows its final positioning in the wall niche.
 
 

Thank you to everybody for your smart comments!
Thank you Jesselee, but is rather easy to make such coils if you use a "mask" like the one I showed in one old post.
 
I can feel that the end is near...
well, the end of the model building!
I think that in less than two weeks I should finish...if the wind blow in the right direction...
 
Only two chapters remain to be closed:
-The remaining rigging of the mizzen mast, done at 70%.
-The flags, done at 10%.
The flags are kept for last (the last seal on the chapters).
a tiny update:
After few months, now the paint small is definetly disappeared from the model pedestal, so I taken it out from the home basement.
In the meanwhile I prepared the plate for the pedestal, which be glued on the horizontal bars (other photo).
I prefered to make it by wood and painting the words, since it give to the overall model a more "warm" appearance.
In another photo, it can be seen how it was when I made it some months ago.
 

Another update.
Another "milestone" reached: I completed all the rigging that is related to the main mast base, so I completed that zone with the two bilge pumps. All the belaying pin rails of the main mast are now complete.
three photos "celebrate" this milestone!
In another photo can be seen the other belaying pin rails which I am slowly filling and a partial view of the rigging that I made in these days (I know that many rigging photos seems hydentical, but are not).
 
I added a small window in the cabin front wall, because it can be logically possible that existed at least a small window (the cannons inside that cabin needs some source of light), even without sound evidences.

For Carl:
Those were all the versions of the flag that I made before the final one...are all showed in the posts.
 
 
Another update:
 
I finally installed the mizzen mast lateen sail and its related boom.
Now, as can be seen, the model start to have its definitive "appearance".
The two lateen sails are not "aligned", but it is normal, since are not "tied" to their mast in the same way (it is not a xebec).
 
I am proceeding with the rigging, and apparently it seems everything a bit loose.
It is normal since I have not yet placed the ropes that keep tight the sails.
 
I completed the filling of the belaying pin rail of the mizzen mast (other photo).
 
A lot of rigging is still to be placed, in addition of a lot of rope bundles (tons of ropes! everywhere! )
I am not satisfied by the stern boom since is too short (other photo).
But I have no solution, since the model "must" be placed in a niche inside a wall that has a maximum width of 90 cm.
that means a maximum lenght of the model of max 88 cm.
I know that is a silly problem and a silly limitation, but that is the space available and I must consider it...
Maybe one day I will become rich and I will buy a villa and I will have more space for this model and I will.....rebuild this boom! :D (dreaming is free)

Another update...
I am proceeding with the two yards of the mizzen mast and the related single square sail.
As can be seen, a lot of ropes are yet to be installed, so everything is rather loose.
I attached all the cannon shots holders (one every two cannons, since I am lazy and I don't want to make 16 of them ), as can be seen in another photo.
Ah yes, I finally released the "Venetian flag 3.0", which will be the final and definitive one! :D
I don't want to put the hands anymore on this flag, because it was a very tormented decision and tormented research...

Hello Fam,
I appreciate your attention to this detail of the flag.
Yes, I know of the existence of a version of the lion bringing the sword, but as for I know it was used only by the land troops.
I was fascinated by the possibility to use the lion with sword, but definetly, after checking many paintings, books and drawings, I abandoned this idea, since there was no evidences at all of its use for the military ships.
The lion holding the sword instead of the book was also a symbol of the justice administration, so it is found in many buildings which were part of the Venetian Republic.
Since the battle of Lepanto che Venetian fleet used a flag with the lion bringing a cross (defender of Christianity!), and so remained until the conquest by the Napoleon troops.
The only deviation was the flag of the flagships, which was made like in the previous post (a more famous way to represent the venice flag).
If you have the occasion to go to Venice again, you can go to the Museo Correr, which has a lot of paintings of naval battles, many contemporary.
In one way is boring, but you can see all the flags used by the ships!
Below you can find some photos to give some consistence to what I said:
 
first photo (taken from Alinari archives): the flag used by the Venetian fleet at the battle of Lepanto, from Museo Correr.
second photo: A detail of one of the ships of one of the paintings from the Museo Correr.
third photo: a detail of one drawing taken from the collection of Biblioteca di Padova;
fourth photo: a detail of a painting from the Atlas made in 1785 by Gian Maria Maffioletti.
fifth photo: a flag used by land troops, with the above mentioned sword raised (but book open!), from Museo Navale di Venezia.
six photo: one of the many sculptures present in Italian buildings with lion with sword raised (and book closed!)
If you are interested, I can suggest some sources of informations (not easy, all sparse informations to be collected)
in anycase try the books written by Guido Ercole, edited by Gruppo Modellistico Trentino, which have a lot of interesting informations about this argument!

Ah yes Jan...that is why I still have this 40 year old Humbrol enamel, one of the best model paints that was ever on the market for hand painting in my humble opinion.
 

 
 
Seriously though I hear what you are saying and my intention is to do as little painting as is possible. blending in a 1/16th line of paint will be a lot less hassle than a large repaint. The collapsible lifeboat that was the most damaged is about as far as I hope to have to go regarding replacing broken wooden parts. There are a few bits missing and I will tackle them as I get to them.
 

 
I am going to use the enamel paint to fill the joint lines where possible this will take time to let the paint harden but will give me a lot of control over these small areas. In all likelihood Bassett Lowke used a very fine grind of enamel although they might also have used Lacquer, which is what we did at Allmodels when I was a young man in the early 60's we matched all our paints from the British Standard Colour charts I cannot remember the actual name of the Standards now  but we only used the primaries and black and white to make any colour we needed.
 
You are right in that this will be one of the most challenging areas but I do have a little background from the old school so I will be proceeding with a great deal of caution.
 
  Druxey, yes adding a little grime will no doubt be in order.
 
Denis, my plan is to do as little to disturb the original surfaces as possible, the colour oxidation is already apparent regarding the areas of the deck that were hidden from exposure when I removed the structures from the funnel deck. The white will be the least problematic in my view. the most difficult I think will be the side of the hull, I will mix some colour let them dry after some initial test sample to get close, and then use the damaged area to test them with very small spots of the Humbrol to see how well they will blend.
 
The next picture shows the aft funnel structure and the area highlighted is where one of the tiny broken bits somehow avoided being swept up it is glued back on with carpenters glue. The vertical rectangular section was snapped completely in half and a section at the bottom was broken off as well.
 
The section highlighted on the collapsible lifeboat is one of the supports for the top boats and is the only pattern left, all the rest are missing from the port side boat deck, I managed to pull a small piece of similar Maple from my scrap maple drawer, so they will be easy enough to replace.
 

 
time for some breakfast and a coffee.
 
Michael 
 
 

Back from some time in England looking after my ailing mother-in-law and back at work on the 'Pritt'.  Not much more done at the moment, but at least the upper deadeyes have been seized in so I can really go ahead with the rigging now.
 
ne disappointment on returning to the museum was to discover that the staff had decided to clean the model makers' display cabinet and on moving the 'Pritt' out to clean the cabinet they managed to lose the boom crutch that had been completed and was sitting on the cabin top awaiting fitting.
 
The photos show the minor progress that has been made.
 
John
 



 

Now that the boats for the 'Herzogin Cecilie' are finished, I can finally get back to work on the 'Pritt'.  I've finished the iron work for the masts and the masts are now fitted.  When fitting masts I use a tiny dab of glue on the mast coat that touched only the mast and the deck, so that removing the masts (if ever required) is just a matter of cutting away the mast coat, while in the meantime the masts are held securely.
 
I had held back on fitting the masts as I hadn't been able to figure out from the photos the form of the spreaders that support the topmast shrouds, but a close ponder over a very highly magnified enlargement of the foremast had revealed that the spreaders are iron rods with holes in the end that are fixed to an additional mast band, so these have now been fitted.  By the way, I'm not quite sure why the 'Pritt' had these upper shrouds.  They're attached right at the top of the mast, but that's not really very far above the main shrouds and the 'Pritt' is the only pearler I've ever seen that has them fitted.  She's also the only pearler I've ever seen with the running stays on both masts, as well, so perhaps she was sailed very hard at some time in her life and needed the extra support for the masts.
 
The photos below show the model with the masts fitted and some of the standing rigging over the mast heads.  The third photo is a close up of the mainmast with the spaghetti of partially installed rigging and the spreaders.
 
John
 

 

 

 
 

Well, I managed to get a sail in before it got cold.

I had a short list of items to "test" with this expedition...
Boat will fit in my Toyota Matrix. Launch trailer worked well, needs some tweaks to keep the boat from sliding off the end before you want it too, and there's too much slop in the flag-bracket handle holder. Self-tending bowlines worked well. Bracing only the tops'l yards worked well. Jib-sheeter worked well despite not being adjusted as best it could have been. Finally sailing in open water again where she was intended to be since I started her in 1999. I held my breath every time a gust made her heel. She did great. Remember to bring extra batteries for the camera next time. I brought tools, line, tape, glue, reading-glasses, tripod, and the camera batteries died. Fortunately Captain Rooney was on hand and took some stills and video with his phone, while sailing Son of Erin and keeping an eye on the two grand-kids - but he's a tug captain and used to multi-tasking. Here's some pics from today's outing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
and 16 minutes or so of video...
 

I've seen several servo hacks designed to have them run continuously, such as you might want for a winch.  If I did this to a pair of cheap servos, I could Y them off the brace winch servos and they should operate together.  This is something I'll experiment with down the road.  Today I dunked sticks in ammonia and wrapped them around a tube to make hoops for the two trys'ls.  While that dried I went to a friends and helped him eat the crabs he caught this morning.
 
26 more hoops like these for the driver

 
It's been running in the 80's here for the past week, temperature-wise; that just broke this evening with rain, wind, and dropping down to 60° (f).  Ready or not, when the these winds blow out, I'm hauling the boat out and putting her in the water.  I want some pictures of her afloat with all her sail's aboard, and I want to test launching and retrieving with the new cart a few times.

I hung the courses (with clothespins) after hemming them.


 
While in hemming mode, I did the last two sails in her suit; the main and fore trys'ls.  I burned all the grommets in with a soldering iron since this pic was taken.

 
These sails (courses and trys'ls) will be brailed up as I don't have a good way to control them via RC.  The courses I hope to figure out eventually, but the trys'ls won't be happening.  I'll shake them out for static displays.

 
I want to use the tacks to haul the clews forward as the best control when close-hauled.  The best way to do that is with a trolley system, like a clothesline, with a winch running a continuous loop and the tacks attached to that loop.  The sheets just run through the model from one clew to the other.

 
There's a couple of problems here.  The main and fore sails are controlled separately, so I'd need TWO of these set-ups inside the model, which accents the second problem; space (room, accessibility through hatches, and the spider's web of control lines already in place.  A more compact solution would be a "linear actuator" or basically a threaded rod spun by a motor with the tacks attached to a shuttle that travels on the rod.
Either way, the trolleys or actuators would have to be as long as at least half the length of tack I need to haul, which would probably be around 6 to 10 inches.
The real thing here is, besides adding two more electric motors to the load and dealing with directional control, etc; syncing it with the winches that control the braces for the same mast.
 
Another much simpler way of dealing with the courses, is the "Bentinck-boom," which is simply a yard at the bottom of the sail.  The foot of the courses gets pulled around like the rest of the yards not directly controlled.  Rather than an actual yard, it would be a rod set into the foot of the sail to have the same effect.  This is ok if it's in a pocket and I can remove it easily to clew up the sail when I want to.
 
Another version of this is to use stiff wire or rod made to appear like the clew-lines, that hold out the clews as the boom would.  This seems it would be more difficult to make removable when I want clew up the sail than the boom version would.
 
Soooooooo....
 
I guess I'll wind up going with the "Bentinck-boom" rod in the foot of the sail idea, but I'm not going to worry about it until I get the rope-walk operating and can get down to properly rigging this beast.

Put the boat back on the cart and added the royals.  Still working on controls before I take her down to the creek and see if all this effort was worth the effort.
 

 

 

The upper steps in the deckhouse are now complete and the first finishing coats of poly applied.
 

 
As I think I previously said the chart table sits above the flag locker. I got a bit carried away with making it.
 




 
The charts cover the Western Isles from the Butt of Lewis to the Mull of Kintyre. The books are old friends - "The Yachtsman's Pilot to the West Coast of Scotland" and "Reeds Nautical Almanac".

Scuppers---------
 
The penetrations through the bulwalk have covers on Altair.
 

 
I thought the covers would look bad if they weren't identical so I decided to cut them from brass channel. The correct angles were formed using a combination of the disc sander and mill - with the settings being maintained through the use of simple jigs.
 
The uniformity was good and the test mounting looked fine.
 




 
I also got round to putting the 1st coat of poly on inner surface of the bulwarks and capping rail.
 



 
 
 
 
 

I got back to the hinges........figured out a neat way to measure them.   I lined the length up to the table edge.   I clamped the brass rod to the table,  and slid the part under the wire.   once lined up to the edge of the table,  I held it in place and bent it with a free finger.   it's not fool proof because the wire does tend to flex a little.........good enough for what I need to do  
    I made a couple more of the longer ones.......enough that I had two sets of four,  the same length.   then I did the shorter ones.
 

 
I made a few more and picked out the ones I wanted.   I cut a length of rod and fed them on......one short...one long... etc
     the last pair,  I had to switch,  because the bottoms are to be soldered to the rod....there will be one on both ends.   the bottom ones were soldered in the fixed position.
 

 
the top ones will be movable.......I soldered them to hold the bend closed.   had to be careful not to use too mush solder.
 

 
I did have to reheat a couple of them to free them up......from there I just kept them moving till the solder went solid.  as mentioned.....I needed to get stain.   all I have is a single bottle of billing mahogany stain 1/2 oz.......I didn't want to use it, but I wanted to keep going........so I did.   we did go out......I did get stain.........but when we came home,  I finished staining it with the billings stain {the fear of two different colors}.   I have some lifecolor weathering kits.....one for wood,  one for armor,  and one for figures.   they are acrylics though,  and I didn't want to mix them with enamels or lacquers.
      I got carried away..........I did the port side dump ramp........but here is how the box looks with stain.
 

 
...and here's the port side with the ramp and hinge assembly.
 

 
one of the hinges is a little off.........this was taken when I first did it.   I went to open the ramp,  and it fell off.   putting it back together,  it got a few CA smears..........scraped it best I could and went back over it with the stain.  when I give it a coat of lacquer {or poly urethane},  it should hide it well enough..........just don't look at it lengthwise    here it is with the door open.......some CA did get into the hinge as well.   I'll work it a few times.......should free up enough.  it'll keep the hinge from being floppy .......trust me  
 

 
in place on the deck....the ramp adds quite a bit to the box.   you can see the height........
 

 
adding the extra plank gives it enough reach.....it extends just over the cap rail.  
 

 
now to get the starboard side done........hopefully without any funny stuff  
 

Many thanks, Patrick!
Each time, I also think that I has reached the limit... But then it turns out that we can go a bit further

Thank you, Nils!
This bottle was me for a long time, but I did not know how to use it.

Then I put the cork and sealed it. All - this model is complete!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After complete drying of the sea, I inserted the mast with folded front sail into the throat of bottle. Then I expand the front sail and glued its corner to the bowsprit.
 

 

 

 

I made the sea from two-component colorized silicone. This was my first attempt to use this material. I poured a few drops of the mixture in the bottle and after a few hours, when the mixture was a little dry, I put the hull of the boat in the sea.