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Hubac's Historian

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Everything posted by Hubac's Historian

  1. Hubac's Historian
    It’s a combination of strip styrene and evergreen sheet of the same thickness. First, I glued pie-wedge pieces of sheet plastic over the round port openings, so that the edges land where a natural joint should exist. I then ground away the excess plastic, and then I simply cut strip stock to meet the miters. I am glad that I took the time to do this. The caprails are of an un-convincing thickness, as they are.
  2. Hubac's Historian
    I added evergreen to the caprails to give them better scale when you are looking down at the sheer rail from above.
  3. Hubac's Historian
    I may be wrong, Bill, but I think Ian is referring to the sheer railings on the upper bulwarks. Maybe he was assuming you would be attaching the upper bulwarks early.
  4. Hubac's Historian
    Are your hull halves warped along the keel?
  5. Hubac's Historian
    As a broad rule of thumb, I think this comes down to whether you are going to airbrush or hand-paint. For hand-painting, I have found the hull halves to be easier to handle, un-assembled. I just putty and touch-up after assembly.
  6. Hubac's Historian
    No, I think your eyes are seeing the reality, there. I think I may have placed the port side a little too far forward. I’ll have to pay more attention to that as I get closer to final assembly. At this stage it is all dry-fit.
  7. Hubac's Historian
    Actually, Bill, I’m amazed it hasn’t happened sooner. March of 2020 was the first time. But, school-age children and the coughing sneezing, sometimes sleezing, populace of NYC offer endless opportunities for contamination. Fortunately, I’ve always been in pretty good shape, and the infections never got into my chest.
  8. Hubac's Historian
    Thank you all for your well-wishes and for your kind comments. Although, I have generally felt pretty ok, throughout (congestion, mostly), today was my first day where I tested negative. It was nice to have a little time to rest, but my compulsive nature has me bouncing off the walls, at this point. So, after much fiddling/fettling, I finally have the forward and mid supports dialed-in where I want them: But, for the fact that I underestimated the angle of the buttressing knees on the forward support: Okay, not a big deal; I added some plastic underneath the knee, so that I could fair the top surface flush with the headrail profile: After fairing, and adding the support ledge for the grate slats: I think the fleurs shaped up nicely, especially considering how small they actually are: I had to add some plastic to the foot of the split supports, in order to raise them up about a 1/16”, but that is not a big deal either. This is the beauty of a plastic build; you can make these mistakes and still salvage the part. The next tricky bit of business is to fashion the forward terminus for the head grating, which fairs into the upper head knee. More to follow..
  9. Hubac's Historian
    I’m impressed by your piercing of the trailboard.
  10. Hubac's Historian
    Very good, indeed!
  11. Hubac's Historian
    Hello! The difficulty I’ve been having with these headrail supports has to do with my fidelity to the idea that some portion of the support should fit beneath the lowest headrail. I started by first adjusting the adjoining angles on the starboard side. I found that I had to add plastic shims, here and there: This all worked out well enough on the starboard side, but I was not having nearly enough of a supporting ledge, when I shifted over to the port side. More-over, when I positioned both headrails at the same time, I realized I was going to have to add significant plastic the the lower coved profile, in order to create a port-side ledge. Rather than continue to add plastic, I decided to let the matter rest for a few days. I am glad I did. In the days that followed, my second bout with COVID (pretty mild) has afforded me the time to really think this through. I remembered that I had already set the position of the headrails so that the forward medallion was below the sprit mast. That was the whole impetus for re-designing the headrails, in the first place. Further, I had set the cathead supports to meet neatly beneath the cathead timbers. Despite all that forethought and pre-work, I had only visually placed the starboard cathead, before fitting the supports, on the assumption that my glue blocking would locate them properly. Wellllll, that was not a safe assumption to make. My forward medallions were actually encroaching above the spritmast, and when I put the cathead timbers in place, I could no longer fit the supports beneath them. Once I could see the proper positioning of all of the affected elements, I knew what I must do: The way forward would be to lop off these supporting ears (middle support) Note: The vertical web you see on the split supports, closest to the hawsers, are only temporary for the sake of strength while I make and fit these parts. Once I did that, the support pieces nestled against both sides easily: I can simulate that under-connection, a bit later, with an applied scroll-head. From there, I focused on what sort of decorative embellishments I would add to the exposed face of these supports. I settled on a raised lip moulding: I am playing with the idea of applied fleur ornaments at the base of each support. These will extend out beyond the sides of each support, which may or may not be pleasing. So far, though, they are coming along nicely: The other tricky bit is that these cambered transverse supports for the head gratings have buttressing knees, running aft. I had applied a glue ledge for the grating slats, and at the ends I have applied these blocks that I will fit to the headrails, and then file to shape. What I have drawn upon them is only a rough approximation. Again, these details are always easier to dial-in with the files: Steadily, now, the bow is rounding into form. Thank you all for your likes, your comments and for looking-in.
  12. Hubac's Historian
    The ornamental quality of the castings looks really very good. I can see how your modifications to the structure have amplified the difficulty of making it all fit together seamlessly. As always, you are doing a splendid job!
  13. Hubac's Historian
    Very stately and elegant in her new home. A magnificent ship, and a Victory lap well deserved!
  14. Hubac's Historian
    Agreed - the pins are very convincing at this scale.
  15. Hubac's Historian
    Ha! You may have to wait a bit longer as these headrail supports are proving more difficult to fit than I anticipated. The starboard side is fitted, but it required significant padding out with extra styrene to make good connections; this, despite making what I thought were really good patterns. Anyway, it will all come together in the end.
  16. Hubac's Historian
    Yeah - at this scale, that will be a challenge. Maybe wire and glue-sizing to make the bulbous heads of the pins?
  17. Hubac's Historian
    I’m not sure what language that is, but not French. ”Ventre de biche” is a French name for this particular color that they painted between the boot topping and the upper main wale. It resembles the tawny color of a deer hide. My “deadworks” (another funny French-ism associated with ships: the underhull below the waterline is the “liveworks” because that is the part of the ship that is engaged with the sea, its kinetic medium. Everything above the waterline is the “deadworks.”) started out more ventre-de-biche: But, then, I overdid the distressing: I was forced to darken the port side (lighter, above) to match the starboard (darker, behind).
  18. Hubac's Historian
    Without the black boot-topping, the waterline issue is not a problem, but you’re still gonna want to scrape away the moulded waterline, cuz it’ll definitely show up as a distraction. This is if you opt for the natural wood bottom. If you look closely, you’ll see that this builder scraped it away. I’ll also mention that this person made pretty good and convincing cloth sails. AND, the so-called “ventre-de-biche” color (belly of the doe) is a pretty close approximation of historical accuracy.
  19. Hubac's Historian
    Thanks for the extra pics of that model, Bill!
  20. Hubac's Historian
    At the end of the day, Bill, it is your model and you should build it according to your preferences. I have seen most Heller SR builds in the public domain, but that one above, I haven’t seen before. The natural wood bottom is interesting. Main thing you definitely want to do, as others have said, is to raise the water line to just below where the lower main wale sits lowest, at mid-ships. Without that modification, the model just looks top-heavy.
  21. Hubac's Historian
    I think it’s a solid move to upgrade the kit railings with extra styrene - it really helps to mitigate the plastic shell effect, by giving these details better scale. I noticed that you cut away the vertical carvings above the poop cap railing. Was this in consideration of installing the fighting-cloth rail that runs above the cap railings?
  22. Hubac's Historian
    I did the same, Bill. It really makes a huge difference in perception. Totally worth the effort.
  23. Hubac's Historian
    Frankly, Bill, I just haven’t gotten around to figuring out anything with regard to blocks and line. I still have a fair amount of structure to build before I’m really there, at the upper main deck, where I have to figure that out. I thought Henry mentioned his deadeye sizes in an earlier post. You should take a close look at his log. He has a broad knowledge of rigging and how it is supposed to function.
  24. Hubac's Historian
    Thank you very much, GranpaPhil!
  25. Hubac's Historian
    The build originated under Michael’s old screen name: SafeMaster. He recently changed his screen name to 72Nova.

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