EJ_L

Looking great! I'm sure it feels good to finally start putting pieces on her and not just sanding.

I did a little searching real quick to familiarize myself more with your ship. From what I have been able to gather and since you are planning to copper the hull, it looks like the rudder should be close to the same thickness as your stern post. This would include the copper plating which appears to cover the rudder as well.

I guess it would depend on the material it is made out of. Also when I say plank, it was more of a veneer covering. I used wide strips of the same mahogany that I planked my hull with to cover the stern post so that it looks like it is one large piece of the same wood as the hull. Otherwise I would have had an ugly strip of the supplied ply wood showing. In your case since you get to make it from scratch you can build the whole thing out of whatever material you wish. I believe that most rudders are the same thickness to just slightly smaller than then the stern post. They also tend to taper to a narrower edge than what is at the hinge pins. Hopefully someone can confirm this or correct me if I am wrong.

Is your rudder planked already or is it just the wood cut out? I have always had to plank over the blank rudder that is supplied with the kit and doing so has kept it the same width as the stern post after it is planked.

That hull does look great! All that sanding will pay off for you when you start planking.

Thank you everyone for the compliments and likes. Mike, I agree with you that before the age of the internet this sharing of knowledge was far harder and slower. Word of mouth at hobby stores and magazines was primarily of I learned to build models. Having a site like this with the vast amounts of knowledge, pictures, helpful people and links to great suppliers has made a great hobby even better. Now if I only lived closer to where all of these great looking conventions take place.

Very good job on the weathering. Reminds me of the fishing boats down at my Uncle's cabin in Louisiana. They have that same rugged, neglect look that you have recreated. I may have to try your technique when I weather some of my structures on my model railroad.

Wow! That is fantastic work! You can't even see where it broke. This is truly a remarkable build.

Thanks Bob!

Welcome to the Hobby!! I would add a good light and magnification. A table top swivel lamp with a built in magnifier will work but a headset such as an Optivisor is better still. Being able to see what you are working is very critical and no matter how good your eyesight is, staring at these tiny pieces or trying to tie miniature knots will strain your eyes and cause them to hurt in time.

I have spent the last few days casing the gun ports and planking the inside bulkheads where they will be exposed to view. Still have some work to do on the planks but the casing is mostly done minus a couple of touch ups. Then it will be time to switch gears for a while and build canons. As most of the canons on this deck will not be seen some of them will go fast. However I still have 10 that will be getting the full detail treatment. The rest will just be a simple carriage and minimal rigging as the only way to view them will be through the ports which does not allow for much viewing especially into a dark interior. I will also be installing most of the dummy canons. I will take some more complete pictures once I finish everything but here are a few progress pics till then.

That is it. Though I did think there was instructions on how to make a home made one out of a small can.

Sorry to hear about your mishap with the keel. That is never a good moment when you are looking at a ruined project after putting in all that time and effort. Good to see you were able to recover and she is looking good again. I'm looking forward to seeing all her details come together to complete this great build.

Elijah, a protractor like that can be picked up almost any place. Look in school supply aisles or if you want a nicer one in crafting stores in the drawing/drafting aisle. They are really inexpensive. A few dollars will buy you one. Tim, she is looking good! I also have the same question about what to do with the running rigging if there are no sails. I would imagine that most of it would remain in place and you would just model it as if the sails were furled. I do not think I will install the sails on mine either but, as that is a long way out, things may change. Also I remember reading about a "block tumbler" on here to help shape blocks or clean up the kit supplied ones. I do not remember where that thread went to. Hopefully someone can shed some light on it.

It's almost over then you have 3 months of building!

Thanks Ken! I'm glad I chose to use mahogany on the hull. It gave it that nice deep tone you mentioned which is what I was wanting.

Just incredible. You are doing a great job and teaching me a lot in the process. I thank you for that as it will be knowledge I will need on my own build.

Your framing is looking great! All this time you are taking will pay off big time when you get to planking. No, the plans will not improve. For someone that believes in building things right and is detail oriented as you and most model ship builders are then plans are never good enough. Whether it is framing, rigging, furniture or the multitude of little details found on ships, something will always be lacking. That is I think something that I like with this hobby. It is beyond frustrating at times but that is what makes us better modelers as we don't just follow a set of instructions that anyone can follow. We have to research, learn to read blue prints, search for art work of the ship and then figure out the dimensions from there. You are doing a great job on your build. Keep it up!

Elijah, my photos from my good camera are often too large to post also. I just do a quick resize and shrink them down to 20-40% and they work great. Most computers will have a edit program like Paint that is already installed that you can use.

Mark, yes I had a lot of modifying to do to get that deck to fit. Below is a picture of how mine currently sits. In the first fittings I had to enlarge the forward openings and basically had to double the size of the aft ones as there was no way to make the precut ones fit. However, even after all that I finally decided that I did not like the way the ribs looked due to their huge size. The hull is not that thick to encompass them at that size and they are not supposed to show on deck so I cut them off. When I finally install this deck I will plank over the holes and add an interior plank along the hull to thicken the hull properly. I'm going to be cutting down a lot of the ribs where they come through as they are not the correct size to be part of the framing.

Looks like you are off to a good start. Yes, the lack of available pictures of this ship is frustrating. In addition to my own build here is a link to another good build of la Couronne on here. This is the Mantua version but is still a good guide as many of the elements of construction and of course the overall shape and design is the same. http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/1022-la-couronne-by-majq-mantua-198/ I have used it extensively for ideas on how to build and especially for decorative ideas. One thing you may consider doing is replacing the kit supplied wood with better quality when you do your hull planking. What came in mine I used for the wales up and the decking but for the lower hull I used wood from Crown Timberyard ans I am very glad I did. I will follow along and watch your progress as I am excited to see another Couronne being built. Good luck!!

That is what it feels like sometimes. My initial layout took me most of the day one Saturday. I don't remember how many times I rechecked what I did but I do remember completely erasing everything and starting over at one point when I was certain I had something messed up. A glass of bourbon and some time playing with my dogs in the yard later I went back in. Turns out I had it right when I did the second layout and my marks were int he same place. I had worried myself into doubting what I was doing!

RedDawg, How I did my planking was I first laid the wales and built the upper half first. reason being is simply that the upper hull is simpler to plank as it is mostly straight runs without any crazy curves. Then I laid the garboard strake along the keel. Once those were in place I used a tailor's tape measure to determine the distance between the bottom wale and the garboard. I knew that the widest plank I wanted to use would be 5mm in width. So at the center bulkheads, which are the widest, I took that measurement which in my case was 110mm and divided by the 5mm width of my plank. This gave me 22 strakes. I was fortunate in that it ended up being an even number. Had it been otherwise I would have adjusted the number of strakes so that none of them would have been wider than 5mm. Now that I have the number of strakes at the widest point I measured along each bulkhead to find each distance. I then took those numbers and divided them by the 22 strakes that would be on the hull. This gave me progressively smaller widths, 4.75mm, 4.5mm, 4.20mm, 3.8mm, 3.5mm, etc., as I worked out from the center to the bow and stern. The trick became measuring along the front edge of the bow as the bottom of the boat does not extend out as far as the top. Here I could not measure from the wales to the garboard as they simply did not line up. I instead measured the curve of the leading edge of the bow and divided that number by the 22 strakes. In doing some research I learned that the width of a plank should not be reduced past 1/2 it's overall width. In this case a 5mm plank should not go below 2.5mm in width. Fortunately my leading edge came out to be 3mm in width so I was safe. While I was measuring all this out I also placed tick marks along the lines of measurement just to use as guidelines to help make sure I stayed on track. Something to keep in mind when you go to plank your hull is that you may lose a little width of your planks if you have to bevel the edges for a tight fit. This can easily throw off a layout even if it is a very small amount as we are dealing with measurement in 1mm or less. I recommend continually rechecking your measurements as you proceed so adjustments can be made if necessary across the entire hull and not just in the last one or two strakes at the end. It is easier to hide a few mm mistake when spread out over 50mm vs suddenly having a couple of planks much wider than the others. The other reason for checking is it will ease your mind when it looks like you are running out of room towards the ends of your ship. Due to the way hulls curve it will quickly begin to seem like there is no way your planking will fit in the remaining space. If you are measuring and cutting them to the measured widths, they will fit. It trips me up every time I do it and I spend a lot of time remeasuring to verify it will work. Good luck, and if can help anymore I will be glad to try.

Excellent looking canons Bob! Those are going to look great in the model.

Outstanding work Michael! You have inspired me to do more research and see what I can do when it comes time for the masts on my Couronne. Once I have seen those and how great they look I don't think I could be happy with a plain mast anymore.