EJ_L

Your steady rest is ingenious Johann!

Beautiful work!
 
Gary

This is maybe best build I ever saw, including beautiful photography , light & background, premium ropes and tratment. thank you fro treat, inspiration  and happy continuation. V. 

Making the yards - Main yard - Grande vergue
Before starting to make the yards, I made myself a planing jig in advance, inspired by Ed Tosti's build report for the clipper "Young America" in the MSW, as shown in the drawing below. Rotating and locking clamps allow lumber of various widths and lengths to be fixed in place for machining, especially with a wood planer. 
 
To make the main yard, I prepared a drawing with dimensions based on the plan by J. Boudriot.

 
The next two pictures show how the holding device mentioned at the beginning of the report can be used in practice. 
It performs valuable services in the manufacture of yards. For example, a wooden strip with a V-shaped groove was clamped in place. A square timber inserted in this way can easily be planed into an octagonal timber. In this case for the main yard and later for the leeward spars. These timber blanks are then much easier to machine on the lathe. In addition, they are used to roughly preform the octagonal areas of the yards or studding sail booms. 

   
With the following pictures I illustrate the further processing steps in the yard production. 



       
In contrast to the main yard, the studding sail booms are much more delicate logs with diameters of 3.7 to 2.2 mm, which had to be machined. So that this succeeds also without breakage, I built for this with simple means a small steady rest. With this I can bring small ball bearings for round timber with diameters of 1 - 10 mm into position for support. In the meantime, the small tool has already proven itself very well. 

On the last picture you can see the first results.

 
To be continued ...

 
 

Marc,
  Soleil Royal is looking great!  Your carvings are fantastic!
 

Hi Michael! Thank you for the nice compliment.  For all of these carvings, I primarily use a curved chip-carving knife, a #11 EXACTO, a shallow 1/8” gouge, a 1/16” veiner, and an 1/8” straight chisel.  Here and there, I’ll use small Dremmel burrs to waste material and approximately define shapes.

She looks lovely Marc!👍 Curious as to what blades you use?
 
Michael D.

I’m a little stalled on the head construction, this past week; I just haven’t had much evening time to focus on it, unfortunately.
 
I have, though, been trying to carve the bow angels that sit right behind the headrails.  I had the hardest time carving this, considering the scale:

As before with the stern angels, the faces are not great, but I can live with them.

Marc,
Stunning work!  I am also stunned that you have had Covid twice.  Bad things can happen to good people.
Bill

ooooh...that's pretty scary....a nice halloween gift.....in my wildest dreams, could i have the patience or talent, for such intricate work.........

Thank you all for your well-wishes and for your kind comments.  Although, I have generally felt pretty ok, throughout (congestion, mostly), today was my first day where I tested negative.  It was nice to have a little time to rest, but my compulsive nature has me bouncing off the walls, at this point.
 
So, after much fiddling/fettling, I finally have the forward and mid supports dialed-in where I want them:


But, for the fact that I underestimated the angle of the buttressing knees on the forward support:

Okay, not a big deal; I added some plastic underneath the knee, so that I could fair the top surface flush with the headrail profile:
 


After fairing, and adding the support ledge for the grate slats:



I think the fleurs shaped up nicely, especially considering how small they actually are:

I had to add some plastic to the foot of the split supports, in order to raise them up about a 1/16”, but that is not a big deal either.  This is the beauty of a plastic build; you can make these mistakes and still salvage the part.
 
The next tricky bit of business is to fashion the forward terminus for the head grating, which fairs into the upper head knee.
 
More to follow..

Certainly it's a Herculean task at that scale, Marc. Looking very promising.
 
Sorry to read that you had a second round with covid. Hopefully you will be healthy from here on.

The attention to detail is mind-blowing and the production of parts is so precise.  Keep the updates coming mate 😎

Marc - 
 
Glad you came through covid (again) so well.
 
Nice work.
I think you have solved some of the trickier fitting problems around the headrails.
Looking forward to seeing her in person.
 
Stay well
 
Dan

Marc,
 
As usual, BEAUTIFUL work!

Bill

Hello!
 
The difficulty I’ve been having with these headrail supports has to do with my fidelity to the idea that some portion of the support should fit beneath the lowest headrail.
 
I started by first adjusting the adjoining angles on the starboard side.  I found that I had to add plastic shims, here and there:

This all worked out well enough on the starboard side, but I was not having nearly enough of a supporting ledge, when I shifted over to the port side.
 
More-over, when I positioned both headrails at the same time, I realized I was going to have to add significant plastic the the lower coved profile, in order to create a port-side ledge.  Rather than continue to add plastic, I decided to let the matter rest for a few days.  I am glad I did.
 
In the days that followed, my second bout with COVID (pretty mild) has afforded me the time to really think this through.  I remembered that I had already set the position of the headrails so that the forward medallion was below the sprit mast.  That was the whole impetus for re-designing the headrails, in the first place.
 
Further, I had set the cathead supports to meet neatly beneath the cathead timbers.  Despite all that forethought and pre-work, I had only visually placed the starboard cathead, before fitting the supports, on the assumption that my glue blocking would locate them properly.
 
Wellllll, that was not a safe assumption to make.  My forward medallions were actually encroaching above the spritmast, and when I put the cathead timbers in place, I could no longer fit the supports beneath them.
 
Once I could see the proper positioning of all of the affected elements, I knew what I must do:



The way forward would be to lop off these supporting ears (middle support)

Note: The vertical web you see on the split supports, closest to the hawsers, are only temporary for the sake of strength while I make and fit these parts.  Once I did that, the support pieces nestled against both sides easily:


I can simulate that under-connection, a bit later, with an applied scroll-head.
 
From there, I focused on what sort of decorative embellishments I would add to the exposed face of these supports.  I settled on a raised lip moulding:

I am playing with the idea of applied fleur ornaments at the base of each support.  These will extend out beyond the sides of each support, which may or may not be pleasing.  So far, though, they are coming along nicely:


The other tricky bit is that these cambered transverse supports for the head gratings have buttressing knees, running aft.
 
I had applied a glue ledge for the grating slats, and at the ends I have applied these blocks that I will fit to the headrails, and then file to shape.  What I have drawn upon them is only a rough approximation.  Again, these details are always easier to dial-in with the files:


Steadily, now, the bow is rounding into form.  Thank you all for your likes, your comments and for looking-in.

Ha!  You may have to wait a bit longer as these headrail supports are proving more difficult to fit than I anticipated.  The starboard side is fitted, but it required significant padding out with extra styrene to make good connections; this, despite making what I thought were really good patterns.
 
Anyway, it will all come together in the end.

Can't wait to see the bow fulfilled !
 

maybe i got it this time...... 
 

la couronne sailing.mp4

thanks.....!!!
oh ..taken by a cell phone...had a good camera, but video didn't come out so i couldn't blow it up......anyways it's gone now and those days are over....more time for meditation and contemplation 😁.....

better sounding cannon...
img-2843_felQgB7T_5N0D_New.mp4

Richard,
Thanks,  Need to get back to her - she's been in idle drydock for over a month. Life has gotten in the way 😎.
And also spent time in Europe for a 1st trip in about three years - given that the planet has been shut down for almost as long.
 
Regards,  

All three masts are topped out and Royal Louis has reached her full size at 33 inches tall and 43 inches long. This is another massive model. 
 
I will be working on attaching more blocks to the masts, tops, and crosstrees then will begin installing stays and shrouds. 
 

All three masts are topped out and Royal Louis has reached her full size at 33 inches tall and 43 inches long. This is another massive model. 
 
I will be working on attaching more blocks to the masts, tops, and crosstrees then will begin installing stays and shrouds. 
 

All three masts are topped out and Royal Louis has reached her full size at 33 inches tall and 43 inches long. This is another massive model. 
 
I will be working on attaching more blocks to the masts, tops, and crosstrees then will begin installing stays and shrouds.