Ian_Grant

John, You're doing great work creating these wheel parts. Since they will all be painted bright orange anyway, if you know anyone with a laser cutter or 3d printer they could be done to perfection in seconds/minutes. May be heresy, I know, but it would give you more time to devote to the cabins etc. and complete the beautiful model earlier. 🤙

Yes, they were one of my favourite species during our Galapagos tour. We were walking on the designated path on an island where they breed and females were sitting on eggs on the ground everywhere, even sometimes in the middle of the path where we had to tiptoe around them. Plus they were busy doing their mating ritual which involves showing off their blue feet.

...even as far away as the Galapagos...........

She looks fabulous, Glen!

Good first build; you're a braver man than me. I've never tried planking a hull. Just a note about the blocks in your mast picture: it looks like the two upper blocks are the wrong way round. By this I mean the single holes should be at the other end. Imagine that the rope passing through has to go around the disc-shaped sheave (a pulley) within the block; whichever direction the rope comes from it must enter the block at the furthest end in order to use the pulley. Enjoy your rigging! Ian

As I recall, flemish horses were present on any yard carrying a sail which had reef bands. A crew member had to be at the very very end of the yardarm to haul the end of the reef band taut and attach to a fixture at yardarm end. I believe this was called "passing the ear-ring". The regular footrope is too near the yard (in the sense of height to the yard from the rope) for this seaman to safely stand. The Flemish horse droops lower to provide this. I haven't looked to add to this response, but there are pictures of seamen even sitting astride the yardarm end to haul the band taught. That's what I recall anyway; I should consult Harland.

That's ok, we'll wait (sound of chair scraping). (sound of feet tapping). "Umm, are you back yet?" (sound of feet tapping).

Nice hull Bill! Also - I hereby induct you as an honorary electronics engineer! Your iron ring is on its way (well, not really since it's a Canadian thing!).

Hi Glen - another awesome build! Just got back from vacation and saw this thanks to your mention of me. 😏 Probably moot now, but when I read about your new idea of lit flames I thought of this build I had admired before:

A little more progress. I've had Lion on the water at three club pond sails. Very relaxing and it's fun to chat to the same 5 or 6 other guys who show up at the park. This week there was a boy hovering around interested; gave him a shot at steering her around. Among other things in a constant flow of talk, he remarked, "You must be the youngest one here". HaHa. Says something about the hobby. I added the port and starboard navigation lights, at the level of the charthouse deck. Still need to make white ones for the foremast/mainmast. I started working on the mainmast stays, then realized they would get in the way of drilling holes and adding stanchions for the aft shelter deck railings (which I have been procastinating about for weeks!). I now have the stanchions for the inner railings made, glued in, and painted grey. I decided to add the boats in the aft well deck before the railing threads were in the way. I spent a l-o-n-g time painting these boats; even then in the end I decided to forego painting bootstripes and red u/w hull on the steam pinnaces since it seemed too much more taping etc for results not all that visible. Here we see the two steam pinnaces, and two stacked boats. The port side will contain the "admiral's launch" beside the pinnace. I can't find a suitable, cheap, 3D file so I'm going to use a whaler hull which printed nicely. I added trailboards at bow and stern and will paint up all fancy for the admiral's use. Don't know whether they slapped grey paint all over these boats in wartime or not. Also visible in the pic are the "green ball" and "red flag" of the helm indicator for ships following when in line ahead, and the inner rail stanchions. I added handrails to the two ladders, from 0.5mm brass rod. I printed a prototype for the Hotchkiss gun emplacements; she carried two on the aft end of the shelter deck according to Norman A. Ough's drawing. God knows how I will make tiny Hotchkiss guns.....TBD. Last, I finally glued on the forecastle breakwater which also has been sitting around painted and ready for weeks. I ordered and have received (just this week) a sound board with USB programming cable and speakers. It's a great little board which plugs directly into an RC Receiver channel (taking power from it too), specifically the channel which has a 3-position switch on the Transmitter (commonly used by pilots for full flaps/half flaps/flaps up). In this case you click it up say "n" times, then click it down once. "n" is the number of the sound track you want to play (board can store many), and clicking it down triggers the audio play. The board can store almost half an hour total of sound. I have WAV files for bosun's call, klaxon, and the old-time steam driven triple-note whistle. Club members suggest "God Save the King" (this is 1916!) and heavy gun fire to go with the rotating turrets. I'd also like to play a voice calling "battle stations" but I have not yet found it with a British accent, only American.🙄 Should be fun!! For example, other club members with model Corvettes have sonar pinging, sonar pinging with a return echo from a sub, gunfire, depth charges exploding, "action station" calls (no Brit accent but they're models of Canadian corvettes). We're starting our trip the day after tomorrow so it will be a while for the next update. Thanks for following!

Good idea. I did the same thing for my Heller Victory.

Beautiful job so far! Is having two adjacent capstans historically accurate though?

Michael, obviously your idea of fun differs from mine. 😁 What was it Andersen said?......"The sprit topmast backstay was one of the places where the early 17th century rigger let himself go." Just kidding; I look forward to seeing it in the "flesh". Ian

I used a bead then wrapped thread around it. Still doesn't give the woven effect though.

Simply gorgeous, Siggi !!!