tlevine

Well, I certainly have not added much to the build log lately but I have been busy.  I have started going through the punch list, finishing small parts that I was afraid would get lost or damaged along the way.  I also made the cat crown.  I held off on making this while I practiced some more with relief carving.  After the quarter badge I think I have had all the practice I want for a while!  The color difference will go away after a finish is applied.

There are eight stanchions (hammock cranes) on the quarter deck rail.  These are made of square brass rod with brass tubing silver soldered to the end for the passing rope.  Each one of these is a different height to compensate for the rise of the deck.  Two holes were drilled into the base and bolts were passed through the holes into the rail.  The bolts are actually brass lil pins whose heads have been filed into a flat square.  You can just barely make them out in the second picture.  To facilitate drilling the holes in the rail I removed the quarter rail temporarily.  There is a scale 7" clearance between the quarter rail and the stanchion.  Next on the to-do list is the anchor.

Although I also used spacers between between the frames, I would suggest that it is a lot easier to simply cut equal length pieces of scrap and put them between the frames. Key in doing this is 1) keep the hull in the building board when inserting the spacers as this will prevent twisting and 2) make sure the port and starboard spacers are exactly the same length.  Although you are attempting to show this build with a minimum of tools, this could easily be done with a cheap hand hobby saw and a sanding block.  The advantage of spacers over running a spile along the side of the hull is that I could fair the hull more easily.  The pictures below show the hull in the building jig after it had been faired.  The spacers are placed medial to the laser cuts for the ribs to prevent any damage to them when they were eventually removed.

After the hull was faired, a temporary spile was placed aft to stabilize the transom as the rest of the hull was planked.  As you and I have discussed off-line, my planking was done prototypical, and not per the kit instructions.  

For obvious reasons I will be following this with a lot if interest.  I am particularly interested in aberrations in the draughts.

Druxey, you had better believe that I am happy to be done with it.  It suddenly hit me today that I am nearing the end of this project (except for the figurehead which is project all in itself).  My goal is to have it completed to take to the NRG Conference in October.

Thank you folks for your kind comments and thanks everyone for the likes.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I have finally completed the quarter badge.  The lower finishing is comprised of five separate pieces: three carved pieces and two moldings.  The patterns were taken from the plan.  The round part at the bottom appears to be a carnation-type flower on the plan.  I hope you don't have to use your imagination too much!  The console brackets are the carved decorations on either side of the badge.  Having practiced with the NRG/Passaro carving blanks made this go a lot easier than I had anticipated.

The next piece to install is the upper finishing.  This is the carved "roof" over the quarter badge windows.  These are covered with carvings.  I ran into two problems: first, the design is impossible to determine from the plans and second, the lack of skill carving wood.  I also looked at photos of the model held at RMG and could not determine the design from them either.  Since the pilasters will be the same design as seen on the taffarel, I chose a leaf and vine design to complement them.  The upper finishing is a bear to make as it must fit snugly to the upper stool and bell light as well as the hull.  I roughly shaped it oversize to compensate for any mistakes made with the carving.  The horizontal munions were replace before the final installation.  At this point nothing, including the lights are glued in place.

The next two photos show the carving on the upper finishing.  I was unhappy with the shape of the crown on top and sanded that down, fabricated a new one and installed it after the upper finishing was glued in place.

The last photos show the quarter badge after the pilasters were installed and  after a coat of Watco's had been applied.  The deep areas look overly dark because the finish was still wet when I took the pictures.  I still need to add a small base and capital to the pilasters.

Before I started Atalanta I had four sets of plans made with the expectation of cutting them up, etc.  Three sets have never seen the light of day.  The fourth set (the one I use) gets rolled up and unrolled on the kitchen counter as needed.  Coffee mugs make great weights to hold the plan rolls open!  BTW most of my work is done on the kitchen table, with the exception of lathe/mill work and big-girl toys like scroll sawing and machine sanding.

Although this is certainly not a perfect representation of the rail, take a look at the arc in Atalanta compared with yours.  This was taken with the camera perpendicular to the rail, providing a decent idea of the true shape.  The vertical limb ends just below the cathead and the angles quickly, with a more horizontal, gentle sweep.  Pictures are sometimes difficult to interpret but at no point does the bottom of the rail extend to the level of the top of the hawse hole.  I remade this piece several times before I was happy.  To make things easier, consider making the piece in heavy stock and once you are satisfied with the sweep, then transfer the shape to wood.  Don't even think about making the timbers until the rail is complete and temporarily pinned in place.  I did not glue anything in the head assembly until all the pieces were fit to my satisfaction.

Thank you, gentlemen and thanks to everyone for the likes.  

Let's just say that the redo is taking just as long as the first attempt.  I have not cleaned it up yet but I think everyone will agree that it looks better (I hope).  Next on the agenda is making the carvings to be applied to the munions.  These will be similar to the ones between the stern windows.

Looking at the plans, the angle for Atalanta is 8 degrees.  Interestingly, Fly (and apparently Vulture) is 12 degrees.  I had everything correct initially and then got distracted by seeing the framing through the munions.  That would also explain why the lights made up from templates did not fit into the fenestration.  I have ripped the whole thing out.  I also decided that I did not like the look of the bell-top.  It was 4" too wide, resulting in a center light that was also too wide.  Hopefully, the redo will not take as long .

Thanks, Druxey.  Gone for a few days.  I will check the alignment when I get home.  It looks a lot more vertical in the pictures than I thought it was.  And thank you everyone for the likes.

While I continue to play with the lioness sculpture for the quarter piece, I have started working on the quarter badge.  I find that a good rule of thumb is that the more extensive the instructions, the more fiddly the structure is to make.  In TFFM, David gives 5+ pages to the quarter badge.  Nuff said...  The first step was to trace the outline of the badge.  There is a slight projection error because of the curvature of the hull aft but I did not worry about it. 

Lines were extended perpendicular to the lower stool at the corners of the munions and outer edge of the stool and a new baseline was drawn parallel to the stool.  This allowed accurate location of the lights and munions.  A shallow elliptical line was made to outline the edge of the stool.  This depth was determined by eyeballing the extreme width of the quarter piece and making sure the lower stool was a little more shallow.  The piece was then cut out;  I cut it overly wide to prevent tear outs at the ends when using a scraper to cut in the decorative molding.  After the molding was scraped in, I cut it to the correct width and glued it to the hull, parallel to the water line.

The upper stool construction is complicated by the bell-top.  The first step is to make the basic upper stool and locate it on the hull.  The angle of the window varies among the ships and the location of the upper sill determines this angle.  Fly, for example, has a steeper angle to the lights than Atalanta.   Use the outline on the plan to make a template for the bell-top.  Cut it out oversized and then finalize its outer curvature.  Then thin it down to the desired thickness and carefully cut the molded decoration into the edge.  The center portion of the upper stool is cut out and the bell-top is glued to the outer portions of the upper stool.

The munions are glued into place.  I glued a shim on the back of the central munions to act as a glue surface for the lights.  

The outer lights are simple to make, as they are simply parallelograms.  The central light has an eyebrow top, matching the bell-top.  I steam bent the wood to the correct shape.  Actually, I did this several times.  Each window was built from the same template and after gluing and drying each window was slightly different...and none of them fit the opening.  Therefore it was on to Plan B.  I made the frame without gluing the bent top piece.  This would be added once the rest of the frame was secured into the opening.  The windows are glazed with mica.

Congratulations on finishing this very interesting build.  Looking forward to your next project.

Sorry for the late reply, Maury.  Yes I am using the Sculpty for a prototype.  It has made getting the correct shape, both exterior and adjacent to the hull, easier.  I initially thought that the upper part of the cornerpiece was a dog.  One of the stories about Atalanta involve her hunting a bear with a group of men.  One of the contemporary carvings shows hounds with the hunting party.  The more I thought about it, I decided that the animal is a lioness.  She and her husband Hippomenes had sex in one of Zeus's temples and were punished by being turned into lions.  At that time it was felt that lions could not mate with each other, only with leopards.  I am in the process of fabricating an oversized sculpture of a lioness and will post that when I am happy with the results.

NEVER put your personal email address in a post.  You never know who or what is lurking.  To contact Tom directly, send him a PM with your address in it so no one else has access.

I have started the dreaded quarter pieces.  On Atalanta they have an upper 3-D carving of a dog (jackal?) and leaves and flowers in relief on the outer and stern sides of the lower section.  Even though I finished out the gallery on both sides, because there is no planking on the starboard side I am only planning on making the port quarter pieces.  I also made the decision to make this in two pieces.  The upper piece will comprise the dog and the lower piece the relief carvings.  The first step was to use Sculpty clay to form the quarter piece.  I would then use this as a template for the lower piece and a guide for the upper.  Because this is a long, skinny piece it was difficult to remove it from the hull without distortion.  The instructions say to bake for 30 minutes but I removed it after 15 minutes and let it cool on the hull to minimize the distortion.  I have already started to draw the shape of the dog onto the clay.

The next step was to make the lower piece.  This ended just below the window sill decorative molding.  I was able to use the shape of the clay as a template.  The carvings curve inward as one goes inferiorly.  I will probably complete and install this piece before starting to make the upper piece.

Thanks for the link, Danny.  I've already looked at it a few times.  I am jealous about the quarter piece on Vulture...it was a simple piece of molding.  Mine is a carving some type of animal and a few other things thrown in just for fun.  

The pilasters are finished and installed.  Once the middle carved section was completed, the upper and lower parts were made up of various sizes of stripwood.  A coat of finish has been applied to the taffarel and all the parts that needed replacing.  The dreaded quarter pieces are next.

Thanks, guys.  I am still finding little things that need fixing.  Overall, I probably spent 30 hours on the repair.  Mike, I think I just got lucky with the lighting that day. Almost all my pictures are taken using ambient lighting, occasionally with supplemental flash.  That day was bright but overcast so there was little shadowing.  Greg, thanks for reminding me of my last close encounter of the klutzy kind.  The ridiculous thing is that she travels with me on the back seat of the car every other week back and forth from where I work.  No problem.  Two rambunctious dogs...no problem.  Myself, alone at home, nothing annoying me...problem!

The munions between the stern lights are covered with carved pilasters.  Some of the Swan Class ships had simple reed decorations but not this one.  I will need to make a total of 10 of them.  I considered making a master from clay and casting them but that would require painting them.  I will try carving first.  Please remember that the full size of the carved garland is 10 mm.  Therefore I have decided to take an impressionist approach to their carving.  If they are all similar it will give a good impression of garlands.

As yet another break from carving I make the quarter rail.  Because of its length I made a simple joint at the support piece above the gun port and a scarfed joint at the center swivel gun mount.  It is bolted to the swivel gun mount, leaving an airspace between the rail and gun mount.  The scroll was carved using the plan as a template.  The distance between the planksheer and the quarter rail diminishes as one goes aft.  Back to the carving!

Maury, I guess it is a good thing that I don't have too much mass!  Thanks everyone for looking in.  Now back to carving.

Thanks, everyone.  My progress will be directly related to my frustration index with the carvings on Atalanta!

It has been another long time since posting but I have two excuses.  First, I went on an extended vacation and started Echo because of ease of transport.  Second...  The second reason is a combination of funny and terrifying.  I had Atalanta sitting on the floor in preparation for taking some photos.  I then tripped on willow-the-wisp and fell into the model inflicting a significant amount of damage to Atalanta.  This included resetting every cannon, installing a new quarter deck rail, new side moldings and several other minor repairs.  Three weeks later I am able to post the photos that I hoped to take on that fateful day.

The tafarel carvings have been installed and the assembly has been glued and pinned to the stern timbers.  The rail was fabricated from five pieces of wood.  The relationship between the caprail and the quarter deck rail was difficult to see on the plans.  I hope I built it correctly because I am not doing it again!

The lower part of the well and lower deck beams have been temporarily installed.  The well is still missing the finishing touches like the hinges on the doors.  There are pins extending from the corners of the well into the bottom of the lower beams.  Once completed, the mast step will be almost invisible (but we will all know it is there).