tkay11

Very good choice! And excellent work into the bargain! Tony

As you'll have seen from the other Sherbourne builds, the gunports and their heights have always been a problem. Others more knowledgeable may guide you here, but I think that ideally the gunport bottom edge should follow the line of the deck and be of sufficient height so that the maximum and minimum elevations of the gun barrel are not impeded. Some have re-shaped the gunports simply by planking over the bulwark and cutting them out afresh. The ports tend to become more diamond shaped as the rake of the deck increases toward the bow. I think you'll have to work out your own particular solution. It's worth looking at the builds of Kester (Stockholm Tar), Dirk (Dubz) and Gregor, who also have a full discussion about the gunport covers. As for treenailing, they should follow the frame positions and the plank positioning which allows for correct butt placement. You'll see the frame positions (which run vertical to the keel) on the original plans -- again which you'll see on Dirk's and Gregor's build. For planking and how to position the planks, see the tutorials in the resources section on the forum. However, if you're going to paint the hull, you won't need treenailing to be shown. Tony

The choice re the tv is easy. There's very rarely anything of interest to see on it. And even if there is, I don't mind if I miss it. But we do have one at home. Our grandchildren watch it in small doses, and in fact I think TV for kids now plays the same role for the imagination as comics used to do for me when I was a kid. But as for me, I haven't read a comic since childhood. Tony

Life must come first, Jörgen! It certainly does with me. Like this morning, preparing for a pleasant day with the Triton, but suddenly asked to take care of grandchildren. It's no contest! Tony

Nice to hear you're back on the Sherbourne, Jörgen , while you have a respite from Vasa fever. Looking forward to the descriptions of progress! Tony

Congratulations, Sjors! It's been wonderful to see the progress over the years, and wonderful to see such a beautiful result at the end. Tony

Do you have a picture of it? Tony

Very neat work! Tony

THE GUNS AND THEIR RIGGING I’m still not ready to show what I’ve done with the gangway knees, as I need to finish talking about the guns. First, the turning and the blackening. I haven’t quite achieved the level of finish others seem to manage, but for now I’m reasonably happy, and won’t be doing any more until I do another model. As an aside, I should mention that lots of photographic stores still receive film for processing. My local photo shop has lots of film canisters that they just throw away. So I go down from time to time to collect a handful. They’re great for fluids and sawdust (which I use for filler). I was even able to blacken my guns in film canisters as they are just the right size. Preparing the capsquares was fun. I have already shown the initial preparation of the capsquares in the previous posting. Here I show how I managed to place the rearmost loop. Although I made a capsquare eyebolt, I couldn’t find chain small enough to make the key with its chain. Perhaps I’ll do that another time. “IT IS FUTILE TO DO WITH MORE THINGS THAT WHICH CAN BE DONE WITH FEWER” I reckon William of Ockham (the one born in 1287) must have been a ship modeller, because the phrase above was one he used. He was following many others (probably also ship modellers) who used the same idea in a variety of guises. The reason I remembered this phrase was when I came to prepare the gun tackles. At first I used a variety of strops and thimbles, rigging them fully, but every time when it came to frapping them for stowage the result was lumpy. I eventually, and step by step, reduced the rigging by dropping the thimbles, then dropping the pieces that wouldn’t be seen after frapping. Having decided that, the first thing to do was to find out how far apart the blocks for each tackle should be. This involved rigging the guns in a rough fashion to their loops in the hull and drawing them tightly to the sides. In order that the frapping should be as smooth as possible, I then stripped a piece of bamboo through a drawplate till it was 1mm diameter and glued it between the shortened stropping ropes. The second block was then added and the ropes glued to the bamboo strip. I could then rig the guns to the bulwarks. You’ll note that luckily for me the deficiencies in my turning of the cannon are well hidden by the gunports! So I’ll now be continuing with the gangway knees. Tony

I was at Balliol. My daughter was at Queen's, though. Tony

Wonderful to see your work here again! Thanks for the update! Tony

Gosh! That was fast! Congratulations. Very nice too! Tony

Thanks again for more 'likes'! Gregor: Nice to hear from you. How's the modelling coming along, i.e. Irene, Jacinthe? I've just bought the Petrejus book about the brig Irene on eBay and waiting to see it. Tony

Just want to add my congratulations, BE. Let's hope this is now permanent! Tony

Kenny, very nice progress! I just want to say that it really is worth while learning how to do silver soldering. The equipment is not at all expensive. You just need a simple small pencil torch (about UK£4.50 or less on Amazon now). I bought one of the model I've linked to 4 years ago and it's still going strong. If you buy the larger ones with press button ignition you may well find they're less reliable (I did). Then you need a syringe of soft silver solder paste (I bought mine at the same time for about UK£9 from cupalloys and that too is still going strong). That's the total extra expenditure. I'm sure the prices will be similar or less in the USA. There's a tutorial on the site which tells you exactly how to do it. You'll find that there's a great deal that can be done with this. Also, if you don't want to make the gangway knees with silver soldering, you can also cut out the shapes from copper plate as was done by Grant in his Triton build. I've just done them that way, although nowhere near as nicely. Tony

That's very nice of you Pete. But your own build seems to be getting along just beautifully and, dare I say it, much neater than mine! Tony

That's really strange! I have just sent you a personal message asking about the dutch books you mentioned in your build log of the Ostend Shrimper! Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I've just looked online and reserved it from my library! Tony

Thanks very much for the nice comments and likes! It's a joy to receive encouragement from peers who really understand the difficulties, intricacies and mistakes of this hobby and who've all been through the same learning experience. G.L.: You made me laugh out loud when you say 'masterpiece'. I keep trying to explain and show in detail every point at which it clearly is far from being at all masterly (so others can learn from my mistakes), but your comment did make me go to have a look at your Oostends schipje and I can say with full confidence your skills far outweigh my own. I'll be following that with great interest from now on as I have the plans for the Brixham trawler Valerian and I want to build that plank-on-frame. I have not yet found any source giving the framing patterns for those trawlers, so the details you have about the framing on a similar kind of boat are of great use for me. I also admire your drawing and lofting skills -- it's all made too easy nowadays with computer programming with the downside that we lose the thinking behind the drafting skills. Tony

I have just listed my copy of George Bandurek's book "Super-Detailing the Cutter Sherbourne" on eBay in the UK. It's as 'Buy it Now or Best Offer'. If anyone is interested the link is http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/-/112326241142? I'll let it run on 30-day cycles until it's sold. Tony

PLANKING THE OUTER HULL I thought I’d have a bash at anchor stock planking for the wales. This proved to be a bit tricky without making a special jig from metal. I did try using a sander, but in the end the method I used was to paste a template on to wood and sand that down using a sanding stick. It would be far better with a jig, of course. Perhaps next time! Having prepared the planks, an important question was how to place them so that the butt ends would lie over frames. So I used TurboCAD to superimpose the planking outlines layer on the frames layer and move it until the ends covered the frames. This worked fine for the port wales. And on the port side the planking went easily enough. I decided to leave a section unplanked just to show how the hull was structured. It also was fairly straightforward to make the trim mouldings using an old hacksaw blade tempered over the gas hob to red heat and cooled slowly before cutting with a grinding wheel and filing. Unfortunately when it came to planking the starboard side, I found that the forward end of the wale was about 1.5mm higher than the aft end. At first I thought it was to do with the curvature of the hull as I thought I had measured the position for the wale fairly carefully. In this blissful ignorance I started the planking above the wale by trimming the immediately next plank to suit. It was only a little while later that I realised that I had not cut the top strake of the wale correctly, and it was in fact at an angle. Rather than unglue everything (I’m getting really short of wood) I decided I’d live with the mistake. After all, I reasoned, I’m not going to be showing this model to anyone, and I’m only using the exercise to learn. Seeing as I’d learnt from the port side, I reckoned I’d be all right for any future builds. Lessons learned! I followed David Antscherl’s book on the Fully Framed Model by making the plank underneath the wale to be 4” tapering down to the 3” of the planks beneath. So I’ll now be continuing with the gangway knees and placing the guns. Tony

A ROUNDABOUT WAY OF DOING THINGS I ended the last part of my log with the statement “I need to finish the planking of the gun deck walls, sand down the fore and aft section faces, and then I’ll be working on installing the eyebolts for the cannon and making up the gangway brackets”. Well, it became a bit more complicated than that. I did start by planking the gun deck walls, but then worked on the gun carriages in the thinking that it would make more sense to fit the bolts once the guns were done. Then, once the carriages were done, I reckoned I’d need to place the gangway knees so that I’d be clear about the placement of the bolts. That drew me into a discussion about where the aft guns would be rigged to since the gangway knees cover exactly the correct position (according to the plans) for the bolts for the gun rigging. So I made the knees following Grant’s Triton build, but then reckoned that it might be better to complete the outer hull planking before working on the inside – in the belief that with all the handling of the outer hull any more done on the gun deck and gangway might well suffer. So I did the planking. And then I realised that unless I documented progress in my log, the task of writing it would become too big and bothersome. So although I’ve completed the gangway knees, I’ll just concentrate in this section of the log on the guns and the hull planking. THE GUN CARRIAGE BRACKETS Having had experience with the small cannon in the Sherbourne, I wanted to avoid the problem of drilling holes through the brackets when they are not parallel to one another. So I made a jig, as documented in the following photos. First was getting the angles right for the jig. To save time, the jig allows for several pairs of brackets to be cut at once. I’m only making two guns, so there’s more than enough room for the jig. Setting the height for the table saw was simple using the template I’d made with TurboCAD. QUOINS Using a simple template and making the handles with the Proxxon drill being used as a lathe was quite simple: DRILLING THE BRACKETS FOR THE BOLTS When it came to drilling the brackets, I decided to double check the verticality of my drill stand, as I’d noticed that when making blocks there seemed to be a very slight deviation. There was. It was small, but enough to be a problem. Luckily, the solution was the simple addition of a 1.5mm wedge into the stand as shown in the following picture: And with that corrected, I then unglued the outer part of the brackets jig, placed another template on the side, and drilled away. CAP SQUARES I fiddled around a bit with black paper to make the cap squares, but finally thought it would be better if I could make them from brass. My efforts didn’t turn out nearly as well as those of the experts around here, but I still enjoyed the process of learning. LOOPS FOR THE CARRIAGE RIGGING Instead of using simple bolts for the loops, I decided to use David Antscherl’s measurements for the loops and make some loops of my own. This was far simpler than I expected, using 0.5mm black-coated copper wire as follows. TRUCK STUBS I decided I’d try out Frolich’s method of making the truck stubs. This involves making a cutter from brass rod, and cutting in a lathe. TRUCKS It was easy to turn the trucks on a lathe and then cut them off with the table saw. The pins for the trucks were made from bamboo strips passed through a drawplate and then stained. The vertical bolts were then added as brass rod and then blackened with lead patina using the tip of a paintbrush. CARRIAGE BEDS AND TRANSOMS The beds and transoms made and fitted. DRILLING THE TRUNNIONS IN THE CANNON I thought I’d try a more accurate method of drilling the trunnions than the one I used for the Sherbourne. First off was to cut the cannon whilst leaving both ends of the brass rod at the same diameter. This would mean any vertical drilling would be easy. So after turning the brass cannon on a lathe, I made a box to the exact diameter of the outer stubs. I then made a cover with a template of the cannon that would fit just inside the top of the box. The height of the box was made a little smaller than the diameter of the cannon stubs, and a piece of sandpaper fitted to the inside of the lid: that would ensure that when clamping the jig the cannon would not roll round whilst drilling. I used as a marker the edge of the reinforce ring nearest the trunnion. I’ll show the assembled guns in a future post, but my next section will deal with the planking of the hull. Tony

Sorry, Grant, but I've only just caught up with your log and seen the issues you raised in post #169, viz: "The things I need to think about that I came away with were: Deck furniture issues with the boom pin rail and windlass and position of pretty much everything, the first model showing the companionway forward under the boom and facing aft with different grate/light positions. One question here is the second model showed 3 additional hand-cranked small windlasses, what are those and were they common? Topmast forward of the mainmast. Two sets of braces for main and top square sails. Only I don't understand why there are two sets, why not just run them forward to keep them clear of the spanker boom? Seems overly complicated to run them to two places." The first issue has been answered as the Trial shown in the picture had an experimental drop keel. In relation to the topmast, there was some discussion of it in the Sherbourne build logs by myself, Dirk (Dubz), Kester (Stockholm Tar) and Gregor -- as there was over a lot of other historical details to do with cutters. I made my own choice of putting it fore of the main mast not only because it was placed that way in a number of contemporary models and paintings, but also because it makes a lot of mechanical sense -- seeing that the mainsail rigging and all that weight now comes off the lower and larger mast. It might well be worth going through the logs I have mentioned above because the discussions also cover many of the points of interest you are likely to come across in the Lady Nelson. However often the decisions are personal, as the original NMM plans were either inadequate (e.g. gunport hatches, rigging) or hard to distinguish. In any event those NMM plans did at least point to a number of inaccuracies of the kit (companionway, windlass). And the kit pieces are often too gross for comfort (pumps, tiller, belaying pins, cannon). I'm only a novice (Sherbourne was my first build, and I'm still working on my second) so I'm sure others with greater knowledge will provide better answers. For the rigging, I would strongly recommend Marquardt's Eighteenth Century Rigs and Rigging, which can be obtained quite cheaply. It is a very good companion to Petersson, which is excellent for clarity and general understanding, but has a few errors of its own. I see that, just as for the Sherbourne builders, you've had your share of woes with the gunports. Some people ignore the cutouts in the kit bulwarks and make their own with planking cutouts after first assaying positions and heights with card cutouts of guns on carriages. Tony

Nice to know of another OU person on the hobby. I look forward to your build log. Don't hold back on the questions as you come across difficulties -- there's no such thing as a stupid question on this forum and you'll receive lots of help. Tony

Thanks, Ed. The two volumes are already with me and I've been studying them. They're helpful not only for what I'm doing now, but will certainly be of use for my next model (probably Le Rochefort) and then, quite probably, the Naiad. Tony

Thanks, Anguirel and Druxey, for your thoughts. I was looking at the possibility of the knee itself. I can see from TFFM that before 1780 it was more common for the knees to be made of wood and the knees would take the bolts, but in these plans of the 1773 ship they're made of iron so I thought that it might be difficult to put the bolts through them. I don't think the stairs will get in the way if I put the bolts the other side of the bracket, but I can see it's a bit crowded. I'm just turning the cannon right now, so I'll have another look when the guns are assembled. I am concerned that if the bolts go wider at one side there might be some imbalance when the guns are fired -- though in this particular case these guns will never fire and the ship would have sunk well before that being without a stem, a stern and half its planking. Tony