Ian_Grant

Makes hot chocolate the best ever! 👍

Actually, I looked again at my Heller Victory, and it's not impossibly more knots than for her. Keep in mind that Victory's fore and main lower ratlines tie off to 9 and sometimes 11 shrouds so they add up very quickly too.

Thanks Kevin and Jerome! Jerome you have me thinking - the topgallant and topmast shrouds are only in twos and threes anyway so maybe skip the knots on the centre topmast shroud. For the lower, maybe just knot the two ends as well.....hmmm.....

Standing rigging done at last! Well, except the ratlines. I accidentally bumped the bowsprit and broke the martingales. Glued them up but the outer broke again later, I barely touched it. Needed to get beneath to work on it. Tried this arrangement, but lighting from below and dazzle from above were issues..... ....so switched to this setup which was much better. I ended up replacing my brass tube martingales with thread, doubled and twisted like I did for the guys. I also replaced the dolphin striker with a slightly stouter tube. Last standing rigging line to do was the fore royal stay. Wouldn't you know it, when I pulled it taut my little white rigging screw on the bowsprit came apart - brass tube separated from the etched eye on the bowsprit; not enough glue. Then the damn thing twinged off my tweezers while I attempted to re-glue it and went off to the 4th dimension. Had to make and paint a new one. Here's a shot of the bowsprit with its rigging screws. The two on the centre line tighten the inner and outer jibstays; the one to port (barely seen) is the doubled fore topgallant stay; that to starboard is the fore royal stay (single). This is all in accordance with Longridge. I doubled the topgallant stays too, just to give them some "heft" as my thread is slightly smaller than scale. Still haven't trimmed the safety netting! Also realized I forgot the footropes but at this point I will leave it as is. Here are some shots of the current state, with my patented background white. Not bad except the fore and mizzen topgallant masts ended up bowed back a little. Especially the fore mast. But athwartships alignment is good! For the running rigging I drilled holes through the pin rails adjacent to the vestigial pins Heller provided. Lines pass through the hole and are tied in a knot, then covered with little "coils". This photo was meant to show this but the coils on the opposite bulwark rails are, sadly, out of focus. The untrimmed ends of the shrouds await their white seizings, between the ratlines. Shrouds, stays, etc were simply clove-hitched to the masts. It looks ok as seen here although the accumulated turns are double that of authentic rigging. No one will know except us. And finally a shot which attempts to show the density of the backstays on this ship. I just noticed there is a clip still on one of the fore topgallant shrouds....oops! Last major task is to add the yards. Each requires four blocks of some sort, for either clew lines or downhauls depending on whether it's a fixed or movable yard. The topsail sheets will be chain, slightly over-scale but I wanted to show them as such to add to the majesty. 😉 As you can see there are many yards. Still undecided about their footropes......at this scale......leaning towards no. But just before I get there.......ratlines!!?? To be in scale I'd need a ratline every 0.1" times five masts. I estimate 3100 clove hitches. 🤪😭 Not sure I want to do them but feel ship would look odd without them........ I have no idea what to use for these..........fly tying line?....wire?....any suggestions welcome.

I used a pen along my Victory's deck seams but I will never do it that way again; for Preussen I just applied a wash which was left in the seams after wiping. Much easier and probably more permanent.

WARNING: Rant on US/Canada border trans-shipping ahead.......... Well I got my package from Servocity today. If I thought my heart nearly stopped when I saw my Cart total, it came even closer when the UPS guy wanted another $109CDN from me at the door for, ahem, GST and brokerage fees and taxes on brokerage fees. This on top of already paying $49.44USD for shipping $188.57USD worth of parts to the border. Servocity has a standard shipping fee of $8.99USD within the USA, so a US resident of Ogdensburg, say, gets his/her shipment for $8.99 but I pay $40USD more for my shipment to travel the extra 6km to the border. Then add $69.30 for brokerage fees and $9.01 tax on that. Finally add Canadian GST which is also applied to the shipping fees not just the product value. Bottom line, I received $188.57USD ($236.83CDN) worth of parts for $408.28CDN to my door, an increase of merely 72.3% in shipping and up charges. RIDICULOUS! HIGHWAY ROBBERY! And that just allows me to PARTIALLY build ONE SIDE of the galley mechanism.....at these prices I may use these parts as drill guides and revert to a mix of metal and wood components, or maybe just give up altogether.

Nice idea! But where is the penguin? 🤫 I too have a passion for Disaronno Amaretto, in hot chocolate, when camping.

Ah! I thought they might be that, but I don't see any sign of a lens/window/viewing slit? I'll have to look up how they worked.....

...."Probably only until my wife comes downstairs." HaHaHa 😄 Very nice model build! Pardon an uneducated question, but why does the first turret lack the protuberances on the aft sides that the other three sport?

The 10" leech and buntline blocks on the lower fore and main yards scale to 3/32" on the model, about 2.5mm; not far from the length you used. But have a look at the blocks from "Syren" on my model (below). They're far less bulky for their length. In fact they look exactly like the buntline blocks pictured in Longridge PLAN NO 8. Also note that they're lashed on the front of the yard. My topsail sheet and lift blocks are also less imposing but realistic. I agree with Marc; if you have a collection of these blocks then go down one size perhaps. I don't recall what Kevin made for you.

What a pretty boat! Very nice. By the way Chris, your new user photo is much more dignified and serious, but I still like your previous one. 😉

Rob, didn't realize you moonlighted as a hit-man. 😄

Fantastic! I should have asked you about printing me some Jarvis brace winches......if you ever do a Preussen/Potosi/Passat/Pamir you will be able to improve the kit's offering.😉

Just a note to myself so I don't lose the figures..... Plotted some more parts in Tinker; in order to have two 30mm linear bearings on a single shaft for separate upper and lower oar beams, the drawer slide bottoms need to be 21mm below water level to prevent the two bearings interfering on the shaft. This allows upper oars to move over a greater range than the lower, while still allowing lower oars to go up to horizontal if required. Shaft length is 95mm.

Kevin, nice pump! Will this really print in one piece in resin at this scale? I'm impressed! I drew better Jarvis winches for Preussen a while back, but my brother's 3D FDM printer couldn't make a nice job of them. Again, I really like your wood-look painting.

"...saved me from throwing the mother of all computer generated tantrums" HAHAHA! 😄 Thanks Kevin, I'll take a look at the video.

I have a wood mold for some unknown part of something I picked up somewhere or other years ago. It reminded me of a bygone era, and my dad.

Starlight, thank you for the encouragement. When I decided I wanted to do an RC build again I was torn between the ideas of a functioning galley and a square rigged vessel. I thought a galley would be more of an engineering challenge, but boring to use once the novelty wore off; whereas a ship would require less challenging preliminary work but be a constant challenge to sail. I opted for the galley now, and hope to do a square rig later! It's been fun playing with electronics again, and I actually quite enjoyed writing the software. I know now that my code is pretty basic and I'm looking forward to improving the stroke's realism. There's plenty of program memory left in the micro! 😃 Speaking of realism, could they even back-stroke in the real thing?? 🤔 It would be harder to do than when they tried to evade "Talos" in "Jason and the Argonauts" .... love that movie! 😀

Oh Kevin, I haven't tried 360 at all.......too much of a learning curve, and I get frustrated and angry at computer tools with their idiosyncratic user interfaces. I have better instincts for physical tools and power equipment. At this point as I said I am going to order some parts and do a partial prototype build to check how the vertical movement would function, and just generally what these components are like. LATER EDIT: Parts order placed. My heart nearly stopped when I saw the $US total, never mind in $CDN. I took the two sweep servos back off the order to make it more palatable; after all, who knows, in the end I may decide to give up! As an aside, one of my neighbour's large maple trees was felled in a recent bad storm. Unfortunately it landed on and crushed our above ground pool! Preliminary talks with our insurance informed us that they will only give us a pro-rated value for our admittedly old pool, perhaps as low as 25% 😭. Yes the pool was old, but it was fine and enjoyable and I wish they would just make it good for us. We could be on the hook for several thousand dollars to replace it at the moment, meaning the Admiral might find it of debatable worth. It's mainly me that enjoys it 😳 now that the kids are grown up. That's why I'm a bit sensitive to expenditure at the moment.........

Had a bit of a brain wave: how about two independent beams for the upper and lower remes? This would allow software to independently control the range of lift motion for each reme of oars, allowing the upper ones to be raised slightly higher without the lower ones necessarily going all the way up to horizontal. I like it! Ideally the vertical shafts could have two shorter linear bearings on them, one for each reme's oar beam. I would modify the interface board and software to add two more output servos for the two new lifts. Potential snag is we now have a long beam mounted on two 1.25" linear bearings more than 2 ft apart; could a single central servo move it up and down without the ends binding? Don't know. I have always had in the back of my mind that perhaps the beams would need servos at each end, so be it. But with four beams that would be eight servos doing the lifting which seems beyond the realm of reasonableness. Or, perhaps, two vertical shafts at each end, the inner pair for the lower oar beam, outer pair for the upper, and all four shafts sporting 2.25" bearings to better resist binding. I am going to order some parts from Servocity to build a partial model, and get a "feel" for how these bearings perform in my scenario. If central lift servos can't work, then back to Plan "A". More to come. Happy modelling.

I'm a bit late to this build, but very impressed! Between you and Chris I am thinking I should try a card model of some sort; will have to look around to see what appeals. Happy modelling!

Yes, every time I'm in Lee Valley I am impressed by the apparent quality of the Fein stuff, but the $$$ puts me off. My loss, probably.

Yes, you need to be concerned about breathing in ultra-fine particles which will enter your lungs. Especially if a model has some exotic tropical wood species. The trick is to collect the dust before it scatters into the air. Have you heard of "suction boards"? Basically you build a box with a perforated top surface and a dust port to connect to some sort of shop vac. Simply sit your piece on the perforated surface and sand away. Dust disappears into the collector before it has a chance to scatter. Of course, this still requires a shop vac but some of the small units are relatively quiet. It must be able to filter sub-micron particles or it will send your collected dust straight back into your room. Hope this helps! Here is an example video:

Going to be beautiful. May I suggest you add "RADIO" to your title; that way all the RC enthusiasts will pull up chairs. 😀 Looked up Southern Cross Models. I see your 1/72 County class hull is 2.7 meters long !!!!!! RC enthusiasts will definitely want to follow this! Also, that deck and turret look very nice; are you 3D printing parts, or does Southern Cross models work up structure too?

Good God Bill! So sorry to hear about all that.....hope you both are fully recovered soon! Best Regards, Ian