shipcarpenter

After a lot of deliberation on a separate thread I decided to depart from laying out and assembling complete frames in two laminations and then setting it in place on the keel. Two reasons. First, Marquardt's framing drawing shows that the laminations usually become independent above the first or second futtock. Second, due of errors in either measuring or laying out my assembled frames, the upper portions of the frames were poorly aligned and require considerable shimming.
 
For the remaining four perpendicular frames (stations 22 through 25), I will assemble the floor and first futtock on each side of the deadwood and put them in place. Above that, each futtock and top timber will be placed individually, either laminated or not, guided by ribbands at different heights. 
 
The first of these, 22, is shown in place, supported by a guide to give it the correct height and width. This guide will be moved to each of the other frames.
 
The support for the ribbands is next to be built.

Hello everyone,
After the summer break, I have returned to the TRE KRONER. The model continues to develop from bottom to top, so the interior of the ‘Underste Kajyt’ is currently being worked on, as well as the continuation of the transom from the outside.
Here we start with the cantilevered balcony, which was glued into shape from two layers of pear wood and butt-jointed to the model:
 

 

 
The cornices that form the end here are again partially curved. I experimented a little and steamed the rather stiff boxwood mouldings (7/10 mm) in the cooking pot and shaped them. This works quite well for continuous curves, from which the segments for the side pockets are cut, the attempt for the balcony railing went wrong, I then discarded that and chose another way:
 

 

 

 
In principle, this consists of building a jig in which the moulding is fixed and the profile is profiled to its final shape. The advantage is that there is no need for hot forming or the use of force if it doesn't quite fit and the profile follows the mould neatly. The disadvantage, of course, is that the curved ends always run slightly against the fibre, which makes the profiling process somewhat laborious.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Here are the first cornices fitted to the model, the accuracy of fit is quite good:
 

 

 
Finally, I continued working on the interior.
I've had some feedback that my choice of colours is not authentic and that the colour scheme is definitely too strong.
However, I have somehow fallen in love with this petrol shade and find it quite suitable. The bold interior colours are also not completely untypical for the Baroque period; you can find something similar in residential buildings. The colour restraint only really became predominant again in Classicism with the imitation of the ideal material marble.
Anyway, I stuck with my colour and painted the stern bench, rudder head box and panels the same colour.
 

 

 

 
Best regards,
Matthias
 

Hello and thank you for your encouragement,
In the meantime, I have made some progress on the lower section of the stern-gallery and added the cornices and surrounds for the parapet panels. The gallery windows have also been partially installed, but still without glazing.

 

 

 

 
The basic structure is already quite recognisable. There is nothing new to report on the craftsmanship at the moment; it is essential to create the correct bending radii in advance so that each moulding finds its correct place in the arrangement.
The foliage carvings will later be inserted into the black fields below the window gallery and the arcanthus fronds below the side gallery, but there is still some way to go until then, although my fingers are itching to get started.
But first I'll continue with the interior of the model, the panelling of the lower cabin is laser-cut from 2 mm pear wood, the posts and transoms are placed along the markings. I originally wanted to leave it natural, but now I'm leaning towards painting everything brown-red, like the windows of the rear gallery.
 

 

 
Best regards,
Matthias
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

To everyone who missed the start, welcome.

Finishing the planking on this side.
One strake has a weird shape to the stern.

W.i.p.

The last streak

One side is done, and received a sanding with 60 grit sandpaper.

And not upside down

Thanks for following, comments and likes

Installation of light well and fireproof bulkhead, completion of rear deck.

Installation of molding rails.

Planking between wales and molding rails completed.

Gluing deck clamp, making temporary deck beams to check the location.

Thank you.
Filling pieces.

Awesome and exciting project!
Make sure though that you have enough room in your house to display the model! Just because your garage is big enough doesn't necessarily mean that there is enough place in your living room to house this monster!
I made a similar error deciding to build a French 74 gunner 1780 after J. Boudriot, in the scale 1:48. Just enough room in my workshop, but after nearly 20 years of fiddling with it (I am a v. slow builder!) I found out that my living room is barely big enough to display this monstrosity!
 
Also, such a scale almost demands to build everything nearly exactly to the original, no simplifications and omissions! The question is, do you have enough time and interest (and appropriate materials) to persevere to the end? It would be almost a tragedy to stop the construction somewhere in the middle due to overwhelming difficulties with obtaining materials and simply due to loosing interest and burning out...
 
I keep my fingers crossed for you!
 
Thomas
 

Hello everyone
 
The channels an their chains:
 

 

 

 
That brings me to the current status of the work.
I'm not satisfied with everything. There's a gap between my expectations of myself and my abilities.
Even though I hope you enjoyed the little journey so far. 
 
to be continued...
 
Herzliche Grüße
Willi

Hello everyone
Progress on the planking.
 

 

 

 
Carvings on the stern.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
to be continued...
 
Herzliche Grüße
Willi

Well after a very long wait for me I eventually got my workshop back in November.  I did however revamp it with a bigger work area and decorate it too.
 
So back to building Le Rochefort at very long last!  In my last post I had to remove a few planks and have a good clean up.  Since then I've been happily getting the planking done.  I think the comments above sum up the issues I had so I think pictures tell a better story than words.
 












More tree nails






Final sanding a a very light coat of shellac sanding sealing



 


Some of my joints leave quite a bit to be desired but on the whole I think it looks OK.  I could have made life so much easier by using much thinner planks but I wanted to stay true to the drawings and scantlings.  Next time I will not use black archival ink for the joints either as I think it just looks far too stark.  I would probably use brown ink or just a HB pencil as my dodgy joints would not stand out so much!
 
I've learnt how to spile planks now too and I have found that once you get your head around it the process is very easy to do.
 
The ship has sustained a bit of damage in the process and as such I need to repair the counter timbers a little and remake the taff rail stantions.  Its no big deal - I think it was druxey who a long time ago said that they probably wouldn't last the distance during the build - he was right 🤣  I wanted to remake them anyway as I had missed out the detail on them which would have been difficult to do in place.
 

The new and improved taff rail stantions which I knock out earlier on the mill

So thats me back at it and although I've been participating on the forum there's nothing like actually building 
 
My next jobs are to cut the limber channel and shape all of the frame spacers on the port side.  I'm then going to concentrate on the stern just to beef it up a bit as it's too exposed at the moment.
 
Another job is going to I'm going to make a heavy duty keel clamp.  I didn't enjoy chasing the hull around the work bench and I've seen that others have made one too. 
 
Thanks for your patience  - Mark
 
 

Thanks 👍
 
 Thanks druxey - It was harder than I thought it would be in all honesty!  For some reason in my own mind I thought that it would be easier planking the inside of a the hull compared to the outside.  I was very wrong.
 
Hi HH - I think we all have different levels of skill but when you know you've not done your best.....well I guess we start again.
 
So I've now completed the nailing as described above.  The only change that I made was to make the nails 0.5mm instead of 0.3mm.  I had to do this because I just kept on breaking drill bits at the 0.3mm size as I really needed a micro drill tool to do the job.  I can't justify buying anymore tools at the moment so I just used what I had to hand.  Once I moved up to 0.5mm I didn't break one drill bit.
 
So I think there's about 1000 nails and the one's in the larger parts are 0.8mm in diameter.  Its not as subtle as I wanted on the planking but it doesn't stand out too much either so I'm happy with the results.
 
So now the next job is to fair the outside of the hull 👍  I've been looking forward to this part of the build for a long time now and there's a lot to do to pull it straight and fair.  I also think that this may be a good time to mark out and cut the top timbers to length as well.  If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know.
 
Cheers Mark
 
 

Thanks Eamonn that's nice of you to say.....but don't zoom in too closely as I have still made a few simple errors.
 
The rising wood is now complete and its a nice part of the boat to make.  The shorter piece is the hardest to make as its thickness rises just before the apron.  I positioned it dry using tree nails to make sure that I got good alignment which made the gluing up nice and easy.
 
I also trial fitted a couple of frames......they are very snug and needed a little bit of fettling with a file but the fit on the rising wood is good.
 
My next job is the wing transom and I'll make a start on this sometime over the weekend when I get some more time.
 
Cheers Mark
 
 

This was an interesting part of the build, though pretty repetitive. I am glad that I took internal planking first, it would be barely visible, and a good practice before doing an external planking. 
One more time thanks to Chuck for showing how to edge bend. Got the hang of it, no more broken planks, and I get quite close to desired shape from first or sometimes second attempt:

 
Got more Pfeil chisels, this time to simplify in-situ fairing. Works like a charm!

Closer to deck clamps it became harder to clamp, so some awkward arrangements were used:

The last streak was difficult. Even though I used tick marks, the last forward plank ended up a bit too narrow. Will be careful next time, does not worth re-doing this time.

A blade is used as a wedge to press planks into each other in the areas of some gaps. More glue to soak into the gap. It is cheating, I know  

During the last few months I was sneaking to my modelling corner regularly (which is a challenge with a newborn), and managed to install all planks before the end of the year! Yay! I did not expect it to take this long though - with an average of 4-5 hours per streak and 14 streaks it sums up to 60-ish hours. 
 
So here is how it looks today, before treenailing / fairing / smoothing / trimming. 
When in display case, light coming from the bottom of the case goes through frames and makes an interesting pattern on the planks:

There is plenty of dust over the model, that I will need to carefully remove after sanding.
Hope to finish it in a near future and get to less repetitive parts (breast hooks, mast steps, deck structures, etc etc).  But before that I need to decide on a finish to use (or maybe no finish at all), will make some test pieces and try all the sanding sealers that I bought last year.
Also I got a surprising color deviation in planks, even though they are all cut from a few sheets of castello box, and sheets had no obvious discoloration. 
Maybe it is a side effect of heat bending, may go away after final sanding. Anyway it is not so bad, shows individual planks. A bit of deviation is good!   

Construction progress is not so fast, for a good reason - we got a second daughter a month ago (yay!). Everything goes well so far, we are a lucky parents and Daria (the youngest) helps us a lot. But, as expected, there is little time for anything... Though I still sneak a plank every now and then, so it is moving with a pace faster than zero, one streak per week on average! Each plank takes from 1hr (for a simple straight planks midship) to 2-3hrs (curved ones with difficult shapes). Sometimes a plank goes to waste, so overall it is not a fast process.
It is a nice to get a bit of your own time and work on a model, even late at night. Makes for a good photos  

 
Back to the build progress. Got quite comfortable with heat bending, pretty low error rate. But I still feel that the plank made this way is more brittle than the one shaped with steam. Luckily it is not a big issue.

Since I did a bad job in fairing, there are some low spots that are fixed by adding a filler underneath the plank:

Or chiseling away the high spots:

 



 
Slow but steady, I passed the equator - 7 streaks done (plus limber streak), 6 remaining!
Nothing is sanded yet, and considering bad fairing I expect to spend a lot of time scraping and sanding to make the planks look smooth and fair. There are a lot of glue traces, they would be cleaned up after treenailing.
I'm glad I started with internal planking - it is a good training exercise, that would be barely visible on a finished model, hidden under all decks and cabins. Hope to get enough skill to do a better job on external planking  Consider this a practice piece.

Kevin, I'll accommodate you now!
here is my workshop that has just been refurbished:









 
 

The upper capstan:

work continues on gan barrels:

Thank you friends!
I have finally completed the structure of the upper deck:






 

Square tuck
I wanted to give this a try at least once before making use of the laser cut versions. #1. I copied the angle from the laser cut piece onto the joined strips. #2. The frame was made and set parallel with the angled line. #3. The curves were done with the spindle sander and disc sander along with a bit of hand work. #4. Almost ready to place on the ship. I Still needed to taper the frame.
The most difficult part was trying to get symmetry between the two sides. It's not perfect, but certainly close enough. I was kicking myself when I noticed that the top of the port side square tuck is 1/64" lower at the stern post compared to the other one. Of course this won't be seen once the moulding is on. I left the outer area of the frames without any tapering. There is a tiny filler plank that goes between the tuck and the first strake. I will wait until that's on the ship, so I can sand that area all at the same time.
 
Anyway only one shot at it for this result.
Mike

Completed!

A few more more steps forward.   
Gangway and Rails
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Wonderful progress. It's really nice to see, that people give this old group project a try or continue their build.