markjay

Hi, I think I want to copper the hull for the Prince De Neufchatel which comes without copper. How do you go about measuring the hull to determine how much is needed? I'm sure there is a formula for this. 
Thanks

I'd like to watch this build Jeff, I'm pulling up a seat.

Hi Peter, Mark, thanks for chiming in.
 
Research is a challenge, but it forces me to be more creative about finding answers. In fact, I thought further about the question about the large planks, and realized that I know a contact in Japan who's a professor at the Gifu Prefectural Forest Culture Academy! Doh!
 
His english is very good, and I'm hoping he can tell me something about wood cutting in Sengoku period Japan.
 
My guess, and it's just that, is that trees were felled, split with axes and wedges, then a crew with adz (adzes, adzs?) work the cut piece into a flat board. 
 
I hope to find out something in a few days. Keeping my fingers crossed that I'll get useful info... 🤞
 
In the meantime, I finally got the hull planking pretty well done. There's a little adjustment to do at the stern yet.
 

 

 

 
Next, there's a platform at the stern I need to decide on what to do with. Plus, there are 3 to 4 smaller beams between each of these large beams.
 
Meanwhile, I putting the deck on the box structure. I have to be very careful here, as I've been making some alterations. I have to make sure this doesn't mess up the addition of the structure's outer shell.
 

 
By the way, regarding that quote by Lt. Armand Paris on the planks of the Sekibune/Gozabune, what he refers to as a Galley, Here's the text in French script. If anyone can translate this, perhaps we'll discover that I've misquoted him regarding those plank lengths.
 

 
 
 

I'd like to watch this build Jeff, I'm pulling up a seat.

Well, I do hope you'll keep posting.  I do understand your research problems too.  

Japanese cedar seems to be quite an impressive tree. Most impressed with the logistics in transporting such huge logs/planks!
https://www.britannica.com/plant/Japanese-cedar
 
/Peter

Hi Mark, Druxey, thanks very much for the comments. It's not much fun posting a project on MSW if there's no discussion at all.
 
 
Mark, I do like doing research. Probably more than the actual model building. But, it would be nice if it were a little bit easier for me to do. I just finished up an early Meiji-period (1868-1912) fishing boat from Souvenirs de Marine, and there are a couple features that I have questions about and few resources for answers. For the Atakebune, it's far worse, as there's so little recorded information dating that far back. Unlike in the west, the Japanese don't have a tradition of keeping ship building records.
 
I had to go to Japan to get as much info as I have on the coastal transports. There are none actually in existence. What there are are all reconstructions, using what was known about the ships. But, those ships were around in the era of photography, so there is some visual evidence of construction techniques. Plus, there were people who were familiar with their construction alive well into the 20th century. There are also LOTS of votive models of them made.
 
 
Druxey, with this kit, I really needed to start planning the kit bashing before beginning. Also, I think to anyone who's been interested in the kit, the simplifications are fairly obvious, even if one has never seen the museum model it's based on. It's obviously been designed to be easy to build. But, that just leaves a lot of potential for the builder. 
 
Regarding your comment about the unlikely length of the hull planks of the Sekibune, I'm glad you pointed that out because that is really one of the dilemmas I'm facing with these ships, and it's why I posted his comment.
 
We're all of the same western mindset that planks can't be that big. I mean, how could they be? How could they manipulate or cut wood and find trees that big? Yet, here's a French Naval Officer who was in Japan in 1868, who clearly had the skills to record the details of many Japanese boats he encountered, down to noting the thick boards and beams and how they were fastened together, etc., and he makes this statement that the planks were one piece, end-to-end. It does seem unlikely, but he had the knowledge to make that statement and include it with his drawings.
 
Obviously, I'm no expert, but I often feel that I am attempting to understand that which can not be understood... 

Thanks both of you for your information and DrPR for your valued research. 

Fascinating, Claire.  Your build of these models and the history and "how they did it" shows a lot of research going on on your part.

Thanks both of you for your information and DrPR for your valued research. 

Thanks both of you for your information and DrPR for your valued research. 

On another thread, Ekis brought up an interesting point about these Woody Joe kits being light on detail and pointed out the issue of the large one-piece hull planks that appear on this model and even the original museum model. Now, I don't have any real answers here as to how the planking on these ships really was, but I have posted some thoughts on my blog that I thought I'd share here:
 
One thing that was brought up recently by a fellow ship modeler was the apparently simplistic representation of the hull planking on models of Japanese boats, particularly that of the larger ones like the Atakebune. The idea was that there's a desire on the part of western ship modelers for more detail, and that the large single sheet planks of the Atakebune kits hull wasn't exactly realistic. So, I've thought about this for a while.
 
It's true that Woody Joe kits lean towards easier construction, and trade-offs most certainly have been made regarding the inclusion of various details for lower cost of design work, materials, and easier assembly. This is true, to some degree, of any kit manufacturer. But, how were the hull planks really made up?
 
These large panels were certainly not made from one single sheet of wood, and must have been made up of various pieces fastened together. How large were the timbers that were available? How were they laid out to form these large panels? How were they joined together? How were the ends of timbers fastened together? Probably, nobody knows for sure. But, there are some examples we can follow, assuming that these are correct, or at least plausible.
 
One excellent example is to look at one of the replica coast transports that were built in the past few decades. While these are not Atakebune, the way they are constructed at least gives us something to possibly follow. The best example of these today is the Hakusanmaru, on Sado Island. This is the best preserved of the replica bezaisen, as the coastal transports were called.
 
I visited the ship in 2016 and took a lot of photos and tried to develop an understanding of the way these ships were built. The details of the structure is very complex, and what your seeing in these photos of the lower hull, is essentially a covering planking that hides and possibly protects the actual structural planking.
 

 
 
 

 
At the Hakusanmaru museum, there's a representation of the cross section of the hull which tells us a lot more about how the planks are fastened together, and the general scale of the wood that forms the main structure of the ship.
 

 

 

 
Again, this is a cutaway of the 25meter long bezaisen replica ship, not a 50meter long Atakebune. Their hull shapes, they are built for different purposes, and all. But, it gives you an idea of what a ship structure looks like with heavy planks and no frames.
 
As I pointed out earlier, this bezaisen had a kind of finish planking that was much lighter wood, and this hid these heavy iron nails. This kind of outer planking may or may not have been present on the Atakebune. And, probably, all Atakebune were different, and more prominent ones may have had a nicer finish. But, one things is clear. There are no scarf joints in these planks. There are overlapping joints in the structural planking. In the finish planking, there are simple butt joints, not staggered in any way.
But, the whole question of planking detail may be more complicated than it needs to be. As illustrated in the photos above, the Japanese shipwrights generally didn't caulk between planks the way their western counterparts did, except possibly at the chine, which are the sharp angle changes in the cross-section of the hull. So, there is little to show of the seam between adjacent planks.
 
In my own experience,  I have scratch built models of Japanese boats where a wide board is made up of two edge-fastened planks, and the only way you can tell that there are two pieces is really because the difference in the grain and figuring of the wood is visible, but only barely, and that's at 1/10 scale. At any larger scale, the seam would be completely invisible.
 
 
My Hozugawa Ayubune model in 1/10 scale. The hull is made up of 2 planks on each side, and you can barely see any seam between the planks at this scale.
 
Now, the length of the boards may be another matter. It's doubtful that an Atakebune hull was made of continuous planks, in this case, 50-meters long. Looking at the paintings of the large Edo period Hiratabune, which were cargo riverboats, they were up to about 24 meters long. At this length, the painting shows the two overlapping joints in the hull planking, making each plank section about 8 meters long.
 
 
The Hiratabune was a 24 meter long Edo period cargo riverboat. Note the overlapping hull planks.
 
So, probably, on an Atakebune, there is likely some fastening and overlap of planks like that shown in the Hiratabune illustration above. On a large hull, assuming longer planks were used, the number of these overlaps are minimized. And at 10 meter long planks, on the 50 meter long Atakebune, there would be about 4 of these overlaps. Of course, there would be fewer if they could manage to use longer plank.
 
However, if the hull of the Atakebune was finished the way the Hakusanmaru is finished with a covering of thin, narrow planks covering any fastenings and any of these plank overlaps, then at 1/100 scale, you wouldn't reasonably be able to identify ANY planks at all, and it would look like one solid sheet of wood.
 
 
Saga Prefectural Nagoya Castle Museum model.
 
But, I suppose if you want to assume otherwise and want fastenings and planks to show, there's a great example in the model of an Atakebune called the Atakemaru. I found photos on Internet, and I'm sorry to say I don't know where they specifically came from. But, it's a beautiful model, and shows the large planking overlaps, and some finer planking detail. Is this accurate at all? I can't say for sure. Certainly, it looks nice. So, maybe some builders will want to try to modify this Woody Joe kit into something more like that.
 

 
 
 
Now, having said all that, I'll add something more that comes from Lt. Armand Paris in 1868 regarding a 30 meter long ceremonial yacht that is essentially a decoratively enhanced Sekibune warship, which is the next size down from the Atakebune. The Sekibune is like a cruiser in comparison to the Atakebune being like a battleship.
 

 
Paris describes "The construction is very neat, the very wide planks are one piece from end to end they are nailed edge to edge" (the edge to edge is a guess. I couldn't get a proper translation).
 
By the way, if anyone has an actual, good translation of the text from the Souveniers de Marine Conserves, I'd love to get a copy. I had to transcribe the French script, some of which I could read, but most I had to use Google Translate. I was surprised at how readable the translations were. 
 
 

And now the swan-song for this lovely little build. These will be released within a couple of weeks. It's as close to giving birth as I can get 😆
 
Unlike Nisha, there are two masts to make here, but the mizzen is just a single piece of tapered dowel. The only difference between this and Nisha is that the mizzen carries another sail and also needs some simple shrouds and rats installing. 
 


 
 
To fit the bowsprit, the opening needs elongating. I used some 3mm dowel wrapped in 180 grit paper. This was tested until I got a nice fit with the bowsprit. 


 
 
If you buy the optional sail set, you will need to fit the sails before masting. Note that I dyed the sails in dark brown, which was quite typical for a working vessel of this period. 


 
 
 
Those shrouds and rats are so easy, as you can see. A ratline spacing template is provided on the plans, making this a whole lot easier for you. 




 
 
No one wants an MDF stand when the acrylic is far nicer. Here is the stand, complete with keel plug to make sure the model is properly aligned to waterline for display.

 
 
And the finals!







 
 
 
Thanks for checking in. Watch out for release very soon. 

I've spent quite a bit of time working out some of the modifications I'm going to be making on this kit. Some things that I might like to do would require some re-engineering and re-fabricating some of the wooden parts, so I don't know if I'll go that far here. Of course, I have a second kit, and I make try those ideas there. But, for this model, most of the modifications are going to be fairly simple.
 

 
As discussed before, the first thing I want to do is to get rid of those tabs that show through the wood at the bow and transom boards. I'd already started the process last time by thinning both those parts down. It may not be absolutely necessary to do that. At the transom, some other filing of parts could be filed down a little to accomodate a thicker transom. But, at the bow, it's pretty close the end ends of the hull planks, so making it thicker might make the bow stick out a little too much. Normally, this bow plate is shown as being somewhat recessed. However, I'm thinking I can adjust that slightly with the placement of the hull planks.
 
For the pieces that make up the hull bottom, I decided to go ahead and sheathe these parts without thinning them down. The bottom of larger vessels is very thick and often extends a bit below the lower planks anyway. So, the appearance would not be unnatural. This was an easy process.
 
 
All parts modified to cover visible tabs.
 
I ended up sheathing the transom piece with multiple strips of 1mm x 10mm wide hinoki. This would be 1 meter wide on the full sized ship, which is big, but certainly historically possible in terms of available lumber.
 
The bow piece was sheathed in two layers, to appear more closely to may drawings of Atakebune I have seen. This doesn't match the museum model, but I thought the simple added detail might make the model a little more visually interesting.
 
Happy with the way the parts were looking, I went ahead and glued them to the frame.
 
 
 
One change to note is that the bottom board on the museum model stops flush with the transom piece. This is one of those things that was bugging me a little and I'd been trying to figure out how the hull planks would run and if the structure would be badly affected if I modified the kit to more closely match.
 
Since it seemed like it would work out, I went ahead and cut the aft-most bottom board piece. However, I also placed the planks on the transom so that the bottom plank stuck out over the edge of the transom by about 1mm. I then made sure to trim the cut edge of the bottom board so that it made a nice fit into the little notch that created.
 

 
Meanwhile, I decided the box structure was going to work out, pretty much as is, at least at this stage, so I began gluing up those parts.
 

 
And maybe I've mentioned this before, but the one modification here is the small sunken steering deck. Given my experience with Japanese coastal transports of the later era, and the way the Japanese traditionally mounted rudders on larger vessels, because the rudder is raisable and needs to rotate slightly when raised, the simple square hole for the rudder post didn't see quite right. So, I ended up elongating the opening and I think I will also cut a slot in the bottom of that back wall.
 

 
The kit doesn't call for the planking of this lower deck, but it should be planked, just like with any deck. Because the walls will be visible, I'll also give them some kind of finish. Probably a simple planking as well. This will be an easy modification for my next post.
 
Meanwhile, check out the posts on the Zootoyz Facebook page showing the excellent progress being made by Mr. Kazunori Morikawa on his Atakebune build, his first wooden ship model kit ever. He's very far along on his build, and has got some very good ideas for some modifications too.
 
Edit: Note in the last photo, that bulkhead on the end is just pressed into place, it's not a permanent installation, so I didn't pay attention to its orientation for this photo. It's actually on there upside down. So, if you have the kit and are following along, don't copy the piece's orientation from this photo!
 
 

Kazunori Morikawa of Zootoyz has been posting progress on his Atakebune model on the shops Facebook page here. And, if I understand correctly, it's his first wooden ship model kit, and I think he's doing an awesome job building the kit and even modifying it to improve the presentation. I have no doubt he will be finished with it in the next few weeks, so you should check out his work if you don't mind going onto Facebook.
 
I don't think he will mind me sharing one of his build photos here. I will double-check with him of course. But, this gives you an idea of how this model kit will progress.
 
Again, this is from Morikawa-san's build, not mine...

 
If you wait for me to get this far along, you may have a long wait. I'm spending a lot of time seeing how parts fit together, so I know what kind of modifications I can reasonably get away with.
 
 
Back to My Model
 
For my own model, I'm pretty well sticking with the kit on the hull planking, though I may change the bow and transom boards a little as I mentioned earlier. But, before I get too far along, I've decided that I need to test fit things together to get a better understanding of what I might be able to modify without too much difficulty. So, I basically began taping the model together, temporarily fittings pieces into place.
 

 
There are essentially three distinct parts of this model: The lower hull, the boxy upper hull structure, and the castle structure. These can actually be built separately and out of order, and I'm considering doing just that. This will buy me some time to figure out what things I want to modify, since the castle-like structure should work pretty well, as is, and setting into place should help me gauge what I can do to the upper hull box structure to make it more unique.
 
In the meantime, I've dyed all the laser-cut sheets using Transtint wood dye. I've been using this stuff for years now. My mixture is 24 drops of Dark Vintage Maple to 9 drops of Amber, thinned down in a 2oz jar of denatured alcohol. The nice thing about using wood dye versus stain, is that dye does not affect glue joints, so can be applied before gluing parts together.
 
And, since this build log is supposed to be about my build, here's some photos of what should be the next parts that will actually go onto the model... maybe...
 
The bottom of the hull, as with all traditional Japanese watercraft, is keel-less. This is the main reason the rudders are so large, as they must act in place of the keel, keeping the ship from sliding sideways too much from wind pressure. Of course, it makes these vessels very easy to beach. the bottom of the model is composed of three interlocking sections with exposed tabs for alignment. Note that I've bent and test fitted these pieces into place, but haven't glued them at this stage.
 
Below the hull are the pieces for planking the sides. Obviously, the single, long pieces are a simplification. But, more on that later.
 

 
The bottom pieces are 2mm thick hinoki, which bends quite easily when damp, but do NOT try to bend the wood without dampening, as it won't bend, but will snap easily.
 
The exposed tabs are common on the Woody Joe models of Japanese boats. For most of these kits, it's never been an issue, as the bottoms of those boats and ships were commonly painted black. However, I've never seen an Atakebune represented with a painted bottom. If anything, the Japanese might have used fire to scorch the wood on the bottom to harden it and make it resistant to rot and insects.
 
But, the tabs are on the underside of the model, and will be very hard to see unless one picks up the model – not an easy task once all the sculling oars are added. So the tabs may be a non-issue. However, like with the bow plate and the transom plates, one easy possibility might be to sheath the bottom piece with 1mm wood. In fact, that could probably be done without thinning the existing pieces, as the bottom of these ships were thick, and may very well have protruded slightly below the bottom hull planks.
 

 

 

 
Sheathing would hide the tabs as well as those interlocking seams. 
 
Before I started this post, I was thinking I wasn't going to worry about it. But now, I'm thinking I may just do it. What the heck? I'm considering so many modifications now that the project will probably drag on for a lot longer than it should. As if I've never done that before!
 

Well, last night, I decided to update my blog, and I ended up writing and writing, and writing... and writing. I ended up spending hours, well into the wee hours of the morning writing. Much of what I wrote, I decided to store away for future discussions and blog entries, or maybe an article somewhere. 
 
For this build log, I'm starting with just the beginning of what I wrote, so there's room for others to chime in.
 
I hope others do chime in, as I'm not an expert in the area of Japanese boats and especially not an expert on these Sengoku Period warships. And, as a student of the subject, I'm learning as I go, and trying to retain what I've learned elsewhere (with my brain, that's getting increasingly difficult to do!).
 
Ekis brought up an interesting topic that I had to really think about, the true nature of these large, flat-sided hull planks presented by the Woody Joe kit and the Nagoya Castle Museum model. More about this later, but it's what I spent most of my time pondering and researching/reviewing. But for now, the model...
 
 
Moving Along
I'm taking it easy on getting this new model kit started. Last time I posted, I really only had cut out the initial parts I needed and then dry-fit them together. This week, I glued together the basic hull frames, using machinists squares to check and set alignment. I used Titebond wood glue for this work.
 

 
I spent a lot of time trying to decide what I wanted to do with the bow and transom pieces. These pieces have holes in them that alignment tabs in the keel piece will lock into. The thing I don't like about this, is that they are then visible on the finished model. As far as I can tell, there are 5 tabs total that will be visible on the completed model, as designed.
 
Since I'm dying the wood, these tabs shouldn't be as noticeable as on a kit built straight from the box. Still, I've considered solutions, and one is to thickness sand the bow and transom pieces down by 1mm, then use 1mm sheet wood to cover them. The covering wood will have no holes in it, so no tabs will be visible. In order that everything still fits together, I will have to file the tabs down by 1mm.
 

 
You can see from the photo below how the tabs stick out now.
 

 
About the Bow
Now, there is one other thing about the bow that I'm considering changing. The Woody Joe kit is based on the museum model in the Saga Prefectural Nagoya Castle Museum, but I'm sure that model has some simplifications, as I believe I've mentioned earlier. One of those possible simplifications is the design of the bow.
 
Many paintings and museum models usually show the bow of the Atakebune to be made up sections, often overlapping ones. I've been playing around with the idea of introducing that feature to this model. Of course, paintings and museum models are not real evidence, since the paintings and models are pretty modern reconstructions.
 
 
The two main types of bow of the Atakebune. On the left is the type of bow shown by the Woody Joe model. Note it appears here as two large pieces that are mounted flush. 
 
 
Based on this illustration from the book Wasen II by Professor Kenji Ishii, it would be simple to represent the bow as shown on the left. Since I'm already planning to sheathe the face of the bow plate, it would be relatively simple to use two pieces of wood to recreate this appearance. I've seen more complicated arrangements, but I don't know if complexity is necessary or particularly accurate in this case.
 
 
 
 

Thanks Druxey, Mark.
 
Ron, I've been using Transtint dye thinned with denatured alcohol for all my Japanese boat models. The mix I'm going to try here is 24 drops of Dark Vintage Maple, 9 drops of Amber, to 2oz of denatured alcohol. That's a bit darker than I've done for most of my Japanese boat models. But, any coloring will reduce the appearance of the plywood, laser char, and seams. I'm not sure if I'll use the same mixture for the decks. I may go with less of the Dark Vintage Maple, or just apply the same mixture, but thinned with more alcohol.
 
All the thicker laser-cut wood seems to be maple ply. It's mostly internal structure, but the main box-shaped body of the ship is this ply and so is the bow and transom pieces. Turns out that this stuff takes the dye really nicely. But, I think I'm going to end up covering up the bow and transom pieces with a thin layer of Japanese cypress. While it will then match the wood used for the hull, that's not why I'm doing it.
 
There are a couple places where Woody Joe put some locking tabs that poke through the wood in those pieces. I've decided, at minimum, to thickness sand those pieces down from 3mm to 2mm, and to cover them with a solid layer of 1mm Japanese cypress. This will cover those tabs. 
 
But, even if I didn't do this, the stain will make the tabs less noticeable. And, there is really only one in the bow that will be visible, and maybe two in the transom. But, the transom is generally hidden except when viewed from behind the ship.
 
I'll post details about this shortly.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Another little update.
 
Since the beginning of 28th September until last week, we had builders here to convert our garage into a proper unit, split into two rooms, one room for the laser cutting and raw materials, and another for packing (and gym...). They did quote 2 weeks, but it was over 5 weeks. We have a new roof, floor levelled and walls skinned in OSB boards, including the partition.
 
All new shelving arrived yesterday, so this week we are fitting the rooms out. Next Monday my new laser machine arrives, so I will be able to develop much larger kits (Sphinx is the largest I could go with my current machine, unless I split the keel, and I prefer not to do that if at all possible)
 
I now have all Vanguard Models kits in stock, after a nightmare couple of months chasing suppliers up with my orders (notably, photo etched brass). As I have mentioned, because of the headaches this has caused me lately, my next three kits are having the photo etched sheets produced locally here in the UK. They cost more, but then again, all photo etch  suppliers are increasing prices anyway, due to shortages of raw materials.
 
Right now, I am laser cutting the Nisha and Erycina production parts. Today I received the 3-d printed castings for the kits, as well as sample sail sets for each. The production versions are being made now, so will hopefully be ready in time for the kit releases.
 
I have read all the build logs, most notably the Sphinx logs. When designing/developing Sphinx, my design philosophy for this kit (aside from wanting to develop kits that I would want to buy) was to make the build as painless as possible for builders who were used to kits like Fly, Vanguard, Duchess etc.. So intermediate modellers.
 
I wanted to include cut parts that are never really included in older kits, where these parts are either left off altogether, or the modeller needs to make them from strips of wood or blocks of wood. All they then need is final finishing and, in some cases, like the quarter gallery, all three edges require shaping. But for the most part, if the parts are not painted, the top and bottom edges need slight filing/sanding to remove the char, which, being laser cut, I can do nothing about. Sphinx will still take a while to build, but a lot of that time should be cleaning up pre cut parts, and not making them from scratch.
 
In summary,  wooden model kits are not designed to fall together when you shake the box (as many allude to Tamiya), but each part still needs to be worked on and test fitted multiple times, and maybe adjusted, before fitting. Sphinx takes 8 hours to produce each kit.
 
I have said before, if I designed each kit like most other mainstream manufacturers, I could honestly produce a dozen or so new kits per year, as there's really nothing to them. But where is the fun/challenge in that?
 
When we get time, we will add a section on my website, grading each kit according to the experience required to build each kit.
 
Cheers,
 
Chris

I've built several of Bluejackets models, very satisfied with the results, but they were solid hulls. I can not find any build logs for the Jefferson Davis which is plank on frame. Has anyone out there had experience with this kit?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.
 
 

The Guns
 
Time to assemble the cannon. Flirt has teeny tiny 4 pounders, the smallest I’ve ever seen. Admiral Cochrane noted he could carry the full broadside of cannon balls for his sister ship Speedy in his pockets, of that I have no doubt.
 

 
As we know assembling 14 of anything is a repetitive process calling for a production line of shorts. I started with one to determine what process I wanted to use to get these done. First up is building a jig. Flirt’s carriages are typical for this scale consisting of six components. Always looking for an opportunity for using my mill, I carved out a block that would allow the four main pieces to be glued together consistently. Just grooves for the axels and perpendicular deeper grooves for the carriage sides, nothing fancy.
 

 
Sooo much sanding of small small parts as I moved past the first prototype (shown in the previous post) into production. I use the plastic cups to keep all the parts separated (piled up here for the photo) and pull them out as I go.
 

 
I kept it simple for this model rounding the char off the wheels by inserting them onto my round file and just spinning them in my hand against a 320 and 400 grit sanding blocks. The challenge is to sand only the char and not reduce the wheel in size while I’m doing it. I’d automate this more for larger wheels and more cannon but this worked fine for the 56 wheels needed. I also used the round file to adjust as necessary for axel fit. For this model I’m leaving the wheels natural.
 

 
Off to the paint shed. I shared in an earlier post how I’ve gone to the dark side and purchased an air brush. I do like how it worked for the gun carriages, keeping the paint thin enough to show the laser etched sides (even at this tiny size, @Chris provides nice details with his laser talents). Plus it took only minutes to paint all 14, I’m an airbrush convert, for some things, I still prefer the brush for most work. It takes as long to clean the thing as it does to do the paint work.
 
As shown in the photo I also painted the resin cannon with black primer. These cannon did require some removal of sprue, I felt like I was a kid again building plastic airplane models, but it really wasn't a lot. They do look so much better than the old metal ones, a lot easier to provide detail when casting them this way, even the crest is there. The black primer, with its matte finish was all I needed before applying Doc O’Brien’s Weathering Powder (Rusty Brown) to the barrels and buffing it down with a series of soft brushes I have for only this purpose. They have to be handled carefully after that but are easily buffed back up if necessary, no sealant (like Dullcoat) is needed in this case, though of course it wouldn’t hurt if so inclined.
 

 
A new production line is set up for rigging the carriages, barrels, eyebolts, and trucks. I feel bad now for encouraging @Derek to fully rig his cannon on his Speedy, no way I’m doing that on these little guys for Flirt. I am including breeching lines though. That required drilling holes and adding the required eyebolts and rings to the carriages. So out came the Quad Hands and the rigging box.
 
I used .018 light brown Syren line and made a little jig for pre-rigging them, identical to the one I used for Cheerful…just smaller. I determined two inches to be the length of completed breeching rope I wanted.
 

 
I’ve seen some posts recently about difficulty in tying knots, there is nothing simpler than this standard seizing method, basically the same way a hook is tied to a fishing line. I’ve tied hundreds of these, the Quad Hands makes it easy.
 

 
Normally I toss trunnions provided with a kit, if they are at all, and make my own. However the ones Chris provides in the PE are perfect, not only nice details but more importantly thin enough to fit properly on the carriage without looking out of scale. With a little assist from a drill bit to pre-bend after being primed and then painted Ironworks Black, they laid nicely onto the carriage after the barrel was glued in. They get the weathering powder brush too after being installed.
 

 
Here’s a completed gun ready to mount, a couple of points:
 
While I appreciate Chris for including eyebolts as part of the kit PE, They just looked to heavy for my tastes so I opted for the standard Amati commercial eyebolts, blacked from their copper start, on the gun. I did use the kit provided ones on the bulwarks. There weren’t enough for the breeching ropes anyway, plus the larger commercial rings are a better look here in my opinion.
 
I softened the edge of the axels with a file, I tried rounding one with sandpaper and it broke off, there just isn’t a lot of wood there. I suppose I could have rounded them even more with the file, but frankly they are so small they aren’t noticeable at a normal viewing distance. It just wasn’t worth the breakage risk or the time. More power to all of you who did or will. In my imagination the part within the truck is rounded from use.
 
I always recommend rigging the breeching rope in advance of mounting the gun(or any guns on any model) as shown here. So much easier than trying to fit all of it on board the deck. If I were installing gun tackle, and I have no intention to do that on this model, I’d make them up off the ship but fit them once the gun is placed - that involves two hooks into two rings once they are made up, a simpler task.
 

 
These guns are really small - the carriage will sit on my thumbnail. The sailors on these ships must of felt they’d be just as well off throwing the cannon balls at attacking ships.
 

 
With that the starboard battery is mounted, I need a break before moving on to the port side. I’m going to work on the deck furniture next for a change of pace.
 

 
A closer look at the mounted battery. I have also installed the pin rails and all bulkhead cleats. I’m going to use these 8mm belaying pins acquired from Crafty Sailor instead of the PE ones provided with the kit, just sitting in this one rail at the moment for a test look. While I left the trucks natural and sanded off the bulk of the char I elected to leave a bit so they looked like they’d rolled about the deck (or maybe it was due to laziness, who knows). I’m sure these near macro shots will expose lots of flaws, still I think it all came out ok.  Did I mention they are tiny.
 
Thanks for stopping by with your likes and comments. Until next time…

I like Doc O'Brien's Weathering Powders a lot also. I used them on my Medway Longboat and it made a big difference to my eye.

If you haven't down load the Alert construction manual on the Vanguard site. It it give you a great overview of the project and what to expect. Good luck.

If you haven't down load the Alert construction manual on the Vanguard site. It it give you a great overview of the project and what to expect. Good luck.

If you haven't down load the Alert construction manual on the Vanguard site. It it give you a great overview of the project and what to expect. Good luck.

If you haven't down load the Alert construction manual on the Vanguard site. It it give you a great overview of the project and what to expect. Good luck.