EJ_L

If you are not needing the hatches to be functional, card stock can be easily cut to resemble hinges. Use small wire for the barrels at the hinge and paint all black. Bolts can be simulated by dimpling the card stock. I've done this on many a door and hatch and they turn out good.

Thank you everyone for the kind words and likes. To try to answer the rigging questions, for a plastic model I've done what O.C. has said and inserted metal rods for strength and/or used wood instead. On wood models, I'm still figuring it out... 🙄 What I've learned that does make a difference is that you will often have to readjust the tension of the lines as rigging progresses upward. Either leaving lines loose or under temporary tension is recommended so that the lines can be undone and tightened as needed. Also, work in balance. For every forward stay placed, install an aft stay and the same port and starboard. For example, do not tighten all the starboard shrouds before the port shrouds or the will pull to the side and straitening it back out once it is tight can be difficult. Instead, work it from both sides one pair at a time. Do this for the top and topgallant masts as well. Once all the masts are in place with their stays and shrouds, then all the lines can be tensioned to balance out. Where I still struggle is with the running rigging, particularly where it has blocks that attached to the forestays. On a real vessel, the stays would be heavy and under enough tension that the pull force from the running rigging would not pull them out of line. On a model however, those lines are nowhere near heavy enough to resist the pull of the lines as they pass through blocks or the more complicated crows feet. To get the rigging to look correct, remain tensioned and not pull out place is a balancing act that I have not yet mastered. In short work in balance and be prepared to rework the lines as you progress. And if anyone else has suggestions, please share!

A word of advice with planking, it is usually advisable to work both sides at the same time. Reason being that when installing the planks, they can pull the bulkheads out of alignment fore and aft. If the sides are worked together, any misalignment can be caught earlier and more easily corrected if the opposite side is not fully planked which locks all the parts into place. Some people recommend going plank by planking opposite each other, I usually go in bands. With where you are in the build, I would recommend evening out the opposite side around your gun ports before proceeding further. Then you can do another band and swap back and forth between the two sides keeping progress even. This method is also helpful on the second planking for keeping the number of strakes even and the same size on both sides. This becomes very noticeable where the sides come close to each other at stem and stern.

Mizzen and main fore stays in place.

Nice planking work. Good to see you still at her. We understand about life taking priority over modeling. No worries on update delays, we will be here waiting.

Looking fantastic! The end result is an excellent simulated wood. Truly impressive.

More rigging going up. The bowsprit has been set and gammoning in place. Set the forestay which will likely be the last piece of rigging on the foremast for the time being. Next up I will fall back to set the stays and shrouds on the main and mizzen masts.

Welcome to MSW!

Welcome to MSW! Beautiful carving work!

I'm definitely interested in a POF cross section. As Mark said above, I think it would be a great stepping stone to scratch building POF models and allows for a lot of custom details and a wide range of useful skills.

Foremast shrouds have been fitted and temporarily tensioned. None of this has been secured permanently yet but I need to have them in place for spacings and the fitting of other items. Working on ratting down down the spritsail topmast shrouds. Once they are done, I will fix the bowsprit to the hull with gammons and will be able to start fitting the fore and main stays.

Your obsession is amazing! haha! Seriously, if you can pull off those QGs as you have drawn them, that will truly be an incredible work of art! I've been loving watching you pull it all together and am looking forward to seeing how the physical modeling happens.

Tom, the round top with railings were common practice until the around the start of the 18th century. That is when they slowly began to change over to the more commonly seen squarish tops with the rounded front corners and no rails or only the one aft for rigging. When exactly the changes started is hard to say as with most nautical changes, they were slow and happened over decades. The reasoning for the changes had to do with sail clearances and operation. Here are a couple of pictures I pulled off google search real fast this morning showing the round tops on the Vasa and the Kalmar Nyckel.

Shroud work on the bowsprit topmast and the foremast as well as adding blocks and pendants for the running rigging. Slow process but it’s coming along.

Beautiful models, a display to be proud of and enjoy. Wonderful piano music as well. Sad to see you go but I wish you all the best and enjoyment your next adventures take you!

Very nice work indeed and slow is often a good thing I have found. To me rigging has always been one of those tasks that since each individual piece takes a lot of time and detail work, every piece that gets completed feels like a major milestone done.

Back on the build! Resumes working on the spritsail topmast and now have all the wood components built and fitted but not yet glued. I am preparing the ropes to make the shrouds now and will be adding them as well as the ratlines as the week goes on. Still trying to decide if/how I want to add sails. I am going to try to get out to the fabric store soon and see what I can find. I don’t want to install the yards till they are added if that is the route I am going to take. More to follow soon!

More progress on the hull planking. Both sides are even again to the top of the upper gun deck ports. Inner hull is planked and a coat of finish applied. I’m going to to take a break from RL for a little while. I need to save up a few dollars for materials to plank the lower hull and finish building out the cabins so the upper hull can be closed out. In the meantime I plan on working on Soleil Royal and continuing her rigging. If you are not already, feel free to join me there and I promise to return to RL soon!

I've made cradles for the masts to sit in to prevent them from sliding. Nothing fancy just a box sized to the diameter of the mast that the mast can slip into and stay in place. As long as it is below the deck where it can't be seen it is no problem. As for the glue, any wood glue will work. I typically use titebond 2 and it holds great. I will add a couple dabs of CA glue when I install the hull planks to aid in holding them quickly and securely in place till the wood glue has time to cure.

Not a lot of progress this week but I did finish the port frames and now I am working on planking the interior. For the port frames, I cut the liners long so that they extend past the frames on the inside and the first layer of planking on outside. I do this so that I can cut them down to the same thickness and curvature of the hull. Once they are all in, I trim them to fit and sand them smooth. Now I can install the planks over the frames and liners for a finished look.

One thing I would caution on in using these older models on details is that they were often built to show the lines of the ship, her potential sailing qualities and to some extent, the decorative figures on them. Common, everyday or "expected" details were commonly left off the model as anyone viewing them would be expected to know they would be there. Lack of ladders for example, would be a detail they may have left off as the admiralty board would expect them to be on the ship so there would be no need to place them on the model. Obviously, if this was a commissioned piece or a gift to someone important, the model would be complete in all details, but most of these were for presentation to the board for approval of ships to be built. Also, most of the models have suffered damage and loss of parts over the years leading to rebuilds. That can easily alter details as the knowledge of if they ever existed is also lost or blurred as in the discussions we are having now. I think to better clarify what would have been on a particular ship, one needs to look at the service records more than the artwork. In this case, if the ship in the year it is being modeled, was to serve as an admiral's ship or house the king, then an admiral's door would be expected. If it was just another ship in the fleet, than perhaps not. Ladders would have been on the ship no matter the use as they had to be there for function. A detail easily overlooked in artistic renderings, but not left off in practice. Even smaller vessels had ladders, larger ones had to have them. One more thing to consider is that ships of the day carried experienced carpenters and mates that could erect or tear dome almost any part of the ship quickly and efficiently with great skill. A feature such as an admiral's door and the associated platform could have been one of those features that was set up only when it was to be used. Due to the delicate position of that landing over the side of the ship, it is not a far stretch to think that it was only set up if the ship were to receive an admiral or king and taken down and stored below decks when not in use. That could be a factor when looking at the different paintings with some including the door and others not.

A possible solution to any missing gratings could be to place the battens in place closing them off. Those would be far easier to make than additional gratings and would be correct in use.

I will agree with Wallace & Kevin in that the weathered look looks great, as long as that same level of weathering is carried throughout the model.

Congratulations on the baby! Good to have you back with us. Your planking looks beautiful. Well done!

For those support beams, either modification is acceptable. What matters is that the bulkheads remain square to the false keel. I will usually glue the beams to the bulkheads so that I know that the remain square. As noted above, the bulkheads themselves have some wiggle room and/or flex to them especially at extremities. Ensuring that those edges remain true during planking can help in keeping the planking even on both sides of the hull.