Gaetan Bordeleau

Because the question of choosing which wood to use for model ship building comes and comes again, I wanted to write another page about it.
 
At the end, the choice you will do will be a personal choice as many activities like you can prefer to cut a plank with a hand saw or an electric saw. There is no good or bad choice, it is a strictly a personal choice guided by our preferences.
 
Here is why I chose cherry wood to be the only wood I use for model ship building.

Because the question of choosing which wood to use for model ship building comes and comes again, I wanted to write another page about it.
 
At the end, the choice you will do will be a personal choice as many activities like you can prefer to cut a plank with a hand saw or an electric saw. There is no good or bad choice, it is a strictly a personal choice guided by our preferences.
 
Here is why I chose cherry wood to be the only wood I use for model ship building.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

If 1/48 is massive, you would need to be crazy to build a 74 at 1/24! 

What goes well for yesterday photos set up, strangely it is easier to take deep inside photo without flash, only with LED lights.
Today's photos, again the key factor is  the LIGHTING more than the camera. For interior photos of today, a smaller camera was used.
 
Which of these camera will gives the better result:  a phone, or one action camera? Action camera is the good answer. I have been experimenting for years "small cameras". The first one was a Microsoft 1080p, up to the last one in 2020, a 4K Yi camera. Today the small camera used was a Go Pro. As with every camera, there is a learning curve, and I am still learning this one, but the results look like promising.

Yes they are Marc.
 
There is a copy of these drawings in" La Frégate, Marine de France, 1650-1850, by Jean Boudriot.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

What goes well for yesterday photos set up, strangely it is easier to take deep inside photo without flash, only with LED lights.
Today's photos, again the key factor is  the LIGHTING more than the camera. For interior photos of today, a smaller camera was used.
 
Which of these camera will gives the better result:  a phone, or one action camera? Action camera is the good answer. I have been experimenting for years "small cameras". The first one was a Microsoft 1080p, up to the last one in 2020, a 4K Yi camera. Today the small camera used was a Go Pro. As with every camera, there is a learning curve, and I am still learning this one, but the results look like promising.

A very Happy New Year to you too, Carl, and every body. In fact, it was "fer blanc" which translate as tin. Effectively, aluminum conducts the heat, as well the electricity. I would be inclined to think that they covered with tin to protect the brick. I guess that you are right about the insulating properties of salt between the fire and the deck. If you look in (#825), first photo, under the oven, there is a drawing on top right, salt is colored in yellow. The oven is about 4 feet high, so the salt layer is about 1 foot thick. 
 
Nothing is glued yet in that part of the deck, so I might add another layer under the oven, just above the deck. To prevent the embers from burning the floor, a layer of lead was added. Also, as protection, on the top of the oven, under the forecastle, a large sheet of red copper with 2 holes for the smoke evacuation was added. I guess, it would a fair statement to say that the fire was surrounded by metal !
 
The oven is fixed to the decks from above and below with 8 iron pegs attached by ropes. This way of fixing the oven, makes it independent of the ship, because if it was united to the boat, it would dislocate brickwork.
 
And for the last question, about the boat, the answer is easier than you could think:  I just wanted to check color rendering, the white balance ,we could say, just before a shooting, for my wife. I could have photographed any object, but I choose one that I knew well.
 
 

The work continues on the second fore deck. We have 3 ovens on this 74 guns: 1 for the bread on the first deck, and 2 on the second deck: 1 for the pastries and the last one for the kitchen.
 
To be homogeneous in their manufacture, the 3 were made with orange bricks. Emphasis was places on the different layers of the kitchen oven: plank, salt or layers of bricks, brick and sheet metal. Is it the salt or the brick which dissipates heat best, I do not know. As for the salt, we know that the salt can resist to the heat, by example in a recipe of salt crusted fish, but how the salt would resist to heat  in a long period of time is another question. We can guess it can resist, because if not, they would not have used it.

I needed a model to prepare the lighting, so I took the boats

There is a second oven on the ship. The pastry oven is intended for high ranks officer tables only. Before cooking the pastries, embers are placed on the floor tiles of the oven until the pastry oven is hot enough. The opening of the oven is on the port side. All that concerns the service of the meals for the officers takes place on port side under the forecastle. For this reason, a wall of planks separates the kitchen in 2.
 
The small oven weighs around 3500kg. The weight of the bread oven is 8000 kg. Around 150 kg of bread can be cook at the same time. The floor can be made of tiles or "oven earth"; clay soil mixture, limestone earth and sand.

Bricks are made from wood and colored with a mix of water based colors from Samana paint. This paint does an excellent job on wood. However, for the bricks, water is added to obtain a more "transparent color". If I do not do this, all the lines which define the brick contour will disappear and we will not see the individual bricks.
 
On the 2 last photos, we see the planking of the second deck. To make the treenails, there are 2 methods, the long and difficult one:  with a draw plate and a pair of pliers made to pull. Or there is the EASY way to make treenails: toothpicks. Up to few years ago, toothpick were made from wood like birch. Today, toothpicks come from China and are made from Bamboo. Each end of the toothpick is turned taper. This means that a broad range of diameters are covered with a single toothpick. The largest are for the knees each side as in the front. These treenails are for the "look", they are not very deep. When I really want the treenail to act as a real nail, I drill the hole much deeper up to come in the wall.
 
Cherry is a pale wood, treenails are also made from a pale wood. It is important that the treenails do not contrast too much with the wood, in this case cherry. At the opposite, if we use a dark wood for a pale structure, the contrast will be too great. The same think will happen If I would use brass nails. Visually, there should not be too much contrast, or the effect will lose his elegance. The thing is like this: If we look at the model, the hull by example, and we will only see an extreme abundance of head nails, we will not see what is behind, this is not the desired effect. I hope my explanation is clear enough.
 
 
 
 
 

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

Yes they are Marc.
 
There is a copy of these drawings in" La Frégate, Marine de France, 1650-1850, by Jean Boudriot.

What goes well for yesterday photos set up, strangely it is easier to take deep inside photo without flash, only with LED lights.
Today's photos, again the key factor is  the LIGHTING more than the camera. For interior photos of today, a smaller camera was used.
 
Which of these camera will gives the better result:  a phone, or one action camera? Action camera is the good answer. I have been experimenting for years "small cameras". The first one was a Microsoft 1080p, up to the last one in 2020, a 4K Yi camera. Today the small camera used was a Go Pro. As with every camera, there is a learning curve, and I am still learning this one, but the results look like promising.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

Hi Marc,
 
The best pictures I have:
 
1 and 2 Frégate Néréide 1720
3,4 unknown
5
 
Here is my guess. Before and after 1700 the shell would be wood and the inside bricks, metals parts came later, I would say after 1750.
The stove was not that big. It was not made to feed everybody, only the officers.
The location looks like to always be beneath the forecastle.
In 1780 the 74 guns had a copper sheet above the stove with 2 chimneys but not in 1680.
 
I would be caucious with Lemineur. I used his drawings for the frames of the 74 and he changed many parts shapes for obscures reasons. Trying to answer questions  before 1700 is often a guess, and the beauty of it, is that everybody can imagine what he wants, no one will come to  contredict him.

Redshirt, 
It is probably a nice interrogation to ask ourselves what it is the limit in the scale we can reach.
I did explore  few scales  and I am probably at the limit I can reach.
 
I remember vaguely to have seen about 30 years ago, in Montreal, a model  made to learn the rigging to the officers. The model was about 20 feet long.
At what scale I do not remember.

Preparation of the frames for the KIT.


 
I have to draw the other half of the plans.

Drawing is made by hand, it is easier to draw a circle than a straight line and all the frames are only curves


 
About 2/3 of the blanks are cut, a lot of wood is use and a lot of wood is thrown in the garbage, up to now 1 ½  trash can.