Palladio

Thank you all, I´m proud you got this flattering impression, but in fact the guys from the late 18th century were simply better and by far more experienced !

Well, I "choose the lesser of the two weevils"...  :-)

By the way, in the german translation of this famous dialog, they choose the term "bug/beetle" instead of "weevil". Believe it or not, a "pretty/cute beetle" is in german the equivalent of a nice girl.

So Jack Aubrey says: Didn´t you know, in the navy we allways choose the prettier beetle...

"Wifes and mistresses, may they never meet!"

A little update concerning the progress in rigging HMS Surprise.

It was a surprise for me how time consuming the detailing of each and every sail turned out...

...and there are quite a few very specialized objects to create. In scale 1:48 you see allmost everything.

Thanks everybody !!

Once hull and the standing rigg are completed, there are two major challenges left.

Sails and flags.

There may be some 500 or even more pulleys of different size and shape, but in the end this is a question of diligence. :-)

Sails and flags are a question of texture.

Most models are shown without sails because sail making is painstaking and often the final output doesn´t look like sails at all...

Even the thinnest tissue has the appearance of corrugated cardboard or worse. That rises the obvious question: is fabric tissue the ideal material?

It´s definetly not! But....

:-) Well, there are certain conventions in the honorable business of historic model ship building....

So I humbly took the thinnest fabric available and started with the gigantic Spanker.

As sail making is awfully time consuming, I had to overcome my concerns to bath the precious thing in ordinary potato starch before giving it a stiff breeze with the hot hairdryer...

.. witch resulted in swelled sails which concerve their form.

meanwhile the main course is ready for action. I replaced conventional seams with liquide fabric glue to avoide stiff multi layers of fabric.

But when it comes to flags, even the thinnest fabric doesn´t work. The texture of a flag is destinctively different from a sail.

In this case, I didn´t give a damn on conventions and looked for an unconventional alternative.

In the end thin copper foil proofed very effective. It was prime coated, using white enamel paint, was fixed on a sheet of paper and send through an ink-jet printer.

You just look for a beautiful "white ensign" in the net, download and print it on the copper foil, which is the ideal material to bend and twist it to a convincing "Flag". The wrinkles of the real flag (which are extremely difficult to achive) are simply printed on the plane surface and look quite realistic.

Well done!

The bow is very convincing.

HMS Agamemnon was a beautiful ship, no wonder Nelson liked her :-)))

 Hendrik

Now she has got a very attractive "face" :-) Thank you for showing !

Hendrik

A full broadside salut to and from HMS Surprise! Thank you all.

Even though the highly praised features of the real ship, read quite different, when you look at the captains logs. She is a nice looking vessel and in her fictional appearance really a fine "seabird"...

Hendrik

Well, there she is, in full size and something like a weird memorial of the beautiful sailing frigate she may be, when finally finished.

First thing that had to be replaced was the carefully "tail docked" bowsprit I used in the earlier stages of the build.

As a working mast it had to be done completely new.

It may not be the easyest thing to start with, but it´s quite servicable. In the end you have to invent a convincing "look" for the rigg, something like a "used look" in my case.

The lower foremast in comparison to the drawing of the massiv 36gun mainmast.

In scale 1:48 at least some parts are exposed to permanent stress which could cause significant damage in the long run.

One of this fragil looking elements are the fighting tops. This is the maintop and the smaler mizzentop.

The "mouse" of the forestay as a workpiece and in action

I like your "heads" :-))))

The drawing of Karl Heinz Marquardt which depicts the fictional Jack Aubrey Surprise, is very helpful indeed. But there is a little sketch of Geoff Hunt (which is also included in the book) that proofs helpful too because it outlines the overall "look" of the ship. Hunt used this sketch and some rough models for his famous paintings.

I´m totally ungifted in knitting, and therefore had to start something else...

This is not the first and definitely not the last Surprise. Just do it!!

I think this was the main stay, I don´t intend to do that mad job for smaler cables.

Concerning the Admirals, if I would call her lovingly "my dear old Jarvie" she surely would grip the nine tailed cat and start flogging the captain of her heart...

This world is unfair!

...with deep respect! "My god thats seamanship"

Thank you all for your comments, as you well know, this is very encouraging in the ups and downs of such a long lasting build.

Typical for a scratch build is the absence of a masterplan, at least concerning the little decisions you make, which may result in many weeks of additional work.

One of this crazy ideas were the workable gun lids.

Most "HMS Surprises" show the traditional one piece gun doors, simple and reliable. My (about) 1810 Surprise had to feature the two-parted version the trio Lavery, Hunt and Marquardt demand. Believe me, I didn`t know what was coming about.

A horror trip:

but she has a "look"...

Finally, one clear cold morning the hull was completed.   ... and another decision had to be made: Rigging? Sails?

Well my wife decided imperiously: "Rigg and sails!" ...and here we are, serving countless ropes...

Hello Paul,

thank you   I mentioned it because Patrik O´Brian used poor Captain Pym and his ill fated HMS Sirius when he portrayed that disastrous grand port frigate raid in one of his books ("The Mauritius command") virtually through the eyes of his fictional charakters.

Thank you all, this is lionfish poetry

I found some "how -to´s" concerning two important topics "guns" and "boats".

Most of the guns for model ships are either purchased or made, using a machine and brass tubes.

(please don´t care for the nickel silver tank tracks,  Merkava3D ) More important is the use of master patterns for the various types of gun barrels. In this case the 12pounder long gun....

and the 24pounder caronade. This masters are made from simple epoxy putty, intended for car repairs.

I choosed a very low temperature bismuth tin alloy to cast the guns (you can use normal silicone for the moulds) and didn´t mind to use resin parts for the wheels of the carriages.

The colour of the barrel is an experiment, in the end I prefered a dull black paint and a drybrush with "gun metal".

This is the complete layout of guns for Jack Aubreys Surprise  18punder caronade for the boat, 24 pounder for the upper deck, 12pounder longguns for the main battery and 9pounder longguns for the chasers.

Same thing with the boats:

I tried to simplyfy the whole procedure for the holiday "workbench".

cardboard replaced more elaborate methods:

The jollyboat took me three or four days hard holidaywork

When the boat was completed, I could´nt withstand to place it in front of the famous church tower of Coullioure (as a tribute zu POB )

My dog "Queequegg" was not amused though...

The pinnace is carvel planked but was build the same way.

Hello Paul,

a very interesting project!  In a broarder sense it even fits to the fictional context of the Aubey/Maturin tales.

Hendrik

Good idea, the problem is, a lot of the "how-to-do" pictures drowned, when a german forum suddenly "capsized" and sank deep in the heard of the internet nirwana...

have a look through Jack Aubreys rear windows...

Well there still are a few examples to be found in my personal data nirwana....

The Lamp

The asymetrical head was formed using copper foil, the base is a ordinary silver bordure from a goldsmith shop. Very useful especially if you don´t like to carve such horribly small parts. Its even better than a photo etching because it´s three dimentional and more convincing. I used it again for the portside galleries.

The glas is no glas at all. I employed a conventional laminator (bureau) without putting a sheet of paper in between. This material turned out to be very resistent using cyano acrylate glue ( clear plastic often tents to get "milky")

Before the lamp finally became decorated with oak leafes, it looked somewhat "chinese".

The side galleries

What the hell is that? A part of the original sketch of Mr. Marshal from 1798

and this is my, a little bit flamboyant design...

You may have noticed that my HMS Surprise is not symetrical, the starboard side is coppered, the guns are runed out and it features the shown side gallery.

The port side...

is looking more conventional. (despite the nice Sofia Aubrey portrait of course)

Hello Albert,

it´s beautiful to see all this Framework.

The "Naiad" is well represented !

 Hendrik

Lets have a little surprise gathering tonight

a litle tribute to Capt. Marryat, the almost (al least in Germany) forgotten godfather of naval storys.

Ther are a lot of thíngs that make a quarterdeck looking "authentic", the capstan, the wheel and of course the binnacle.

... and aft of the wheel the (one and only) ships lamp.

Heureka,

another scratched "Surprise". Well done! When I read your log, it sometimes felt like a deja vue of my own experiences with Jack Aubreys beloved Ship.
 

HMS Surprise,
"a trim, beautiful little eight-and-twenty,
French build with a bluff bow and lovely lines,
weatherly, stiff, a fine sea-boat,
fast when well handled,
roomy, dry…"

(Patrick o´Brian)

Roomy indeed ...with a max headroom of about 150cm under the forecastle...

One of the most important features for the common sailor must have been the pantry.

The galley stove was a giant thing concerning the little availlable space.

This oven is more or less in working condition but most of the different brass parts are glued together.

You don´t see much of it now but at least you know it is there.....

Not far away and of similar importance is the waste management system.

roomy and definitly not dry...

Thank you for your kind welcome contributions

Indeed I found some almost forgotten pictures from the early beginning of ths project.

Building the bow section I felt inspired by the plank on frame guys   Surprises stern is rather unpretentious, she is a french corvette of under 500 tons.

Miss Unité as she appeared before make up...    and in full dress

Most of Surprises metal parts are not brass but alluminium.

The Guns

The 12pounder guns are too big for such a small frigate, but I followed POB  in this detail. Despite the weight, it is empirical obvious that you can´t handle them properly.

The barrels are tin casts in silicone molds, the carriages constist of some 50 pieces each

Hendrik

Hello Robert,

I didn´t expect to find swivel-guns on a royal yacht...

poor pirates of the carribian seas beautiful!!

Hello Greg, the scale is 1:48

Well the pictures above represent more or less the actual status, meanwile shrouds and stays have partly been rigged.

It all started with a quite conventional framework from plywood. The depicted laser measurement of the completed hull was just a joke, but it turned out quite helpful to fix the waterline...

instead of clumpsy carvings I invented a more "impressionist" way of applying plausible looking, but rather indefinite details, using wood putty and photo etched oakleafs. The whole area is painted anyway.

Miss "Unité", the figurehead was created from a mixture of materials, using plastic bodyparts, copper and putty. She tured out to have a (late) 19th century look rather than representing the 18th but frankly, I like her

Hendrik

Please not another „HMS Surprise“
 
I thought this international forum literally crowded with them, but when I looked through the pages, there were not so many examples, at least they didn´t show up to me jet.

Well, there are a few possible approaches to that specific frigate:

The real HMS Surprise ex Unité , which was sold (and broken up? ) in 1802
The fictional Frigate from the novels of Patrick O´Brian, beautiful but hopelessly over rigged and, over guned (which was the exact thing I did)
The “Movie Surprise” (ex Rose) which played the role of the famous ship so well, that it almost dominates the public impression of the small frigate.
 
When the book "The frigate Surprise" of Brian Lavery, Karl Heinz Marquardt und Geoff Hunt came out, I finally found my personally image of the beloved Surprise.
 
In 2011 I started the project as a classic PoB build, scaled the plans of KH Marquardt to the dimensions of the existing NMM views of the real Surprise, took many details from the various novels of POB and finally the colors and overall appearance from the artwork of Geoff Hunt.
 
Voila!
 
 
 
 
As the Surprise is not jet finished, it is too early for the gallery and somewhat too late for the build log. If you are interested, I show some pictures from “the past” and start rigging up the yards and sails, which will hopefully come to an end this year.