petervisser

I've been a bit slack in posting updates over the holidays, but the 'Duchess' has been quietly progressing in front of admiring holiday crowds at the museum. It always worries me that the unprotected model is very close to the public, unlike on the dedicated model makers' desk which was intentionally built wide, but I never have to worry about the kids touching the model - just (occasionally) their parents.
 
As you can see, the standing rigging is finally nearing completion (sans ratlines), with only a few more stays on the jigger and the mizzen spreaders to do. I'm now changing my focus to the sails and will hopefully play with the first sail - the flying jib - for a bit on Friday.
 
John
 

Thank you very much MikkiC, thanks for the like..
 
I keep going slowly, I'm turning the yards..🔥


I came across a new Proxxon, a 4-jaw chuck.. Great Christmas gift. The placement of the prisms is more accurate..😍


The first yards have been dialed in. Additional items will be placed..

I wish all modelers a lot of peace and, most importantly, diligence and a passion for building in the next construction year 2025.
 

I will begin by wishing you all a very happy New Year.  My celebration begins today as I rejoice the completion of the standing rigging on my Flying Fish.  A number of photos are attached.
 
Now the real fun begins!   I am not expecting any of the remaining modelling. work to be easy 😬.
 
Best wishes to you all for 2025.  Thanks for looking in.

After another lengthy hiatus, work has resumed on my Cutty Sark. I left off work last spring after discovering I had made a somewhat serious error on some of the rigging of the masts. It has taken several months to reconcile these errors, and  deciding whether to undo a substantial amount of standing rigging or leave well enough alone and charge on. I opted for Option B as the mistakes can only be noticed by me and an astute number of serious clipper ship aficonadoes on this website. 😉 I have fitted a number of the lower yards with ties and halliards and have now dry fitted the upeer yards on all three masts. I spent the last couple of days manufacturing collars for the trusses. Now I can continue rigging the yards with ties, lifts and halliards. Here are some pics showing all the yards in place , the upper ones being dry fitted.
 

Hi Galkar and welcome to MSW. Like you I am also an avid fan of Patrick O’Brian and his incredible body of work. I too have read the series several times and will likely read them again. As for the Sophie in Master and Commander, she is a fictional brig based on Cochrane’s Speedy and therefore has little resemblance to the actual brig. But like you, I also have a keen desire to build her. Therefore I have purchased Model Shipways Fair American which I believe to be a reasonable facsimile of the Sophie in M&C. They both have raised poop decks, and with a few tweaks, the Fair American can be made to resemble the brig depicted on the cover as painted by Geoff Hunt. All the best with your enjoyment of this amazing hobby. Cheers, Peter

After another lengthy hiatus, work has resumed on my Cutty Sark. I left off work last spring after discovering I had made a somewhat serious error on some of the rigging of the masts. It has taken several months to reconcile these errors, and  deciding whether to undo a substantial amount of standing rigging or leave well enough alone and charge on. I opted for Option B as the mistakes can only be noticed by me and an astute number of serious clipper ship aficonadoes on this website. 😉 I have fitted a number of the lower yards with ties and halliards and have now dry fitted the upeer yards on all three masts. I spent the last couple of days manufacturing collars for the trusses. Now I can continue rigging the yards with ties, lifts and halliards. Here are some pics showing all the yards in place , the upper ones being dry fitted.
 

Hi Guys,
I have commenced the running rigging at last, starting with the three sets of lifts for the 3 yards mounted on the lower masts. Baby steps... And what with runing the rigging to the spider bands at the bases of the masts, meant coiling down the ends of those lines. In the past, I used to leave enough thread after running the line through its various blocks and tackles and coiling the surplus several times around the belaying pin. However, with greater efficiency and less toil in mind I decided to put Tom Lauria's method into practice. He coils the lines off the model and places the coils on the pins. It is a more accurate depiction of how lines are coiled onto pins at the expense of having two lines make up each individual rope. Here's a link to his video:
 
 
I did make a couple of modifications to his technique so as the loop around the pin didn't come undone and used diluted white glue to set the coils up permanently. Here are a few pic's of my efforts:
 

Here I used a scrap piece of cedar strip as the pins were more easily pushed into it.
 

Here are the coils around the pins with an additional pin set back from the top edge of the cedar strip. This allowed for a bigger bight to pull under and into the coil of rope.
 

Here I used actual belaying pins to thread the bight as it made it easier to place the coils onto the model. As mentioned I used diluted white glue to set up the coils and allowed for longer tails so the bight did not become unstuck.
 



And here are the results of the lifts' rigging onto their respective belaying points. It took a bit of trial and error to come up with a successful method but I am hoping it will alleviate some of the hassle in this repetitive task. Cheers
 
 

After another lengthy hiatus, work has resumed on my Cutty Sark. I left off work last spring after discovering I had made a somewhat serious error on some of the rigging of the masts. It has taken several months to reconcile these errors, and  deciding whether to undo a substantial amount of standing rigging or leave well enough alone and charge on. I opted for Option B as the mistakes can only be noticed by me and an astute number of serious clipper ship aficonadoes on this website. 😉 I have fitted a number of the lower yards with ties and halliards and have now dry fitted the upeer yards on all three masts. I spent the last couple of days manufacturing collars for the trusses. Now I can continue rigging the yards with ties, lifts and halliards. Here are some pics showing all the yards in place , the upper ones being dry fitted.
 

After another lengthy hiatus, work has resumed on my Cutty Sark. I left off work last spring after discovering I had made a somewhat serious error on some of the rigging of the masts. It has taken several months to reconcile these errors, and  deciding whether to undo a substantial amount of standing rigging or leave well enough alone and charge on. I opted for Option B as the mistakes can only be noticed by me and an astute number of serious clipper ship aficonadoes on this website. 😉 I have fitted a number of the lower yards with ties and halliards and have now dry fitted the upeer yards on all three masts. I spent the last couple of days manufacturing collars for the trusses. Now I can continue rigging the yards with ties, lifts and halliards. Here are some pics showing all the yards in place , the upper ones being dry fitted.
 

After another lengthy hiatus, work has resumed on my Cutty Sark. I left off work last spring after discovering I had made a somewhat serious error on some of the rigging of the masts. It has taken several months to reconcile these errors, and  deciding whether to undo a substantial amount of standing rigging or leave well enough alone and charge on. I opted for Option B as the mistakes can only be noticed by me and an astute number of serious clipper ship aficonadoes on this website. 😉 I have fitted a number of the lower yards with ties and halliards and have now dry fitted the upeer yards on all three masts. I spent the last couple of days manufacturing collars for the trusses. Now I can continue rigging the yards with ties, lifts and halliards. Here are some pics showing all the yards in place , the upper ones being dry fitted.
 

Hi Galkar and welcome to MSW. Like you I am also an avid fan of Patrick O’Brian and his incredible body of work. I too have read the series several times and will likely read them again. As for the Sophie in Master and Commander, she is a fictional brig based on Cochrane’s Speedy and therefore has little resemblance to the actual brig. But like you, I also have a keen desire to build her. Therefore I have purchased Model Shipways Fair American which I believe to be a reasonable facsimile of the Sophie in M&C. They both have raised poop decks, and with a few tweaks, the Fair American can be made to resemble the brig depicted on the cover as painted by Geoff Hunt. All the best with your enjoyment of this amazing hobby. Cheers, Peter

After another lengthy hiatus, work has resumed on my Cutty Sark. I left off work last spring after discovering I had made a somewhat serious error on some of the rigging of the masts. It has taken several months to reconcile these errors, and  deciding whether to undo a substantial amount of standing rigging or leave well enough alone and charge on. I opted for Option B as the mistakes can only be noticed by me and an astute number of serious clipper ship aficonadoes on this website. 😉 I have fitted a number of the lower yards with ties and halliards and have now dry fitted the upeer yards on all three masts. I spent the last couple of days manufacturing collars for the trusses. Now I can continue rigging the yards with ties, lifts and halliards. Here are some pics showing all the yards in place , the upper ones being dry fitted.
 

After another lengthy hiatus, work has resumed on my Cutty Sark. I left off work last spring after discovering I had made a somewhat serious error on some of the rigging of the masts. It has taken several months to reconcile these errors, and  deciding whether to undo a substantial amount of standing rigging or leave well enough alone and charge on. I opted for Option B as the mistakes can only be noticed by me and an astute number of serious clipper ship aficonadoes on this website. 😉 I have fitted a number of the lower yards with ties and halliards and have now dry fitted the upeer yards on all three masts. I spent the last couple of days manufacturing collars for the trusses. Now I can continue rigging the yards with ties, lifts and halliards. Here are some pics showing all the yards in place , the upper ones being dry fitted.
 

Just came onto this site yesterday and wanted to add some pictures of my Mikasa model by Trumpeter.  I started this one (my second model) in February and have been working on it ever since except for the last month.  I've been down with Covid and really haven't felt up to working on her lately though I plan to get back into it this weekend.  I bought both the Pontos and KA Models kits to go along with the basic set and have really enjoyed the work.  I'm including some pictures below.  Most show the state she's in now.  Sorry, there are so many pictures, but there are so many details I wanted to show.  Thanks.

An invaluable tool.
 
This old low angle plane was sharpened to 2000 grit using a Veritas sharpening jig.  The plane was also flattened on a sheet of glass and many sheets of 400-800 sandpaper.
 
Notice the fine shavings from the planks that were trimmed.  The plane will be used to tapper the planks as the finish if far better than a knife or sandpaper.  For curved planks the Veritas Miniature Low Angle plane is an excellent plane.
 
    
 
Ready for lining out and planking.

If you haven't done this give it some thought....    Add your name and build year somewhere, either on the nameplate or semi-hidden on/in the model itself.   If your model is fortunate, that info well help give anyone some info if they decide to restore it.  We see questions about restoration all the time here for both scratch and kit models where the restorer is looking for additional info.

I'm with Glenn and bartley. I have acquired my nameplate from a trophy shop for a reasonable price. It is also a great way of including some pertinent info you might want to include with the name. Here is a sample...
 

Hi All,
Small update:
 
Catheads prepared Fore Deck Mooring Bitts prepared Fore and Main Mast Fife Rails prepared Master Blank for Water Casks prepared and planked (This will be cut into six 21.0mm lengths, Strapped and Deck Supports manufactured.) Fore and Main Hatches will be re-built Main Mast "Step" (Housing) improved In all, it's starting to look a little more like a ship!!
 
Plenty more to go.... 🙂
 
Cheers.... HOF.
 
Photos:
 

I'm with Glenn and bartley. I have acquired my nameplate from a trophy shop for a reasonable price. It is also a great way of including some pertinent info you might want to include with the name. Here is a sample...
 

I'm with Glenn and bartley. I have acquired my nameplate from a trophy shop for a reasonable price. It is also a great way of including some pertinent info you might want to include with the name. Here is a sample...
 

I'm with Glenn and bartley. I have acquired my nameplate from a trophy shop for a reasonable price. It is also a great way of including some pertinent info you might want to include with the name. Here is a sample...
 

I'm with Glenn and bartley. I have acquired my nameplate from a trophy shop for a reasonable price. It is also a great way of including some pertinent info you might want to include with the name. Here is a sample...
 

I continue in a slow pace. A few hours here and there.
The masts got rigged separately and finished as far as possible off the ship.

Then the mast where stepped onto the ship. I'm now working on belaying the lines of the running rigging.

Just after my last update my basement shop area (where I do my modeling) was shut down so extensive renovations could be performed... stud walls, updated electrical, plumbing, foam insulation, etc.  It has been a trying mess and not over yet.  I expect by the end of December I will be back to work on the CS in much cozier and functional surroundings.
 
Today I dug out my masts and deck houses to see what work they will need.  A little nostalgic as this is all 40-year-old work.  Thought a few of you might enjoy a closer look at my early efforts.
 
Here are a few shots of all the masts and yards.  The three mast tops were built to Sergal's plans and need to be completely redone.  The three crosstrees were redone and are much closer to original but still look a little heavy to me.  The jackstays were redone to bring closer to scale and are probably going to be fine after a little work.  Sad to say all my stunsail booms will need to be removed.  Even though Longridge included them on his model, I can find no evidence they were used at Falmouth.  A shame as they really add a lot of interest.
 





 
Never finished the deck houses, which I started to cover using cherry veneer.  Lots needs to be fixed and the roof decks are wrong.  I had only just started reshaping the poop and still has original skylight.  My plan was to cover with more cherry and different decking.




 
Lastly, I found an original Sergal-supplied walnut belaying pin.  Here it is next to the blackened brass pins I'm now using to illustrate the difference in scale.

A smallish update today.  Lately, my pondering to fabricating ratio has been about 10 to 1.
 
The copper tiles continued to darken slightly for a couple days as the fixative cured.  An improvement, I believe, and now feel I can declare that effort completed and move on.
 
Marked out, drilled, and installed commercially available belaying pins.  I ended up using blackened 3/16" brass pins even though they are slightly smaller than scale, which is mostly to do with length than girth.  If in doubt, go smaller not bigger.
 
I also fabricated the 4 mini rail winches.  I turned all 4 simultaneously on my Dremel-like tool using 3mm walnut dowel.  I did them side-by-side which made it easy to judge their relative shape.  Before parting the drums, I dipped them in shellac to seal and stabilize so they would be less likely to splinter during the parting process.  Funny thing about adding details, I had drilled a small hole to add a pin to represent the winch crank handle stem, but then removed it. It looked terrible.  Seems when you reach a certain concentration of detail the look you are going for collapses.