Hubac's Historian

I love the table, Gary!  And, in my estimation, you are no slouch with the camera, as well.  Really great interior shots of the ship, which is looking very crisp.  One particularly interesting aspect for me is the patination of the finished framing; it has a dark, rich color as though the timber has been oxidizing for hundreds of years.  It really looks great!  Michelle Padoan creates a similar effect, but I would say yours is more convincingly “antiqued.”

1 hour ago, shipman said:

Working with these kits can, be a toxic mix if you aren't careful.

 

What so you (metaphorically?) mean, Shipman?

There’s no doubt, Bill, that the speed of your build has been pretty astonishing!  Your standing rigging looks very crisp and taught - CONGRATULATIONS on this major milestone!!

Hi John!  Thanks for the kind words.  Yes, that is the primary problem with the kit head; the sprit-mast angle is too shallow.  I have seen one builder I know correct the angle, in the first place and then all of these gymnastics were not necessary.  Unfortunately, this did not occur to me until it was too late to do that.

I’m not disappointed, though, as I thought the headrails could do with re-working anyway.  I never really liked their sweep, even though they closely follow the Tanneron model.  Lastly, even the supporting knees on the SP monograph are at a rather shallow angle, so I think my mods will present well, in that regard.

Good evening, Amalio.  Will your model ultimately be on public display at a museum somewhere?

She’s coming along beautifully, John!  Let me know whether you come up with anything for scale figures.

As always, David, your perceptions are right on!  For one, the following pic is more representative of the space available to me:

I would like to have more space, but then I’m compressing the width of the three headrails, between the upper cheek and the beakhead grating.  The three headrails also require interspaces; slightly less than a half inch at the forward end (after revision) isn’t a lot to work with.

The fact remains, though, that this design process remains fluid, because I haven’t even gone to the vellum, yet, to delineate the rails and position the stiles and figure out what to do with the aft medallion.

As always, this kind of feedback is welcome!

I’m beyond words, here, Kevin!  Simply incredible!  You may not think so, but I certainly do.

I had a series of epiphanies in the grocery store.  First of all, the exact positioning of the aft medallion matters a great deal, because it determines whether the cathead timbers will clear the headrails.

Last night, when I was positioning the stock headrail to take a measurement at the figurehead, I was looking at it from the outboard perspective; I had failed to consider that one of the modifications I made was to recess the beakhead bulkhead into the upper bulwarks, so that there would be an “actual practice” plank overlay of the beakhead bulkhead.

When I got home, after putting away the groceries, of course, I positioned the stock headrail piece where it actually needs to be.  I discovered that the shortage is much closer to 5/16”, rather than the heavy 1/8”th I had previously based my pattern on.

It also dawned on me that I had not even bothered to place the sprit-mast to even see whether the forward medallion was actually now below it.  What was I thinking?!

Anyway, these were not difficult alterations to make.  Here is headrail pattern 2.0:

The other important consideration is that the beakhead grating has to flow into the headrail on a steady incline, so the top edge of the headrails can’t dip below the line of the grating.

Of course, the next question is whether I will have room for the pixie figure that I drew, just aft of the headrail:

I’m not sure about that:

Although, it could simply be a matter of re-scaling the figure.  When I drew her, it still had not dawned on me that the Berain bow drawing does not account for the forecastle deck.  The figure I drew is “stretched” in order to accommodate that reality:

Perhaps she can be somewhat reduced in scale to fit comfortably between the headrails and that first port opening.  I may, ultimately, need to alter the aft medallion to copy the actual Berain design because the Heller version adds width to this critically tight spot.

That’s a problem for another day.  At least I have the length and sweep worked out. 

A lot of small odds and ends have been happening.  I’ve smoothed-over and re-touched the upper bulwark joint.  I painted and installed the starboard spirketting and the quarter deck beam.  I’ve fitted and installed the last little piece of the frieze, where it bridges the bulwark joint.  I’ve also installed all of the starboard channels.

One aspect that has provided a series of mis-steps is the buttressing knees of the channels.  First, I could not locate the card template I had made for the port side, so I made a new template.  Then, the first knee I fitted was made from slightly thinner styrene than what I used  on the port side.  After the second knee, I found my original template!  So, even though I will remove the first too-thin knee and replace it, I manually faired the first two knees to the correct profile.  The third knee I installed was too tall!

I decided to take a break from that frustration, for a moment.  The port side gallery bracket is well-underway and coming along nicely.

Last night, I was in the mood to take a stab at a pretty challenging re-design.  As previously discussed, the kit head rails are now a generous 1/8” too short, after increasing the hull width at the stem.  To attempt to use them, anyway, would result in a visual compromise that would only serve to draw heaps of attention to its wrongness.

Even on the stock kit, there are numerous problems with the way these rails were designed.  Most significantly, the forward escutcheon rises above the level of the sprit-mast, where it becomes an encumbrance to the rigging.  Secondly, the low-sweeping arc of the rails makes it very difficult to craft plausible supporting knees, which the kit omits, in the first place.

Since, I have to re-make the rails, I thought I’d try and solve these two additional problems, while also improving the grace of the arc.  My plan is to extract the forward and aft medallions, as well as the acanthus stiles that connect the three rails.

The pattern I arrived at, I think, does a reasonably good job on all of these fronts.  The three rails taper, gradually, from 3/4” across the rails at the aft medallion, to 1/2” at the forward medallion:

Arriving at this pattern was just a matter of holding the stock part to the model and taking a measurement for the increased length, as well as figuring out the point at which the arc could transition into a slightly more shallow curve (just aft of the cathead support).  Then, it’s just a process of drawing and erasing arc segments with a set of French curves.

The stock rails on the model:

The sweep is so low, your supporting knees must be practically flat in profile.  The forward medallion is also way too high:

By contrast:

There is, now, at least some elevation to create a cyma-curve for these supporting knees.

I think the curves are more fair now, as well.

There is a lot of work in these, to bring them to fruition, but I think this is a solid starting place.

I am amazed that you have three full-frame builds happening, at once!

This is brilliantly done and a fascinating insight to your process.  Thank you for sharing!

I would also like to know the secret, but I wouldn't necessarily mind if you made it for me.  Lanterns = scale difficulty to 11.

6 hours ago, glbarlow said:

I agree about the too busy part, There are so many nice features there all ready I wouldn’t want to drown them out with hardware for the sake of hardware.  Hammock cranes or crutches would add nothing in my opinion, maybe boarding stanchions. 
 

While historical accuracy is relevant, I believe we are building an admiralty model, not a rendition of a sailing vessel (e.g. no rigging) so what would convince the board to build this vessel, eliminate adding anything would detract from the elegance of the design.

 

Just my two cents, I’ll go back to planking now. 

Perfectly well-said.  

Tremendous job on the plating - the patination looks very good!

Extremely helpful, I would say, Shipman, and full of interesting knowledge of ships.

Thank you GpP!

Thank you EJ!  I am honored that you guys continue to follow this build and it is immensely gratifying that you are able to take something away from it.

As I told, from the start of this build, the kit I’m building first belonged to my next-door neighbor, who served as an important mentor in my life.  Mark Hansen spent countless hours of his personal time, teaching me how to do things.  I enjoy posting the build log because I view it as an extension of that goodwill to other builders who might want to play around with this stuff.

I do spend an embarrassing amount of time looking at Puget portraits and studying models, but I think that much of this model’s charm has to do with the fact that it has a-symmetries and imperfections and it is full of compromises.  It does consistently represent, though, the best that I was capable of at any moment in time.  Hopefully, the project won’t plateau, and I’ll keep learning from all of you and your own fantastic builds, and it will all just get better and better.

A big thanks to everyone for sticking with this project.  It really means a lot to me!

Rabbit hole - perfectly expressed.  I’m inclined to jump-in, because I know I will eventually build models that really deserve perfect scale rope.

I think you will find, Kevin, that there is definitely a difference with the Syren rope.  This past October, I watched Chuck demonstrate his technique at the Joint Clubs mtg in New London.  His rope is superb.  The best I’ve seen, really.  Personally, I’m torn between learning to make rope, myself, where I’m in complete control of the quality, or buying rope.  The Amati rope looks very good.  For the price, it is - I think - hard to beat.  Chuck’s rope would be ideal, but I need a lot of it, and it would be cheaper to make on my own.

Wow, Kevin - that is such a very nice thing to say!  Thank you very much!

Just gorgeous.

Your decking is really nice, and you have achieved that super-rare, scale-rarity which is realistic grain patterning on individual planks.  This really stands out to me.

Yeah, a serving machine seems like an absolute must-have.

This will probably sound absurd - HOWEVER

I personally like to believe that my particular instant obsession with this ship when I was 8 or 9 years old is rooted in the mere possibility of past lives.  I like to think that maybe I served on this ship, or at least saw it with my living eyes.  It is a nice fantasy 😜, and why my wife refers to her as the other woman.

No divorce is not yet imminent; so far, it is a happy poly-amory.