dafi

Strengthening the mast, but at all times not only war, means also in bad weather 🙂
 
XXXDAn
 

If it's not a gronicle,  then it's a thrupple nut.
 
Sorry, Bob; but Steel defines 'mast hoops' as follows (Rigging and Seamanship, 1794, Volume I, page 6):
 
HOOPS are strong circles of iron driven on masts and yards.
 
Hoops are also as Bob describes.

Sailing ships alongside a wharf sometimes 'cockbilled' their lower yards (as in the image below of Port Adelaide in the 1860's) to avoid damage to the yards, but otherwise, as has been noted above, they would have been square. It was generally considered 'bad form' not to have your yards properly squared in port.
 
John
 

Thoese slots were just for my benefit when designing the kit. I usually remove them for the final production files, but decided to keep them, in case any modeller found them useful for any reason.

Just playing around....

Well, another little piece...
 

The brake isn't set and the tranny is in neutral.....
 
And the overall look from the right side....

The next and final step to getting the operating controls all hooked up, (except for the Steering) is the Clutch linkages, Throw-out bearing and forward universal... (which is represented by those two conical discs in the frame bay behind the conical clutch... The Clutch pedal is mounted in the engine compartment...
The clutch is actuated by a linkage from the engine compartment to the cockpit which operates a torque tube to rotate the throw-out bearing which carries the clutch away from the flywheel... The Clutch pedal also operates the driving brakes and is adjusted to engage after the clutch has disengaged... They were a pain in the you-know-what to keep adjusted correctly.... I don't have an image of the linkages used to effectuate this for this car, but I do have such for the 1911 National model 40 which was set up identically to this car.... (a National Model 40 won the 1912 Indy 500) This brake setup was standard on these race cars during this period, the civilian production variants were set up differently with independent brakes....
 
Anyways, Onwards....

steps.....
 






 

more....

The swivel gun mounts:
 







 

chesstree, fenders and the entry steps:
 

The quarter deck breastwork:
 









 

It was nice again and my little one with the black and yellow stripes really enjoyed the trip 🙂

As every 2 years there was a big meeting in Augsburg, around 70 modellers, some with their partners, met, chatted with each other, had a nice evening together and many even had a great Sunday breakfast together.

Here are a few pictures of my little one with her accessories.











I was also able to take part in and witness a Guinness of World Record attempt: Matthias registered his ship in a bottle as the largest free-hanging ship in a bottle. Now we're just waiting for the certification 🙂



Well then, a nice greeting from both of us, DAniel and Vicky

All those metal fittings look so ‘last century’ to my eye, and stub guns, takes me back to Norske Love of the 1980’s.
Times have moved on……..
 
B.E.

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

I guess we’ll find out if this forum has the patience for another Heller 1/100 Soleil Royal build log. This one will be focusing on changes, mods, upgrades, additions, styrene-bashing, and general mess-making in pursuit of something just a little different from the boxtop. Hello modelers—my name is John. I’m a lifelong plastic model kit enthusiast who never builds anything according to instructions. I first saw Heller’s 1/100 Soleil Royal when, as a commercial art student, I worked for a short time at Revell in Venice, CA, airbrushing backgrounds for box cover art. It was around 1978–79. One of the big shots had the unbuilt Heller kit opened on his desk. I was gobsmacked, and vowed to build the kit one day.
 
Unfortunately, display space at home was scarce, and I knew that the model wouldn’t survive the irregularities and frequent moves of a twentysomething punk’s lifestyle. I kept putting off getting the kit until things got settled a bit.
 
Now, 45 years later, I figure it’s now or never.
 
In the half-century the kit’s been in production, it’s been controversial, an inspiration for a lot of palaver and condemnation. For a supposed “scale” model, there’s a lot that’s questionable about it, and if you aren’t familiar with the shortcomings, it’s because you haven’t read the other Soleil Royal build logs yet. However, the more I read and the more knowledge I picked up, the better this kit looked. I decided I could build an attractive representation of one of Louis XIV’s premier rang (first rate) ships-of-the-line from this kit. It would be impressive, if not wholly accurate. Many features would be exaggerated, but I’ve never had a problem with a certain degree of caricature modeling in small scales. I’m not a fine-scale modeler. I’m familiar with all the compromises accepted in other categories of modeling. Why not ships?
 
Besides, I had decided my Soleil Royal would look different from the usual. I love to add stuff and change the detailing on kits. I haven’t found a kit yet I couldn’t customize.
 
Here’s what I started with in November, 2022.
 

 
The kit is beautiful, well-detailed and nearly free of flash and mold lines. State of the art when it was released in 1974. Parts fit well and the few large pieces that were slightly warped (no kit is perfect) were fixable with a little work. The box was delivered in November. I stared at the pieces for a while and then started reading reference books, websites, and build logs. I learned a lot from other Soleil Royal build logs on this forum and others. I am continually delighted, amazed, and entertained by the work of Marc LaGuardia (Hubac’s Historian) and his correspondents. The work I’ll be showing off here is the direct result of the knowledge they have generously shared. I’m a metaphorical fig newton, standing on the shoulders of giants, or however it goes. 
 
I didn’t clip a sprue or squeeze a glue tube until February, but here’s what my project looked like in August, after six months work—finally ready for masts and rigging. (More beauty shots at the end of the post.) 

I propose to show how I got to this point in weekly posts that will also contain some hopefully-interesting-slash-useful history and background of the ship. There’s a lot of stray information (and disinformation) about this ship floating around, and I’m going to try and assemble all the important bits in one place. The prototype was a remarkable work of Baroque art as well as a weapon of war. A floating castle of death-dealing artillery decorated by the same artistes who built and filigreed the palace of Versailles. The dichotomy is delicious.
 
SO WHAT IS BEHIND HELLER’S KIT?
The model is patterned after an 1837 wooden ship model in Paris’s Musée National de la Marine, made by the skilled ship modelmaker Jean-Baptiste Tanneron. You’ll be hearing about the Tanneron model a lot. Copying it was a logical thing for the Heller mold-crafters to do, since it was the only well-known detailed representation of the Soleil Royal from historic times. One of the first things I did was tape together half the hull and propped it up to make a comparison photo.
 

 
But copying the Tanneron model brought Heller problems. The first is the true identity of the ship. There were three ships built in Louis XIV’s time named Soleil Royal. The first was built in 1668–70. Hereafter, I’ll call that one Soleil Royal I. The second was a from-the-keel-up rebuild of the first ship in 1688–90. That’s Soleil Royal I(a). The third was a new ship built in 1692–93, Soleil Royal II. All three were 100+-gun premier rang three-decker royal flagships, extravagantly ornamented to reflect the glory of Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil, the Sun King. The Musée de la Marine is noncommittal about which ship Tanneron’s model represents.
 
According to Heller’s literature, the kit represents the first two ships (considered as one), which met its fate in an encounter with an English fire ship in 1692. I’ve come to believe this is the wrong ship. Heller is partially to blame for the confusion, but in their defense, the Heller die-makers working in the early 1970s didn’t have the instant access to books and internet information we enjoy today, and the museum authorities they consulted were apparently not very helpful.
 
The second major problem with the model is that the hull has too shallow a draft. According to surviving records, the 2400-ton 170-foot ship should have a draft of 24 feet. The Tanneron and Heller models—nope!
 

 
Third, to compound the problem, the above-the-waterline dimensions are exaggerated. The gundecks have lots of headroom—eight feet, compared to the six feet on actual 3-decker warships. There would be very few cases of concussion by clumsy gunners going bonk on overhead beams if they sailed on a ship with Tanneron’s dimensions. Here’s the Heller model with a scale line drawing of another ship from the same time period, the Foudroyant:
 

 
Aaaand… let’s quit there. Let’s not even discuss the height and width of the stern.
 

 
What was Jean-Baptiste Tanneron thinking? Unfortunately, we can’t ask without a ouija board. It should be noted, however, that before the invention of photography, representations of historical objects in artwork (or sculpture, or modelmaking) weren’t anywhere near modern standards of accuracy. Living in an information-and-photography-saturated society, our attitudes about fidelity to prototypes have evolved a lot.
 
For myself—I think the impression of a tall, castle-like warship is enhanced by Tanneron’s exaggeration of the proportions. And this is no modern interpretation. Have a look at the only eyewitness sketch of one of the Soleil Royals in action. Look how high the exaggerated sheer is in the drawing and compare that to the Tanneron model. Oh yeah! Both artists made this ship big, and high, and a true seagoing fortress. That should be the biggest takeaway from seeing artwork or a model of this leviathan. I think the Tanneron model (and the Heller kit) gets the point across nicely. 
 

 
So in the end, if you choose to build the Heller Soleil Royal, you’re really building a model of a 19th-century model, and it’s a caricature model anyway. For complete intellectual honesty, you should get out your wood-colored paints and wood-grain-duplicating techniques and make the model look as if it were carved from fine hardwoods; a model of Tanneron’s model. That would be a commonsensical approach.
 
Fortunately for me, I have no common sense when it comes to models. I want have fun detailing, painting, and rigging a plastic model ship. Here are more photos of my progress up to August, 2023.
 

 
Not much gold leaf on my version of the ship. After some reading, I don’t believe there was a great deal of gilding on the prototype. Figuring out what to paint the ship, based on surviving descriptions, old artwork, historical painting practices, and antique models, was a major part of the research. Paint choices and decorations will be discussed in later posts.
 

 
Deck furniture got changed. Many trips to Ikea.
 

 
Much time was pi—ah, productively spent—rigging tiny guns and rebuilding tiny boats.
 

 
Guns were either replaced or rearranged and drilled out to the right calibre. Colorful gunport lids will be installed as soon as I finish the channels and shrouds. 104 guns were mounted, same as the ship had in the period I’m trying to model (very early 1700s). The waterline got raised to squeeze in a few more feet of draft. Quarter galleries got entirely rebuilt to better resemble a surviving historical drawing.


 
I believe that the enclosed “bottle” quarter galleries on late 17th-century French warships had removable panels—whether for weather or for war. I left the upper gundeck balcony open to demonstrate this. 
 

 
Most of the ship’s gilding is up high—out of the way of waves and wear. 
 

 
Wasn’t happy with the too-big kit-supplied figures, plus, I needed a few new ones to match the drawing of the quarter galleries I was referencing, so I sourced new figures from the Shapeways 3D-print marketplace. Figuring out all the ship’s iconography was a deep research rabbit-hole, but a rewarding one. For the curious, the figures on the forward edges of the quarter galleries are Kronos, “father time,” (starboard), and his consort Rhea, mother of the Olympian gods (port). The other two figures are replacements for the kit’s too-large allegorical figures of America (port, with feathers) and Africa (starboard, with elephant-head headdress). The figures were “dressed” with additional sheet styrene.
 
Next week we’ll get the project going by seeing what mods and additions were made to the hull, plus background on the three Soleil Royals and the whys behind which one I’m modeling. I invite discussion in the meantime. Happy modeling 'till then!
 
 

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

Thank you druxey!
 
Well, Augsburg is now over and all buyers of my block collection have received a free update that includes the Steel specifications. I hope I haven't forgotten anyone, if not please let me kno 🙂

And after all those blocks, time for a chang 🙂

A long time ago I had already presented the built Brodie stove. Cooking place for 800 men.

First mishap - I had actually misplaced it for almost a year ...

Second mishap - space test and the stove turned out to be 2 mm too high ...

In the meantime, because of the unavailability of the original, I had made it again in print ...



... on the right the recovered stove, in the centre the first print - also too high - and on the left the right-scaled version, here the printing technique actually helped to quickly define the correct size, as I had scaled the stove in 2 % steps and could therefore simply place the results on my deck and select the appropriate size.





And the winner is:













XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn

The best parties always take place in the kitchen.

First of all, of course, we need the kitchen worktop. Coincidentally, one of the prints I had made for the Revell Constitition fits like a glove, no wonder, almost the same scale and the design was based anyway on the design of the British 😉

Anyway, the kitchen and hearth are only worth as much as the life that takes place there.



The first three men assigned to kitchen duty were quickly pressed. Frederick Bush, the 24-year-old, hunky German is fetching firewood, Irishman Thomas Foley, at 47 one of the oldest crew members on board, will be working on a meat-like structure and Hans Yaul from Switzerland will be chasing the protein-rich maggots out of the cheese with his big knife.

Number 4 was more of a challenge. It's always nice when the kits come with little men, but they're usually not the right kind of hands-on character. Here on the right is a sailor from the Constitution kit.



Any sailor would immediately fall over on land with his legs in a row like this, so I first changed the leg position to a stable three-point position and also tilted the head slightly for the dynamics. After all, he should be fuelling the stove. However, the test position then showed a completely incorrect and far too static posture for this.

So he bent his back and brought his second arm into a working position. Now he finally looks like somebody doing a job.



Number 4 is alive 🙂

I then used one of my misprints to prepare the wood filling. The grill at the front of the Brodie Stove has 3 sections, so apparently you can fire it in 3 sections depending on what capacity you need. This is also the log length that dear Frederick has in his arms at the moment.



Afterwards, the lower decks are secured against falling objects with cotton wool pads ...



... and the grill is carfully loaded with firewood. We now know that our dear Lord of the Fire is 28-year-old James Caton from Brazil, with the logs that Frederik has placed in front of him and two bags of coals next to him for a nice, even heat.



And here you can already see why I had to shorten the height of the Brodie Stove compared to the original drawings: of course it has to pass under the deck beam and the two lids at the top should still be accessible. That's why there is a gap of exactly one deck beam width between the chimney and the lids at the top. How these two boilers could be effectively operated and cleaned with this limited access is still beyond my understanding.

Just like the automatic turning mechanism of the grill spit at the front. I know of English country houses that have a similar system, but there are usually much larger fires at work. The mechanics of the drive chain and the corresponding bearing of the spit are also not yet technically comprehensible to me in detail, even if they are based on identical plans in the NMM.

Furthermore, you have to bear in mind that the whole stove in Portsmouth is only a replica based on the plan just mentioned. I think back then, the stove size and installation situation were customised for each ship. Whether this is all correct in the replica is therefore not known. And fortunately, the difference in height is no longer noticeable once installed in the model.

And while we're on the subject of size and deck height, Frederick, with his height of 1.9 metres, which was unusual for the time but not uncommon, also has a problem here ...



... that standing is just about possible, but the next deck beam is already lurking for his head.



So he was clever enough to adopt a slightly more stooped posture to wriggle himself past the firewood, the coal bags and the water barrels.

In the small cooking chamber you can already see that with two people it's going to be a tight squeeze, especially if there's someone else working on the stove. I have deliberately avoided decorating the worktop like the breakfast buffet in Portsmouth, as everyone brings what they need for cooking from their mess and has to leave a clean worktop afterwards. After all, this is the only cooking area for 800+ crew members.

And that's the end of the small picture in the picture, just a few more impressions 🙂











Prost Mahlzeit,

XXXDAn