Erik W

Thanks for the kind words guys, and the likes. Al, I'm also a bit apprehensive about the mast, spars, and rigging. I'm currently sloooooowly making progress on the bowsprit. Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday. With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging. It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here. So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos. Haha. The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break. I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit. I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same. The last photo is my humble little work area. To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project. Erik

Thanks for the nice comment Al, and thanks everyone for all the likes. My latest progress was fashioning the tiller. I cut the extra tiller from the plans (Chuck has 2 tillers drawn on the plans), and using double sided tape applied it to 1/8" boxwood sheet. I cut the tiller out to a slightly bigger size than needed, and then just took my time removing material and shaping it over the last week. I'd say the most challenging part of this was getting the ball shaped at the end to be as close to spherical as I could. It's not perfect, but close enough. I had not attached the rudder permanently to the ship when I made it months ago. This turned out to be a good decision since it was easier to get the tiller fitted to the rudder off the model. The joint between the rudder and tiller is reinforced with a short length of .032" diameter brass wire. I securely glued the rudder in place with wood glue applied to the gudgeons. I'm on the home stretch now with the deck details! Erik

Jeff, Thanks for the kind words. Since the angle that we took the photos of this stage of our builds is different, it's hard to tell if the curvature at the bow is the same or not. Either way, yours doesn't look like it's not where it should be. Erik

I continue to work on the details on the deck. Since my last update I've added the split rings and eye bolts to the deck. I put extra effort into making these as perfect as I could get them, since they are so easily visible on the deck. After much trial end error I got the results I was looking for with making the eye bolts that hold the deck split rings as small as possible out of 28 gauge wire. Next up was making the mast coat. With no power tools, this was quite a challenge. The hardest part was actually just making the wood washer out of sheet stock. The inner diameter is purposefully a tad bit small at this point. Once I have the mast made, I'll sand the hole wider to fit. The galley stack was pretty straight forward. This was dusted with rust weathering powder after painting. And lastly, I made the elm tree pumps. These were pretty straight forward as well. The black areas of these were also dusted with rust weathering powder. I took extra care to get them aligned/oriented properly on the deck. Erik

Jeff, When compared to my own placement of the wale, I think your wale placement looks good. Here's my post from that stage of the build: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/12512-hm-cutter-cheerful-1806-by-erik-w-148-scale/page/3/#comment-395794 Your wale does curve under the counter at the stern more than mine. I don't know if that will be an issue or not though. I actually had a difficult time planking under the wale at the stern since the transition from the stern wale to the lower planking was quite a sharp angle as seen here: https://modelshipworld.com/uploads/monthly_2023_09/Cheerful(195).JPG.42400cb70242dfae3b90a753a39f5af3.JPG So maybe that curve on yours will make the lower planking transition smoother. The fashion pieces you'll add later might be difficult to shape though. Erik

Hey Glenn, I thought I'd chime in too. Your Winnie is a superb work of art. I reference your Cheerful build regularly as I progress with my own Cheerful. One thing I have noticed as I've also been following this build log is you've managed to really raise your own bar with the quality, precision, and finish of this model when compared to your Cheerful. Don't get me wrong, your Cheerful is amazing, which is why it's one of the builds I regularly reference. But your Winnie is simply superb. I can't wait to see what you tackle next. Erik

I reached a milestone this week. I finished the carronades. I spent the last week making rope coils and gluing them in place. I used Glenn's (glbarlow) method, described in his Cheerful build log, of wrapping the rope around dowels glued into a piece of wood strip and securing the ends to the edge of the wood strip while the glue dried. For glue I used diluted mat medium with a small amount of rubbing alcohol mixed in (this reduces surface tension). I like mat medium for applications like this since it doesn't dry glossy, and in this case also doesn't darken the rope's color. Once the coils were dry, I trimmed the ends of the gun tackle rope, and glued those to the deck using wood glue. I then glued the coils down with Elmer's white glue. I haven't used any kind of finish/sealer on this build so wood glue/white glue binds to the bare wood easily enough. The last two photos below are brutally enlarged close ups, showing the gun rigging, warts and all as they say. I'm actually quite happy with the way the carronades turned out. This finished Chapter 10 of Chuck's monograph. I looked back at my older posts, and it took me 6 months of daily progress to work through Chapter 10. Luckily I'm not in any kind of hurry! And a quick funny story: I had a random ship building dream (my first model building dream ever) where I dreamt that my arm hit one of the boom crutches and it broke off. I woke up, and had the thought, "OK, I need to watch my arms and hands around the boom crutches". That day, while working on the Cheerful, I was conscious of watching myself around the stern of the ship. While finishing up, I partially moved a magnifying light I build under out of the way. A few minuted later I moved the Cheerful, sitting on it's build board, toward me. I then heard an audible snap as the boom crutch hit the edge of the magnifying light. I turned my head in time to see the starboard boom crutch sailing through the air, on a beautiful arc, like an Olympic downhill ski jumper. It seemed I had time to go through the entire 5 stages of grief before the part landed on the rug. So . . . I spent part of the last week reattaching the boom crutch and touching up the surrounding paint. I'm sure anyone reading this can relate to this story. Haha. Erik

Al, Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, if you look at the time stamps on my posts you see I took a 6 1/2 year break from the build after I finished planking the hull. So I know what it's like to drift away from the hobby for a bit. Thanks again, Erik

Glenn, And I appreciate your recommendation a few months ago. The fly tying thread works great for small applications. Erik

In the last couple of weeks I've finished the gun tackles on 9 of the 10 carronades. It took some trial and error to get these the way I wanted them. My first attempt at seizing both blocks might have been more prototypical, based on the photos I was looking at, with a noticeable small gap between the block and the rear of the attached rigging hook, with the seizing in between. This though made the two blocks on the sides of the carronades closer to one another, which to my eye, looked less visually appealing than having the blocks spaced further apart. So, I settled on rigging the blocks with the back of the hooks nearly touching the blocks and with the seizing done using 72 denier 8/0 W fly tying thread (see bottom photo), rather than small sewing thread. This also kept the seizings from looking too bulky, which I've noticed from looking at photos of other builds, can tend to happen when rigging smaller blocks. One accidental challenge I made for myself is not paying attention to Chuck's instructions for using 28 gauge wire to make the eye bolts on the carronades. I inadvertently used 24 gauge wire, but formed to the correct outside diameter as shown on the plans. When I realized this, I thought it would be no big deal. The problem is that it left a hole that Chuck's 3mm black plastic rigging hooks barely fit into. Some eye bolts wouldn't take the hooks at all, or the hooks broke while trying to attach. So . . . . I had a sheet of the old brass 3mm hooks. I super glued two of those together so they're the same .020" thickness as the black plastic hooks, and then was able to bend them as required. I only used these on the rear blocks where the hook is vertical, so intermixing the black plastic hooks with the brass hooks wouldn't be noticeable. And I figure accidentally using the thicker 24 gauge wire for the eye bolts vs. the correct 28 gauge wire isn't noticeable since the outside diameter of the loop is the same as it would be with the smaller diameter wire. Anyway, that's my cautionary tale of why reading comprehension is important in model building. Haha! Also, between the making the breech rope and the gun tackles, I'm feeling much more self-assured as I approach the rigging phase of the build. I'm more confident that the outcome of the rigging will be of the same standard I've achieved for this build thus far. Erik

Yikes! That was always my fear at that stage of my Cheerful build. Having to remove something I had glued in place. Nice job on not breaking anything! And you're right in wanting to correct noticeable mistakes now. Anything out of sorts at this stage will just create and compound problems down the road. Erik

Johann, I agree with Greg above, your rigging really sets the standard for what can be accomplished. As I enter the rigging stage on my build (currently with the carronades and cannons), I'm inspired by your work. While being a beginner myself, your close-up high resolution photos are very helpful as I learn what I need to do. I feel with the rigging, more than any other aspect of the build, photos are most helpful with visualizing how to accomplish the tasks. Erik

I finished the breech ropes. I definitely got better at the seizings as I did more of them. It's hard to see, but the seizings on the starboard side are a bit more clean looking than the port side. More importantly, I feel more comfortable with this intro to rigging stage of things. So, I may actually be able to do a credible job of rigging this thing after all. Now onto the gun tackles . . . Erik

This week I've been in assembly line mode with fashioning the breech ropes and attaching them to the carronades, and then attaching the carronades to the deck. Chuck's advice on the seizings above has been invaluable for a newby like me. Six down, four to go . . . *note: It looks like I'm using different color red paint. It's the same bottle of Vallejo red I've used all along, but I've noticed it looks more orange when newly applied, but for some reason darkens to more red over time. Weird. At any rate, when not under the bright glare of a closely positioned halogen light for photos, the variation is not noticeable to the naked eye. Erik