Jump to content
MORE HANDBOOKS ARE ON THEIR WAY! We will let you know when they get here. ×
Model Machines LLC – Byrnes Model Machines - machines to be back in production soon. ×

Hubac's Historian

NRG Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    3,280

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Hubac's Historian

  1. Hubac's Historian
    Thank you, Mark. It is much appreciated. Well, early returns on the first sample casting are promising, if not perfect. I learned a few things. Usually, I use a toothpick to fish the air-bubbles from the points and crevasses of the mould, after pouring the resin. A toothpick, however, is not a fine enough instrument to get into the tails of the scrolls. I had a lot air pockets, in these areas, that spoiled about half the castings. The other mistake was attempting to sand the background so thin that the scrolls would almost free themselves with sanding alone. The trouble, here, is that the scroll heads lose too much of their substance or volume. In truth, it only requires one small gouge and the tip of a sharp EXACTO to free them. And there’s only the smallest bit of picking that has to be done where the scroll head meets the neck, and between the fronds of the tail. It isn’t like the fleur-de-lis, where I am doing a significant amount of re-shaping. I can cut one of these things out and be done with it in a minute or less. So, I’ll make another couple of moulds, take more care to eliminate bubbles, and I’ll leave the ground backer a little thicker. I suspect that these second castings will have the weight and crispness that I’m after, without having to move on to 3D printing. Also, yesterday, I went to a plastics place on Canal street and bought a largish sheet of .020 white styrene for the frieze lattice. I would prefer a somewhat thinner sheet, though, because the relief would then be a little lower and more subtle. .010 is probably ideal, but .015 might be workable, as well. It will also be easier to cut the lattice out with just a steel rule and a pen knife. Thinner sheet is easy enough to source on-line, and I can always use the .020 stuff as substrate for my new decks. I’ll just order a few different thicknesses, and see how they work out.
  2. Hubac's Historian
    MASTERS MADE I was speaking with Dan, yesterday, who gave me some really helpful tips for mounting objects this small, with thin-set cyano. The basic idea was to hold the part in place on the mount with, in this case, the tip of a pen knife, while applying a small drop of cyano to one side of the part; capillary action will wick the cyano beneath the part. A quick touch with the edge of a paper towel wicks away any excess, thus reducing the corona of excess glue to nearly nothing. In practice, I found these scrolls even too tiny to reliably hold down with the pen knife. It didn’t help, of course, that the other side of the mount had a dolphin master mounted to it, and so it was wobbly on the table. I haven’t had access to a table saw, lately, so I haven’t been able to cut up more mounting stock. My solution was to hold each scroll by the tail, with a fine tweezer, while applying a drop of cyano to the back. I then touch the scroll down to a paper towel to wick away the excess, and then mount to the block. This left only a very little bit of squeeze out, that was then wiped away. Here are the masters in high-definition, highlighting the remaining discrepancies and imperfections in their shaping. I will touch the tail of the upper left scroll with the tools again, but I am otherwise satisfied with their symmetry. They were too small to attempt tracing a pattern, so instead I just nipped away at uniform blanks (1/16” x 3/16”) with the tools until I liked the shape. Also, I found it necessary to simplify the scroll a little - eliminating a teensy spur from one side of the tail - because it was just too small to cut into the plastic. What is difficult to see are the small domed accents that I added to the scroll heads. This will only show, on the finished model, as the smallest glint of reflected light, but it helps give the scrolls just a little bit if shape and dimension. Applying these domes was much easier than trying to carve them into the blank. Next, I’ll make a trial mould and casting, and we’ll see how they turn out.
  3. Hubac's Historian
    Beautiful work on your bulwarks, Don! Nice to see you back to work on her.
  4. Hubac's Historian
    Great start to the head, EJ!
  5. Hubac's Historian
    This is just delightfully clean and precise work you are doing, Ondras!
  6. Hubac's Historian
    Thanks, Dan! This morning, I profiled one hand of the masters, and later today, I should be able to make decent inroads on the other hand. Now that you mention it, I remember your davitts are in plastic! Well, it’s all a grand experiment, so we’ll see how it goes.
  7. Hubac's Historian
    Hey Dan - thank you for weighing in, and thank you to everyone else for your likes and looking in. Would it be correct to presume that laser cutting/etching is strictly for wood? If so, I think these things might just be too small, not to disintegrate under the laser. My blank size works out to 1/16” x 3/16” on .020 styrene sheet. I suspect that the best fall-back option is 3D printing, or maybe even photo-etch. Fortunately, owing to their small size, very little modeling of the parts will be necessary. I’ve decided to try the DIY casting method, in order to see what that process yields. For the masters, I will focus on cutting proportional outlines that I will then add a small domed accent to the scroll head. Although I will probably engrave-in a few small accent lines on the masters, I will reserve any attempt at further modeling the parts until after the resin ground has been wasted away. I’ll need to make both right and left corollaries. I’ll make one sample mould and see what I come up with. If I don’t like my castings, I should be able to use my masters for 3D printing. I’ve prepared a blank. I’ve resharpened all of my knives. So, I guess we’ll just have to see how they turn out 🤞🏻
  8. Hubac's Historian
    I am also interested in your deck layouts, Mark, as you have paid particular attention to the French style of laying a deck. I’ll definitely be doing some look-backs to that section of your log.
  9. Hubac's Historian
    Well, that’s appropriate, because the frieze-lattice is exactly that - a Christmas tree for ornaments 🎄
  10. Hubac's Historian
    This is mostly a place-keeper post, just to show that something is happening. I continue to learn interesting (to me, at least) things about the process of making casting masters. On previous ornaments, I was perplexed as to why - when the ground was sanded/cut away - the ornament seemed larger, all around, than the masters. Well, I finally realized that the thin-set cyano I am using to mount the masters to their stamp blocks, leaves a corona of squeeze-out around the perimeter of the master, which is not really visible to the naked eye, yet it leaves an impression in the mould medium. In the end, this results in quite a lot of re-profiling of the cast blanks to bring them back to scale. Sorry that I do not have any pictures of this phenomenon. Hopefully, I have described it adequately. This time, I was carefull to scrape away the cyano squeeze-out from the master block and the resulting moulds were much cleaner. That being said there was still quite a lot of cleanup and re-shaping involved, after cutting away the ground. Here’s a rough blank with the ground removed: Here’s that same ornament after clean-up and some re-shaping: Here are fifty ornaments that have gone through that process, and then have been given the once-over, again, in order to maintain a level of consistency among them all: This is more than enough to select from for the upper bulwark frieze, and I’ll have a good number left over for the port lids, although I will still need to cast more when I get to that stage of the build. What is not evident in the above pictures is the decision I made to change the profile of the side fronds of the fleurs from my original intent in the mould masters. Ultimately, with my mind set on the fact that the frieze will be dense with ornament - I decided to soften the frond points and cut the fronds a little closer to the ornament centerline. We’re talking slivers of an inch, here, but repeated many times, over an area, this should help balance the visual weight of the ornaments, relative to each other. Hair-splitting, yes, but worth the extra effort, IMO. Next up, I will make the many small frieze scroll ornaments I need: These little things (on every pointy end of the frieze lattice) are really tiny. I’m not sure this casting process is the best method, as they are roughly 1/8” wide by 1/16” high and I need A LOT of ‘em! I haven’t gotten around to taking an actual measurement yet, but they are tiny enough that it is hard to imagine going through any advanced effort at sculpting, over and over again. I wonder about making a punch that I could use to stamp these things out easily and quickly from 1/32” styrene sheet. I could then use the same technique I used for the wale through-bolting, to create tiny domed accents for the scroll heads, that I would apply to the scroll with a dot of glue. This would give the scrolls just a bit of shape and dimension, as opposed to being a completely flat stamping. Does anyone out there have any relatively easy advice on making such a small punch, or any ideas on an alternative approach to this particular ornament? Is this, perhaps, an ideal application for 3-D printing?
  11. Hubac's Historian
    The way that last shot of the bow is cropped is a great impression of what she would look like afloat on her waterline. Beautiful work, Michel! I particularly like the horsehead above the “herpes,” and the figurehead is nicely balanced, now, with it’s riding figures.
  12. Hubac's Historian
    Great work on those castings, Dan. They really cleaned up nicely. Also, an interesting idea for muting the orange paint; Chuck Close would appreciate that one. Altogether, a fine job you have done on this elegant ship. Congratulations, Dan!
  13. Hubac's Historian
    Voila! These are now clean and uniform enough to mount and make mould impressions from. And then, I’ll just be making a ton of em!
  14. Hubac's Historian
    Well, it was a delightful week away, spent entirely on the beach. I didn’t get to any of the carving I thought I was going to do, though, but that is just as well; I needed a break from everything. Today, I carved the first of four fleur-de-lis that will make up my master for the frieze, and probably the lower battery port lids, as well. And maybe even the middle battery ports, if they don’t seem too large. Here’s what that looks like: And one more shot against a clear ground: If they all come out at least this well, I will be happy.
  15. Hubac's Historian
    The figures of the four seasons really tie the whole thing together, EJ. These are your best carvings, yet!
  16. Hubac's Historian
    One of several aspects of your Licorne build log that has been especially helpful to me, Mark, is the galley stove section of your build. I’m not sure I will go whole-hog and build a full galley stove, like you did, but I will probably include the visible portion, beneath the f’ocsle deck, as well as the chimney through the deck. This was a detail I was aware of, before, but your particular approach made it seem very doable to me, and worth the extra effort.
  17. Hubac's Historian
    You are welcome, Jay. In truth, though, I owe my understanding of the allegory of SR’s stern to Michel Saunier and his painstaking research for his completely scratch-built model. Michel is the primary researcher of this ship. If you haven’t seen his model, you should look it up on MSW.
  18. Hubac's Historian
    I really appreciate that, Mike. I feel sometimes that I overdocument the minutea, but that’s just who I am - a classic over-sharer 😀
  19. Hubac's Historian
    In preparation for my week off, in Cape Cod, I am trying to prepare fleur-de-lis carving blanks for the frieze. My current inability to print my GIMP drawing, to scale (or at all, really), has me improvising in ways that are somewhat successful and in other ways not. I’ve been taking measurements off my flat computer screen with my Starrett rule, to determine that my fleur-de-lis for the frieze should be very nearly 3/16” x 3/16”. Great, I think to myself - I have styrene strip that is 3/16” x 1/16” thick! So, on a piece of vellum, and within these perameters, I begin to attempt drawing my fleur-de-lis. This takes a few hours to arrive at proportions that are pleasing and approximately close to what I could achieve on the computer. For reference, though, I went back to pics from a recent visit to the Met, which featured an exhibit on the court of Louis XIV. Among the exquisite items and artifacts, on display, was this relatively small marble study, that depicts Benjamin Franklin and Louis XVI, on March 20, 1778, signing the Treaty of Alliance. Aside from a relationship that would help (tremendously!) forge our American independence, what I was most drawn to were the perfectly rendered fleur-de-lis that adorn Louis’s cape. Look, Ben’s going in for the Bro-shake: This is, in actuality, a very small-scale sculpture of this event in Amero/Franco history, but the carving of the marble is remarkable in its detail and consistency. Here, it seemed to me, was a perfect example of everything a fleur-de-lis should be. With that settled and the first flower drawn, I next folded the vellum over that first drawing, and made a series of tracings, all in a row - 8 in all. My objective, ultimately, is to make carving blanks from the five best tracings. Reasonably satisfied, and reasoning as always, that I can correct shaping discrepancies with the tools, I pasted a photocopy of my drawing to a strip of styrene. I wanted to preserve the original drawing for the several other sizes of fleur-de-lis that I will need elsewhere on the ship. Here is a photo montage of my mixed results and several epiphanies along the way: These look decent. Workable. After filing a few to profile, though, I discovered that they did not fit neatly within the sheer strakes at the fo’csle and quarter deck levels, as I had previously drawn. Keeping them, at this size, would necessitate letting them into the sheer strakes at these most narrow points. While this was an acceptable accomodation to me for the upper arches of the domed port enhancements, along the main deck level, I feel that this will not look passably ok with an ornament that would, naturally, be scaled to fit the available space. The middle fronds of the fleurs are small enough as it is. So, I decided to chop the points from the top and bottom of the flower until they, at least, fit within the sheer strakes. Above is a good comparison of the difference in proportion, from where I started to where I need to be. They should, in fact, be even a little smaller! But, here are two revised flowers, side by side: My experience, thus far with this casting process, is that I inevitably end up with ornaments that are larger or smaller, depending upon a number of variables related to the process of removing the ground and defining the perimeter. There will be plenty of extras to choose from, that will fill these more narrow spaces without seeming too large, relative to the frieze lattice. Whatever other differences, in size throughout the frieze, should contribute (hopefully, in a good way) to the handmade quality of the model. I can’t wait for vacation!! 🌞🌊🏊🏻‍♂️⚓️
  20. Hubac's Historian
    I'm just re-visiting favorite build-logs, and I'd like to say that one of the things that is so pleasing about this model is the side-to-side symmetry and your perfection of line, Siggi. Just awesome!!
  21. Hubac's Historian
    Hey EJ - great work on your figure of the “Americas”! Looking as closely as I can at Berain’s drawing of the stern, it appears that this figure, on the port side, is not holding anything. Her left hand is perched, at her side, upon the arched pass-through that she sits upon. Her right arm is raised, crossing her body with the hand resting on the quarter piece that supports the side lantern. It is the figure of “Europe,” astride her horse (perched upon the left side of the taffrail) that appears to be holding a pointed spear, or scepter. This would make sense, thematically, as Europe was the dominant continental power, with “Asia” (on the right side of the taffrail, astride her camel), the next leading world power. The neo-classical robes of Europe and Asia are emblematic of their self-conception as developed cultures, while the Americas and Africa are mostly bare-skinned and wearing only primitive vestments.
  22. Hubac's Historian
    Incredible work, Vic. She really cuts a fine figure on the water!
  23. Hubac's Historian
    Now that all of the sheer-rail detailing is done, and dolphins installed, and all of the round port enhancements are let in place - here is a bit of a before and after comparison with the original kit parts: I’d like to note that, only here at the transition from waist rail to the f’ocsle rail, does the dolphin nearly align with the scalloped hancing detail, below it, as drawn by Berain. For the stern upper bulwark pieces, I felt that at least having the dolphins and hancing steps present was enough, without going the extra mileage to extend the piercing of the timberheads, so that the hancing pieces all lined up under the dolphins. In at least one instance on the quarter deck, the presence of a round gun port prevented that alignment, anyway. By not doing so, I afforded myself more room for a more complete layout of the lattice frieze, which I felt was a more important detail. Now, I will begin making all of the fleur-de-lis, shells, scrolls and folliate diamonds that ornament the new lattice frieze, which will fill all of this newly cleared space on the upper bulwarks. At some point soon, I will need to figure out where I went wrong in my GIMP drawing process, so that I can print what I have for the lattice frieze and the amortisement of the quarter gallery, to scale. Presently, the entire drawing is crammed into something like 1/300 - 1/350 scale. I made some error in importing the scans of my hand drawing into a workspace that was unnecessarily too large. To work on the drawing, I really have to zoom in. All of this, in some way or how must be why working on the drawing slowed to a near standstill because I had many thousands of data points crammed into too small a space. Anyway, Much as I would like to, I don’t need to finish the drawing in order to complete the model. It would just be really helpfull to extract that frieze layout because it should be a perfect match for the upper bulwark pieces. I’m also hoping to salvage my bow angel and the trailboard frieze for between the knees of the head.
  24. Hubac's Historian
    I think that, as long as the guns are not less than five scale feet from the water, then her waterline should be fone where it is.
  25. Hubac's Historian
    WOW - I am speechless, Vic! You have done it again! Absolutely spectacular.

About us

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

SSL Secured

Your security is important for us so this Website is SSL-Secured

NRG Mailing Address

Nautical Research Guild
237 South Lincoln Street
Westmont IL, 60559-1917

Model Ship World ® and the MSW logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,929,264 & No. 6,929,274, registered Dec. 20, 2022)

Helpful Links

About the NRG

If you enjoy building ship models that are historically accurate as well as beautiful, then The Nautical Research Guild (NRG) is just right for you.

The Guild is a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to “Advance Ship Modeling Through Research”. We provide support to our members in their efforts to raise the quality of their model ships.

The Nautical Research Guild has published our world-renowned quarterly magazine, The Nautical Research Journal, since 1955. The pages of the Journal are full of articles by accomplished ship modelers who show you how they create those exquisite details on their models, and by maritime historians who show you the correct details to build. The Journal is available in both print and digital editions. Go to the NRG web site (www.thenrg.org) to download a complimentary digital copy of the Journal. The NRG also publishes plan sets, books and compilations of back issues of the Journal and the former Ships in Scale and Model Ship Builder magazines.

Our Emblem ®

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

Nautical Research Guild ® and the NRG logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,999,236 & No. 6,999,237, registered March 14, 2023)

×
×
  • Create New...