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RobZorba

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Everything posted by RobZorba

  1. Hi Captainhash, Most kits of HMS Prince, including the Constructo kit, are based on the shipyard model in the London Science Museum. No harm in that, because the shipyard model is the set of "plans" from which the full size HMS Prince was built. But I guess that the customer (King Charles II and his brother the Duke of York) wanted some changes, especially to the decor and ornament, which are different in the 1672 painting from the shipwright model of circa 1668. So, I believe that the painting of the fleet including HMS Prince completed in 1762 is the best reference we modellers have for the decor, stern ornament, rigging, sails, color scheme etc. I believe that this painting is highly accurate and supersedes those details in the shipwright model. It would be great if kit manufacturers could be made aware of this painting of the HMS Prince, so that decor and mouldings supplied in the kit could be updated. What do you think? Would anyone on this forum like to undertake a commercial project to produce and license an updated set of "carvings" for the Constructo Prince kit? If I do it myself, is it likely that Constructo would license the moulds from me?
  2. Take a look at the stern image of the Prince in the 1672 painting "King Charles II receiving the fleet". I posted the link earlier. I believe this is the most authentic painting available of the stern and port side of the actual HMS Prince. The full painting is over 3 meters wide, so the Prince is pretty high resolution. Here is a link to the Royal Nautical Guild webpage for this painting. King Charles II visits the fleet in 1672
  3. Yours look great after reshaping, and the LED "lanterns" will be superb. Glad you noticed the mistakes in this part of the instructions. In my kit, three of the bulkheads, parts 5, 6 and 7 were laser cut wrong. It was impossible to slide in the strips for mounting lower guns. I had to dremel out an extra 5mm on the lower edge of all "slots" in those three bulkheads. I dry fitted and pinned together all parts up to and including upper deck 40 before I glued anything. There were many parts that had to be modified, not just 5, 6 and 7. I recommend this "dry fit" approach to anyone building any kit, because you will have to make some modifications to get everything to align correctly. These modifications are much easier to make before any parts are glued together. Also it's important to read ahead and check against the plans and original ship drawings and models and paintings frequently. We cannot rely on instructions or photographs in an instruction manual being correct. If something looks wrong, or doesn't fit correctly, it probably is the manufacturer that made the mistake, not you!
  4. Some observations about Constructo's choice of timber for planking the hull: The wood supplied by Constructo for planking the lower hull is a red hardwood with frequently "crossed" grain that traverses the strips at 90 degrees at times. This wood is hopeless for use when planking the lower hull. Even after soaking 2 days, then steaming and rolling the bends using a hot iron, the strips snap along the grain and across the planks as you can see in the photo attached. And btw, the holes for the pins were drilled first, otherwise pushing a pin into the timber snaps it straight away. The wood supplied by Constructo for planking the upper hull is a softwood with straight grain that runs consistently along the length of the planks. The planks bend easily and do not snap. The bends at the bow were easily made after soaking, not a single snap occurred. My conclusion is that it would be far better to plank the whole hull firstly using the softwood with straight grain. Then use 0.5mm hardwood and softwood strips like the decking strips as secondary planking for decorative and scale finishing purposes. I will never again try to plank a hull with primary planking using fragile redwood strips with crossed (90 degree) grain. This timber is totally useless and inappropriate for this job. I hope Constructo modify their kits in future! I will be painting the lower hull white, so I'm not too worried about the snapped timbers which I can repair with glue and wood filler.
  5. Captainhash, many thanks! One thing I noticed in the instruction manual photos for the galleries is that parts 63, 65 and 67 appear to be shown assembled back to front. I believe they should be assembled so the small recess is near the stern and the longer recess is near the front. Not as depicted on pages 25, 44, 45 etc with the long recess at the stern. When correctly aligned, the "bulge" in parts 63, 65 and 67 should be linearly aligned with the upper parts 69 and 71. You can see this in the science museum model and in various 17th century paintings of the ship. The consequence of incorrect assembly is that the curved "bulges" in the upper and lower parts of the galleries do not align, and so the decor on the galleries does not fit correctly. In the instruction leaflet, the decor is sloped at an unnatural angle when compared with the shipyard model in the science museum in which the decor is parallel to the stern. Anyway I'll post some pictures in a later thread of the resulting "modified" stern galleries ... planking lower hull at the moment. Look at 5th or 6th image here, there's a very good photo of the stern gallery on the shipyard model of the Prince ... the decor is parallel to the stern ... HMS Prince Shipyard Model at London Science Museum Compare with images in Constructo Instruction Manual ... the decor is not parallel to the stern ...
  6. An alternative method for marking out the gun ports is to trace the gun ports from the Constructo plan on kitchen greaseproof paper, then tape and pin the tracing paper to the hull, then use a 0.8mm drill bit in my Dremel to mark each corner of the gun ports. Reverse the tracing paper to use the same tracing to do both sides of the hull. Before using the Constructo plan for gun port positions, I checked carefully with a side view image of the HMS Prince shipwright model in the UK science museum. As far as I can tell, the Constructo plans are very good. The easiest way for me to remove the 10 mm square of planking for each gunport was to first drill a 5 mm hole in the approximate center, next use a small Dremel cutoff wheel to mark all 4 sides, then use a mini saw blade to enlarge the 5mm hole leaving about 0.5mm of wood at each corner. The final surplus material was removed with a square section needle file. Constructo instruct the kit builder to make a frame from 1mm by 2mm stripwood and stick it inside each 10mm by 10mm gunport. This reduces the size of the opening to 8mm by 8mm which is too small an opening to be true to scale, and into which a 10mm by 10mm gunport cover is never going to fit. Closed gunport covers should "fit" flush with the hull. Also there is no visible "window frame" around each gunport in the ship wright model or in paintings of "the Prince". What did I do to solve this? I slightly enlarged each gunport opening to 11mm by 11mm. Then I used some 0.5 mm thick deck planking strips to line each gunport - meaning that the final opening size was 10mm by 10mm. The thin strips are barely visible in a side view. The sides of each gunport are painted red in all English ships. In the last picture, with some red and black painting done, the "halo" around upper gunports is bare wood onto which the circular gilt decor will be stuck using cyano later.
  7. I appreciate your condolences, thank you. I have recovered from the theft and things are good now. I hope to do a nice job building my Constructo HMS Prince kit.
  8. Hi CaptainHash, Nice to see your build log, thank you for your excellent work. I bought the Constructo Prince kit and am currently planking the lower hull. Would you like to swap build hints and tips? I do not plan to start a build log of my own, but I can take occasional pics to share with you on your thread if you request it. I did a lot of research on the appearance of the "real" ship, mainly in paintings. The builder's model in the UK science museum does not reflect the final color scheme or decor. I make that statement based on a painting dated 1672 entitled "King Charles II visiting the fleet". The Prince was the flagship of the fleet at that time, and is painted in great detail which I believe to be accurate. See this link ... King Charles II Receiving the Fleet (1672) By the way, there is currently an error on the Maritime Museum web site for this painting. The web site identifies the flagship as the 55 gun Royal Prince of 1610. But this had ceased service a long time before Charles Ii became King. The ship in the painting is the 100 gun flagship, the HMS Prince which was a 1st line ship of the British navy from 1670 until 1692 when it was refitted to become the Royal William.
  9. I regret to say that this build log will not continue. There was a theft from the garage in which I had my workshop, and the tools were stolen and the model was vandalized and damaged beyond repair. I was too upset to tell anyone until now. But I have started another build which is of HMS Prince, the Constructo kit.
  10. Hi Mark, Thanks! ... separating the strips into two pieces was a great technique. On my Vasa (single planked hull) I tried to keep the planking strips in one piece, and there was much difficulty bending and shaping some of the strips where the bow and stern curvature was large. Although I also used cyano and accelerator to tack the planks to the bulkheads, I do not like the cyano glue because any spills or seepages are difficult to clean up, and any cyano glue residue looks awful when the timbers are stained later on. I think next time, I will use PVA (which cleans up easily when wet), and will use these planking clamps: http://www.micromark.com/10-piece-planking-clamp-set,6454.html Rob
  11. Hi Mark, Masterful job of first planking! Looks really good. I notice the lower hull planks have one join ... what is the reason for the join? ... maybe it was easier to plank if you did the bow and stern separately? ... anyway, I wonder if you have any pics showing the planking of one side's lower hull in progress at 50% stage? What technique did you use for holding strips in place? ... did you use CA glue to tack the planks to the bulkheads, and PVA glue between planks to glue them together? Thanks, Rob
  12. Completed the walkway installation in the prow of the ship ... not stained yet ... that will come later, after the rigging stay rails (lower picture) are fixed in place.
  13. Here's one of the completed gun ports ... in fact all 54 of them are completed and waiting to be fitted ... the hatch covers are bits of lollipop sticks, the hinges are hammered bits of brass wire, and the canon is mounted to a small square of perspex with a hole drilled, and a "gun carriage" painted in black on the back. The lights installed in the model shine through the perspex of the gun port.
  14. Thanks everyone for the very informative and helpful replies. I now know what I have to do, thanks to you! I will be adding the scupper holes and small plates / drainage spouts before staining the hull. Plus the gallery skylight and postman pat hatchway :-)
  15. @Tadeusz43@ Thanks a lot for your helpful reply ... hence the words from "The drunken sailor" ... <<put him in the scuppers with a hose pipe on him>> ... presumably "the scuppers" was also a collective slang for a sewer/ drainage trench etc ...
  16. Peter and Mark, Thanks for your replies ... I agree with you both ... but I am really puzzled why the Museum issued digital drawings in 1970 (with the VasaMueet name and address on them) showing a door and not a window. The line drawing excerpt I posted earlier is from the VasaMuseet digital drawings dated 1970, not from Corel or a kit manufacturer. Supposedly the digital drawings were based on a laser scan of the actual ship. But if it is true about the laser scan, then why the incorrect imagery showing there being a door in that position?
  17. Anyone know about the "step" with a hole in it in the earlier pic I posted? What is it? What is its purpose? It it an attachment point for some mechanism for raising or lowering the longboat? Or for attachment of a ladder for the crew?
  18. Another question ... some modellers "created" a skylight in the lower galleries, probably based on this view of the actual Vasa. I think this is not a "skylight". I checked the digital plans published by the museum and they show a full door in the gallery roof. Does anyone know the answer? Was there a boarding door in the roof of the lower gallery? Both port and starboard? Why do no model kits show this door in their plans?
  19. Hi Michael, yes I know what you mean about the 1/10th. But they made mistakes on it if you look closely enough. For example ... they "forgot" to make a keel and a lower hull ... they should really have built it so it would float :-)
  20. Here's an image of a gun port and cover from the full size Vasa, showing the ropes that were used to open and close the gun port cover. There's a small ring attached to each side of the gun port cover, with a separate rope tied to each ring. The upper rope is under tension because it is holding the gun port cover open. The lower rope is used to pull the cover into its fully closed position, and then tie it off under tension so the cover remains closed in bad weather. I am thinking of using some thin copper wire to make the rings ... will the work on modifying the "Billing" gun ports ever finish? Can anyone tell me what the "step" with a hole in the middle is, the piece highlighted in red?
  21. Glueing the hinges to gun port covers to the gun ports was a fiddly job. I wanted every hinge to be parallel and the spacing to be correct for assembly to the gun ports later. SO I made a small "jig" to hold the cover in place and define the correct spacing for the hinges which were hammered 1cm pieces of copper wire with a 2mm 135 degree bend at the end. I used cyano glue and accelerator, then filed any surplus cyano away after it was set.
  22. Started painting the hull, needed a break from the pesky gun port parts! The paint Turi and I decided to use for the Vasa "red" is Humbrol Matt Acrylic Scarlet Red, code number 09. When dry, it is a good match to the color used for the museum model ship.
  23. More progress with the gun ports. I cut the backs off the plastic "lion's head" gun port covers provided by Billing Boats, because they were hollow and just completely wrong. Made new gun port cover wooden hatches from lollipop sticks. Made hinges from a length of copper wire (TV aerial core) hammered flat. Painted everything before assembly. About 40 hours work on these so far and not quite finished yet ...
  24. About the bowsprit - foremast block and tackle arrangement .... Do these two pictures of the Vasa in the museum help? ... The lower block has only 3 holes, I guess the upper one 3 or maybe 4 ...
  25. It's beautiful, and excellent work ... thanks a lot for sharing your expertise with us beginners!
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