Chuck

Thank you Bruce... I must say its nice to work on the model with regularity now. I forgot what that feels like.

With the benches all done, its finally time to permanently glue those stern windows in position. This includes the acetate for the simulated glass. Just a tiny drop of glue was used to glue the wooden window frames in permanently. Then the acetate... For these as you might know, you cant use CA glue. It will fog up the acetate awful and look pretty bad. You want to use as little glue as possible or even no glue at all. We will be positioning window sills inboard to finish off the look. They will also hold your acetate in position. With the acetate in position I proceeded to cut lengths of 1/4" x 1/32" strips to fit between each window as a sill. This is tricky slow work but well worth the effort. It gives the whole stern bench area a clean look. You will cut these to shape just like we did for the transom cap. Just notch them out and leave a slight over hang. You can see my final piece yet to be positioned below. To complete this area sand the forward edge after all of these pieces are glued in place to even out the overhang. Then apply some wipe on poly. I am quite happy with the results even though most of this detail will be hard to see at all once the quarter deck is framed and planked. I also thought I would mention that the way I like to work is from the stern forward with all the deck details etc. Next I will start adding the ringbolts, cleats and other features to the bulwarks and get the cannon in position. But first there is something else that can be done and you guys dont even have to wait until chapter 5 comes out. You should be able to gather up all the materials you need. I am referring to the gun port lids. You will need five per side. There are many ways to make these of course. In this case I will be using brass strips blackened. But its easy metalwork. No soldering!!! I made one port lid today just to go through the process. I will detail how I am going to make these so you guys who are waiting, can do these ahead of receiving Chapter 5. They are working port lids. I will show the aft lid closed on my finished model but you guys can do otherwise. I will keep them all closed while I am working on other stuff to protect them. So the port lids are next to be made before I start the bulwark details.

Im not sure what accommodations you are referring to. I am sure there was something however. No I am going to leave the sliders off the model. I preferto just leave those Qgallery entries open.

Well that is a great start. Hopefully you will get those parts soon. Shipping is a mess right now just about everywhere. Welcome to the group.

Thanks Ryland. An O scale sleeping cat would be the perfect addition on top of that rudder trunk. Maybe I can find a decent one out there. Chuck

The benches are pretty simple as well. You just want to follow the curve of your transom. This might be different slightly from model to model. First, you add one of the bench sides to the side of the rudder trunk. See below. Note how the top aft point of the side is even with the break along the inboard counter. At the same time, assemble the front panel for the bench with the other side. Have it ready to glue into position. It will sit on top of the lower counter. But you can see how the front panel is actually up on the lower counter and not actually on deck. This is correct. The benches will not extend all the way to the bulwarks. keep in mind that the bottom of the front panel is beveled so it will fit snug along the forward edge of the bench on top of the curved counter. To finish it off, add the tops of the benches. Bevel the back edge so it fits the counter. It really finishes off the great cabin nicely. The bench tops overhang ever so slightly along the front edge and of course the ends as well.

That is looking fantastic....

It would have but I like to try new stuff. These are also a lot longer than on Cheerful. But in the end when done carefully and cleanly it looks the same. Just another way to do the same thing.

Thanks The rudder trunk is pretty straight forward. Parts are all laser cut but will probably require minor tweaking to fit everyone's model perfectly. There is a laser cut rectangular build jig marked with an X. This is to help you build it squared up. The two sides are glued to this first as shown below. But before you do....test fit each side panel at the stern to make sure it fits. Make adjustments to get it snug against the inboard side of the counter. Then glue them to the side of the base jig.....keep the sides at right angles. Then add the front panel....easy - peasy. Then add the top. Keep in mind that the aft edge of the top is beveled so it fits snug against the counter planking. The top also has the slightest overhang and the edges were softened a bit. No hard edges. Its not glued on yet. There will be two benches on each side of the trunk which I will make next.

To finish up the rudder and get it installed, it is just a matter of repeating the process of placing the hinges on the rudder post. They are also wooden and laser cut from boxwood. Just make sure you are carful to line them up with their partners on the rudder and angle them properly. See below. Once again the edges were painted black ahead of time. Interesting is the fact that you will have to line up the holes in these so you can hang the rudder in place. That is not an easy feat. But here is a good cheat or trick. You only really need two pins on the rudder to engage the hinges on the hull. Just the top and bottom really need the pins engaged. So you can literally snip them off the other hinges or not add them to begin with. They are not seen and on a scale model dont really serve a purpose. I did this and I bet you cant tell!!! Then add long strips of 1/16" x 1/32" boxwood just ahead of the hinges to use as the straps. Take their lengths from the plans. This is just as we did on the rudder itself. Paint the edges of the strips black first. Once glued onto the hull with the angles all matching, you can sand them all down thinner so they look in scale. Again, once painted and weathered they will look like metal pintels and gudgeons. But look at the photo below. At this stage I marked in pencil where the bolts should be. Then I drilled holes for the black monofilament. I used a #73 bit. Insert the black 20lb fishing line into the holes and snip the ends off leaving them stand proud to simulate the bolt heads. Here is the finished rudder with bolt heads. Its painted black and weathered a little bit. Also notice the small bowtie plate under them. This is laser cut for you out of laser board. Bolts were simulated on this as well. I also added the horse shoe plate at the bow along the gripe. This is also laser cut for you. A bit of weathering powders were used here also. That is it for this update and now I will start on that rudder trunk and benches inboard in the great cabin.

Thats coming along fine.....There is a PDF of the friezes in the downloads forum. You can print out as many as you need. Just print them on plain printer paper. Same is true for the flags and other details and templates.

Nope...its 9 planks. With the end of the tick strip also falling on a line....see below. Cut some thin tick strips from paper. Hold them along the edge of the frames with the end of the tick strip against the keel rabbet. You will need to mark the overall length of the frame from the keel rabbet to the sheer. Its very easy to do. ...Take that tick strip and lay it on top of your planking fan. Because we know that this area will need to be split evenly into nine planks, its just a matter of sliding down the fan until it fills the space up. Then mark the strip with 9 tick marks. with one end of the strip against a line. The black horizontal lines on the planking fan were just put there so I have some reference to help me keep the strip level rather than angled. ..Take that strip back over to the same frame and transfer all those tick marks onto the frame edge. All of the frames have been marked except for the three frames at the bow and the three frames at the stern.

That is too soft in my opinion for ship models. Even softer than basswood.

Looking excellent!! A very nice Syren. 😀

Looks good. Cover the stem with heavy tape or some painters tape to protect it while planking.

Should have more in a couple of weeks. At Syren. A few weeks ago I completely sold out of every size. Except for a handful of triple blocks, I literally sold them all over a four day period. Which was insane. About 20,000 blocks. so i have been slowly restocking them. I am about 1/2 way through making more.

Coming along really well. Keep up the fine work.

Just sand it flush inboard instead. Thats the way to go.

I would redo it...but thats my preference. A very out of scale cap rail is typical on most models and kits. The importance of sanding down the bulwarks thin enough is crucial otherwise the model will look clunky and toy-like which unfortunately happens a lot. At that width the cap rail would be 2 feet wide on the actual ship. If you can try and picture that. It will be tough to do at this point though. You would only be able to sand the outer layers by abut 1/64" on each side. The good thing however is that you will be adding the hammock cranes and these should obscure the width of the cap rail a bit....but not much. For any model....its best to go thinner with the bulwarks than the other way around. It makes for a much more elegant model in scale. Maybe remove the outboard molding and sand the hell out of the bulwarks to taper them as much as possible to get it thinner along the shear. Just a gradual tapering towards the sheer inside and out. Chuck

Its grumbacher acrylic in a tube. Just plain crimson. Straight from the tube thinned down with water.

Thanks...yes these parts will be in chapter 5. But not the monofilament. You guys should puck some up in various weights. I use Sunset Amnesia black fishing line.

Finally an update as life returns to normal....well not exactly during these times but I am back on the project. Since I want I turn the hull over so I can drill the rudder port, I thought I would put the rudder together. This should be the last time we have to turn the hull upside down.... So the rudder. I was originally going to go with a one piece rudder....BUT...I was pleaded with to do a built up version as well. I cant do both because that would be a lot of wood that would end up being tossed. That would be a an incredible waste of 1/4" thick wood. So a built up version it is. To begin, glue the three main pieces of the rudder together with PVA. Dont sand the joints at all because they are precision laser cut for a snug tight fit. No need to use pencil on the seams either. The laser char simulates that nicely. You can see below how tight the pieces fit. Then add a 1/4" by 3/64" strip along the aft edge as shown on the plans. That is followed up with a small length of 1/4" x 1/16" strip along the bottom of the rudder. So far easy-peasy. But then you must sand and shape the rudder to the typical shape. Meaning the rudder blade tapers narrower towards the aft lower edge. Quite a bit actually to around 5/32" thick at the bottom aft corner. The forward edge where the rudder hinges will go...this edge needs to be chamfered on both side almost its entire length. But all the way. Again...you should follow the plan which I will attach at the bottom of this post..its 8 1/2" x 11" so you can print it out and keep beside you as you work on the rudder. When satisfied, the pintels and gudgeons will be made from boxwood. They may be fragile to handle but once glued to the rudder are just as strong as brass. I painted the top and bottom edges black right away. This will make a nice crisp edge when you glue them on so painting these small edges will only require a bit of touch up. I hope that makes sense. I also inserted the pins into the pintels ahead of time. Dont make them too long. The straps of these hinges are too thick initially. Dont worry about that at this time. Just glue them onto the rudder as shown on the plan. There are five of them with the longest one at the bottom. Keep the angles consistent. You can see one of them temporarily slid into position. Once glued on..... Sand the straps thinner. I sanded mine to about 1/32" thick or slightly thinner towards the aft edge. See below. Note how the pre-painted edges are nice and crisp after sanding these straps free of laser char. There are a few more iron bands and the spectacle plate as well. For these I just used 1/16" x 1/32" strips. Much easier to work with. All of these details are shown on the plan. Just take your time. The edges of the strips were painted black first just like the pintels. Then the outsides were sanded thinner and the hard corners softened up a bit. I also took this time to mark the locations for the bolts along the straps with a sharp pencil. Then I drilled the holes with a #73 bit so I could insert some 20 pound black monofilament in them. This was used to simulate the bolts. It was inserted into each hole and snipped clean so the ends stood proud of the straps a bit simulating the bolts. To finish it up, The wood hinges and straps were carefully painted black. Then I used a bit of weathering powder to help them look like metal. See below. Lastly, I added the two ring bolts for the spectacle plate from 22 gauge wire and a tiny portion of 1/8" x 1/8" strip to simulate the aft end of the tiller sticking through the rudder head. You can see that below. Its just 3/64" thick. I did soften all the aft edges before gluing that on. Thats it!!! A down and dirty laser cut rudder with tabled joints. Over the next couple of days I will drill that rudder port and repeat the process of gluing the rudder hinges to the stern post so I can install the the rudder. Stay tuned. And there is no reason why you couldnt use brass for the metal work if you prefer. But I know most of you dont have the equipment to do the soldering and that is a whole additional skillset. But you can use brass if you want. This is a great way to simulate the same results however. Here is the PDF of the rudder as well for download. rudder.pdf

Looking good.

That looks great. Now its time for the fun part.

In the other tabs above......where the other discussions are ongoing. https://modelshipworld.com/forum/93-general-project-discussions-on-planking-fittings-and-monograph-chapters/