Hubac's Historian

I always liked the Endeavor replica!

58 minutes ago, Bill97 said:

Henry my topmast are pretty strong now with the wood dial glued inside. I am studying the topgallants to determine how to make my own. I saw in your early build posts that you filled the unneeded recessed area at the top of the lower masts (intended for the shroud tops) with thin Evergreen strips. I am going to do that as well before painting. 

Yes, I saw this on Henry’s build and did the same.

From the topmasts, on up, I will just fabricate everything from scratch.  I’ve already made all of the round tops to replace the kit ones because I found them to be under scale.  The mast caps that connect each higher mast section to the one below are easy enough to make.

I’m keeping all of my lower mast sections in plastic because they are certainly string enough with dowels embedded, they are reasonably accurate and can be made more-so with a little modification, and they’re going to be painted, anyway.

Yes, the t’gallants can’t be re-enforced, but they can be replaced with wood or metal.

The issue of overlong topmasts on French ships is interesting to me.  On much period portraiture, they are depicted as also seemingly too long.  A few examples:

When in doubt, Anderson is pretty unimpeachable.  There are also fairly reliable mast and spar dimensional tables taken from the Le Havre de Grace survey of SR in 1685; dimensions are in the old French foot, but they are easily convertible to imperial by a factor of 1.066.

In case you might be wondering to yourselves - I have not yet applied these dimensions to the stock kit topmasts, just yet.  I plan to use the stock kit topmasts as spares lashed to the deck to either side of the main hatch coaming.

What I have done is to raise my lower mast sections by about 3/8” above deck level.  I will more or less preserve the topmast lengths, but I will replace them  with wooden spars, and I will shorten the t’gallant masts, which actually are far too long on the kit.  Those will also be replaced with wood.

Definitely, the mast re-enforcements are a must - especially for the topmasts.

Thank you, David.

Yes, thank you Bill. Physically Dad is fine.  Pretty solid, actually.  Mentally, though, he is declining quickly.  Pretty much, on a daily basis, I shake my head at what this disease does to a person.  I appreciate the thought.

4 minutes ago, yancovitch said:

curiosity....how long did it take you to carve them with your perfectly manicured fingers 🙂

About 5 hours per pair.  The nails take longer 😀

48 minutes ago, Bill97 said:

As always Marc beautiful work. 
 

Did you ever expect Denver to win the first championship?

Yes, actually.  I am not a casual fan.  Jamal Murray is really good, and Jokic is the best and craftiest passing bigman since Larry Bird.  I really like Denver and was very happy they won.  Nice to see Porter Jr. have a solid game, as well.

This is a placeholder post of sorts.  My daughter had taken over my workspace with finals studies, the prior two weeks, so the kitchen table was never free until 10pm.  By that point, I had nothing left in the tank for modeling.  The NBA playoffs were also particularly interesting, this year, so my attentions have been divided for a good long stretch.

I did manage to fit and secure the under-framing for the tafferal backboard, but apart from that - not much else has happened on the model itself.  Most of what needs to happen on the model requires my utmost concentration.  Now that the kids are done with school, and we aren’t running around all over the place, I should have deeper reserves in the evening time.

I have been chipping away at the tafferal carving, itself, though.  I decided that the best way to go about this was to break the carving up into separate elements, as I had done for the amortisement.  Not only did this make the carving more manageable and replaceable by section, if need be, but it enabled me to more easily glue-up laminations of different thicknesses so that there would be a perceptible foreground and background to the composition.

The clouds in the foreground are the thickest stock, the horses of medium stock and the chariot the thinnest stock:

I have completed the clouds, which were further subdivided into port and starboard.  I haven’t taken pictures of them, but they are fluffy, happy clouds that would warm Bob Ross’s heart.

What I am working on, now, are the horses.  I began with the port pair, which was the more challenging side to figure out.  My thumb gives a pretty good indication of scale:

I’ve made a start on the starboard pair, which is moving more quickly.  I think the whole ensemble with capture the depth and drama that I am looking for.

Thank you for your interest.  More to follow..

I think whatever differences there may be between bow and stern are negligible, and I certainly would not know of them without it being brought to my attention.

I’m curious to understand better the parallels between Marsalv’s build and your own, Kevin.

Definitely bold!  

The wales came out brilliantly, Maurice.

This looks pretty incredible, and I will gladly follow along.

Here is one possible source, Bill:

https://www.1a.lv/p/puzle-heye-1000-gab/3c6q

I did a reverse image search through TinEye.

This is lovely progress, Patrick.  It is fun to watch the old girl come back to life!

5 hours ago, Ferrus Manus said:

Yeah, we go through an apocalypse every year. If we just went back to traditional methods of eating and living, we wouldn't have this problem. 

I wonder what that would look like in our modern age; small agrarian cells that feed individual communities or regions?

Thanks, Bill!  The air quality is pretty astonishingly bad today, but we are taking all

necessary precautions.  It is amazing to consider that states like California live like this for long stretches of every year.  If anyone remains in doubt - climate change is a real thing.

The following build is one that I have been following with tremendous admiration.  The rigging is among the very best I have  ever seen, and his particular sequence of masting and sparing and working through the standing and running rigging makes the most sense to me.  I think I will follow his lead when the time comes to it:

Every time I visit this build, I am astounded at your skill and your sensitivity to form.  As incredible as the woodwork is, the rigging is even more impressive.  Every part of this is aspirational.  This is just such a magnificent all-around effort!

“In the last 40+ years they were simply not taught anymore about material culture.”

It’s a shame because it is the technology, the machinery that enables a society to push forward.  This is as true for warships as it was for the discovery of fire.

Not necessarily Bill - you’re cathead placement most likely is perfectly fine.  Bear in mind that my beakhead bulkhead has been widened on both sides because I widened the hull at the stem.  Consequently, there is now space between the bulkhead ladders and the cathead/supporting knees.

These pics are from trying to get the fit and alignment of everything right:

Yeah, Bill - the issue of piercing through the beakhead bulkhead for the cat-head timbers was a tricky one.  With some effort, I was able to file tight-fitting holes at the correct angle.  This was an issue that I had not thought through, in the beginning, when I was modifying the bulkhead.