Bender

Before building the handrails I needed to attach the Oar thole-pins (Oarlocks) and the Oar wear pads. On the real Reale de France the thole-pins wound have been a wood. I used brass rods.
 

 

 

 
The wear pads.
 

 
 
 The shrouds will pass through these four holes and attach to the chain plates.
 

I added some more of the kit supplied decorations and attached the wale.
 
In the next four pictures you can see the little brass stars that are attached along the hull.

 

 

 

 
This last pictures is the kit supplied rudder hinge. It did not hold out very well.

This picture shows the cat heads being attached.

 
The last four pictures show the cat heads from different angles.
 

 

 

 
 

Next is to cover the bow with planks. This is the last of the plywood to be covered.

 
I made several copies of the plan and cut out a pattern for each plank. I use kid's stick glue to attach the patterns to the wood. 
 
This pictures show how the planks fit together. Some of the pieces still have the paper pattern attached.

 

 

 
The deck planked.

 

 

 
The real Reale had Iron straps to help strengthen the deck. Here I used brass strips. 

 
This type of ship would ram other ships, so the deck needed these reinforcement.

 
 
 

The finished canopy.

 

 
 
More photo etched brass

 

I attached this piece incorrectly . . .

 
and had to remove it. It is damaged beyond repair.

 
Rudder.

 

More pictures of the canopy under construction.
 
The last of the curved slats.

 
The form used to shape the canopy came out at this point. . . . in pieces.

 

 

 
The next few pictures show the cross slats being attached.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Next the canopy. The kit supplied plywood and PE brass for the lower and upper section of the walls that support the canopy. I messed up the brass on the lower section. The brass on the upper section was meant to look open with vertical spindles. I used some spindles from Model Expo and took some liberty here.
 
You can see the plywood and the spindles.

 

 

 
 
 
The kit supplied plywood to make a form. The slats that make the canopy top are bent over the plywood form. This form has to be remove after the canopy in finished. I made a bunch of cuts in the form to make it easier to brake apart and remove.

 
The next few pictures show the slats being added.

 

 

 

 
 

Kit supplied plywood part and part I made from cherry.

 
The raised deck trimmed 
 

 
The kit supplied fancy strips for the decking in this area.

 

 
Covering up the plywood on the other side.
 

 
The edges and face of the plywood on center walkway are covered

 
This shows the decking for the center walkway laying in place.

 

 
The string is part of the rigging and needed to be in place before the decking is glued down.

 

The kit came with some fancy trim.

 
Two-hole toilet.

 
This structure provided some privacy for the toilets. The shrouds will attach to this piece.

 

 
  
 

 
The counter foot boards are added.
 

 
I glued and clipped some wood to cover up more plywood, and you can see the counter foot boards.

 
This shows the counter foot boards in place and shows the wood I used to cover the plywood.

 
 

This ship has three walkways. One down the center and one on each side running the length of the overdeck. These pictures show the port and starboard walkways.
 
Starboard side walkway being clamped to the overdeck. The curved piece you see under the clamps is there to keep the clamps from damaging the wood.

 
Clamps removed

 

 
Close up of the walkway and raised deck.  The two round holes are the deck officers' toilets.

 
The port side walkway under the clamps. The perspective of the starboard side (tops of picture) makes it seem that the walkway and the raised deck are on the same level. They are not.

 

 
Perspective is off on this picture too.

 

 

Now that the keel and stems are permanently attached, I re-assembled the raised fore castle deck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided it would be better to attach the keel and stems before finishing the raised deck, so the deck came off.
 
I didn't have any clamps with jaws long enough so I used two pieces of wood with clamps on the outer edges.

 

 

 

 

At the bow a deck is built over the five cannons.
 
The kit supplied plywood.

 

 
I did not use the plywood except for a pattern to make sure I built the deck to the correct dimensions. I also used pictures of Gerard Delacroix's La Fleur de Lis to see how the frame was constructed.
 
All of the beams and posts are cut from cherry. This is cherry left over from building the Oliver Cromwell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Everything is dry fitted at this point.

 
 

This ship had five cannons mounted at the bow. A large cannon in the center. Two medium cannons on each side of the large center cannon. Two smaller cannons on the outside. Each cannon was mounted on a slide.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some more of the underside of the overdeck.
 

 

 

 

 

Near the front and rear of the ship--where the hull narrows--the overdeck sticks out well past the hull.  Reinforcements were added under the overdeck. The supplied parts for this were precut but of poor quality.
 
This is the supplied part.

 
I had some cherry left.

 

 

 
Here is the supplied part and the part cut from cherry

 
I used a spacer to keep each parallel.

 
 

Next are the benches. . . .Benches? The  rowers actually stood on these. There was a foot board on one edge and a counter foot board on the other edge. There is a clip of La Fler delis on YouTube that shows how the rollers stepped back and forth from bench to foot board. 
 
These are the benches.

 
Gluing the foot board to the bench.

 
I made a gig that held each bench at the correct angle

 

 
The forward cannons will soon be attached to these platforms.

 
 
 

At this point some cosmetic planks needed to be added. You can see the white strip of wood.
 

 
This is due to the order of the build. The deck needed to be planked first so that the notches could be cut for the outrigers. Next was the first layer of hull planking. This is the light colored strip of wood you see in the picture above and below. Then the second layer of hull planking. The outrigers came next. Last the planks were attached under the overdeck. And this left the white strip. Pieces of decking are cut and glued between each outrigger. 
 

 
I had a few regrets with this build. One regret was not replacing the outrigger plywood with real wood. I had plenty of cherry to do this. Later in the build I found some paint that matched the color of the plywood so that the plywood is not obvious.  Also from this point in the build I replaced any plywood supplied parts with cherry.
 
At this stage the decking below the center cannon was added.
 

 
Next come the foot boards, which looks like benches. The foot board attached to a beam that runs the length of the deck.
 

 

 
 
 
 

A beam was added to the underside of the overdeck. 
 

 

 
This beam is the starting point for planking. The planks ran from this beam to the hull.
 

 
These last three pictures show the planks on the underside of the overdeck.
 

 

 

 
Notice that the keel and stems are no longer attached. After fitting these pieces they were removed until later to keep from damaging them.

Thanks, Frank, for the welcome back. It is nice to be back at it.
 
Just four picture for this post. This first picture shows half the port side finished.
 

 
 
This picture shows the last few outriggers on the port side going in. And you can see what the outriggers look like.
 

   
The frame work for the overdeck is nearly complete.
 

 

 
 
 

The next step was building all the hatch coamings. A wave of any significance would wash over the low deck of this type of ship, so the hatch coamings had to be tall enough to keep the water from pouring into the lower deck.
 
Hatch coamings attached to the deck. 
 
 

 
Next was the overdeck. To support the overdeck, 80 frame pieces attached to the main deck on each side and stuck out past the main deck. For lack of a better name, I'll call these pieces outriggers.
 
Here is a picture of the outriggers after they were shaped.
 

 
The outriggers are sitting on the plan sheet. Each piece was cut from supplied plywood and had the top and bottom profile already cut. I only needed to cut the long strips of plywood into shorter pieces and then shape the ends that attached to the deck and the end that attached to the outer support beam. I made copies of the drawings, cut out the pattern, glued the pattern to plywood, and then shaped each outrigger. Each piece had a different shape. This task was not too hard. I used a desk sander to do most of the shaping and a file to achieve the final shape. And when attaching the outriggers to the deck I needed to do some more shaping.
 
Corel's directions stressed the importance of making sure the outer support beam followed the curve of the main deck. I attached the fore and aft outriggers and three outriggers in the middle
 

 
I used office clips to hold the outer support beam to the outrigger. 
 

 

 

 
One side is finished. The outriggers needed more shaping so the piece would fit snugly against the deck and the outer end of the outrigger followed the curve of the outer beam.
 

 
Looking up.
 

 
I mentioned above 80 outriggers on each side. I have not been able to find the drawings that came with the kit. My number of 80 came from counting the outriggers in the picture below. I counted three times and came up with three different counts. You are more than welcome to correct my count.
 

 
 

The second layer of planking is finished, and it took a lot of sanding to get the hull smooth. 


You can see there is a gap for the keel to fit into--actually--let me pull up a picture from the first post. This picture below shows the three layers of the false keel and how the middle layer of the false keel is inset so the "real" keel can slide between the outer two layers of the false keel. This added a lot of strength to keel.

The kit directions gave two options for the keel. You could either assemble the false keel together with the "real" keel, or plank the hull first and then fit the keel. Which is what I did. In order to have no gap between the keel and the planking, I made sure the planking ran well into the gap where the keel would fit. I used a long file to shape the edge of the planking. The gap in the three layers of the false keel kept the file moving straight and kept it centered. I took my time with this. I didn't want to file the slot too wide.

This is a picture of the finished hull sitting on one sheet of the drawings. I put a yard stick (almost a meter long) in this picture to show the length of the hull.


This picture and the last picture show the cheeks at the rear. These gave me a heck of a time. And this is not their final state.



 

After sanding the first layer really well, I started attaching the second layer. Again, the only real problem was the cheeks at the rear. But as the second planking reached the bottom--near where the keel would attach--I noticed the shape of the hull was not correct. If I continued with the second layer the hull would not curve into the keel correctly. I had to remove about five inches of the bottom two strips at the aft so I could sand a little more from the bulkheads and the false keel. The next three picture show what it looked like after reshaping and re-attaching some more bass wood. They also show a steeler plank that needed to be added

It  was ugly at this point. You can see in the picture above and below where I removed two planks and added a strip of bass wood.


The last two pictures show push pins holding the second layer in place.

After adjusting the bulkheads so that the deck ran smoothly, I started with the first planking layer on the hull. The strips were long enough to ran the entire length, but I had trouble with the glue drying too much before I could attach the entire strip. To keep from cutting the strips shorter, I applied glue to a little over half the strip and tacked the strip with push pins. As I worked my way from front to back I kept applying more glue to the strip. The first strip started flush with the top of the deck. Besides the push pins I used blue tape to hold the planking strip tight against the deck.
In the next two pictures you can see how the blue tape is holding the top plank against the deck.


 
For the next few runs of planking I used the spring clips to hold each strip tight against the strip above.

Not only did this hold the strip tightly together, it kept the edges flush with each other.

After five runs of planking, the width was too much for the clips, so I went back to using tape.

The silver clips are helping to hold the the edges of the strip flush with each other

This is what it looked like after some sanding.


Except for the cheeks at the rear end--which required a severe bend--the first layer of bass wood gave very little trouble.

This is another problem I had with the bulkheads. You can see in this picture the the deck is not running smoothly.

I had to separate the deck from the bulkhead

and file the top of the bulkhead down.

After re-attaching the deck to the bulkhead I had to add some material to the bottom edge of the bulk head. This is a strip of basswood I curled with a curling iron.

I think this is what it looked like after the glue dried, but before I sanded it down to sit fare with the other bulkheads. I haven't been able to find the directions that came with the kit, and I don't remember the names to all the parts of this ship.