Beckmann

The flag staffs, the tiller and the nailing is done now. Here are some photos. 

Here you can see better, what I mean, but you are right, it is not too much noticable.

Thanks Chuck,

I have a problem, I don't know, why it occured: The keel ist bending about 3 mm upwards in the middle. During the planking I had it on the frame all the time. I preformed the planks with heat, so they were not very much forced in place. Is there a way to prevent this? Certainly not any more at this stage of building, but I would like to know, what I did wrong. I will post a photo of the problem later.

Matthias

Hello everybody,

The ornaments, frames and moldings werde gildet and added to the hull. At the moment I am busy preparing the rudder.

Matthias

Hello Doug,

there are some fellow members of our german "association historic naval Architecture", who are incredibly well informed. One told me, that this photo originates from the catalogue of an Exhibition in Hamburg Harbour in the year 1978 about shipping on old photographs. It was subscribed: "Fischerleute des Kutters H.F. 249 um 1905" (Fishermen of the cutter H.F. About 1905). Wheras the term "cutter" is no description of a certain type of ship. In german it is a general term for fishing vessels, still used today. It was probably a vessel like the still existing H.F. 294 "President Freiherr von Maltzahn". Have a look at https://www.hf294-maltzahn.de there are plenty of photoes on this page, also many historic potos.

Matthias

I was wondering, how the windlass exactly looked like and how it was used. In a german Essay "Ausarbeitung zum kulturhistorischen Wert des Giekewers Frieda" I found a nice photo and with the permission of the author I can share it here.

Hi Scott, there is a page about the shipbuilder Colin Archer, who built LEON.

It says:

Year of Building: 1880

ship builder: Colin Archer

Built at: Larvik / Norwegen

History

Hjemsted: (Port of registry)

Arendal 1880-1900

Kragerø 1900-06

Solum, Porsgrunn 1906-15

Skipsfører: (Captain)

P. Eilertsen 1880-87

M. Andersen 1887-94

C. Jacobsen 1894-96/97

Ole I. Jobsen 1896/97-1900

I. N. Knudsen 1900-06

Isak Olsen 1906-13

Th. Halvorsen 1913-15

Eier: (Owner)

Brødr. Herlofson 1880-86

Axel Herlofson 1886-88

Axes Smith , mgr. 1888-94 (D. Herlofson, eier)

C. Jacobsen 1894-1900

Chr. Jobsen 1898

J. Schelderup 1900-03

J. M. Jensen 1903-06 (A/S Leon)

N. Realfsen 1906-15 (A/S Leon)

so that explains the inscription of the bell

I got this photo from the Aust Agder Museum at Kuben / Norway (together with the permission to use it here).

So that's alle what remains from LEON. I presume, every ship of that size had a bell. Shipbells always were important for the daily routine onbord the sailships and as well as alarm Signals at night, or when ist was foggy.

Maybe this is a possible position for the ships bell of LEON

Hi Johno, thanks for your reaction on my question. I put LEON apart at the moment,  for I am building Chuck Passaros wonderful barge, but I can show some more photos of the state of things.  I hope to proceed on Leon soon.

That looks great, spraying the thwarts in advance is a good idea. I wish, I had done that with my barge. Are you going for gildet ornaments or leave them wooden?

Summary of Surface:

sanding, primer

sanding, first coat of colour

sanding, second coat of colour

sanding, third coat of Colour

first varnish coat

second varnish coat

That's it now. When working on it, I remembered, that when I made an apprenticeship as a joiner / Carpenter, some 25 years ago, we used to water the wooden surfaces. The wood fibers stood up, and when you sandet them down, you hardly had to do any sanding at all anymore. I don't know, why I forgot about that. - Next time -.

At the Moment I am busy doing the moldings. I haven't done that before, so I had to practise a bit. First thing to do was to make a scraper, tiny enough for these small strips. I used an old metal scraper About 2 mm thick and milled the profile into it with a little cutting wheel from the dremel. It worked quite well. The shaping of the strips also worked well. 

First thin varnish coat  is done. I took the lacqer spray , for the red colour shines a bit more under it. I will go twice over it.

I made a test ob my spare   pieces. To be honest, you can hardly see the difference.  The fixative (on the right side) is a tiny little bit more mat

I like both surfaces.

I added the thole  pins at this stage of the building, so the finish covers all of the parts being painted red.  

I also got the fixativ  and some other stuff to try out what will look best.

You mean the stuff, artists take to secure a charcoal drawing? Okay I will get some and try that out.

I bought some dull/mat acryl-Colour, type cherry and added some drops of black colour to darken it a bit. Then I painted everything twice, so it covers well.

On the spare piece I tried out from left to right: wax polish (not good, does not really connect with underground and looks dirty), varnish, and shellac, whiped on with a cloth. Wiping on shellac is probably the most elaborate way, but one can control the gloss level very well. So I probably go for that.

The gildet frames look nice on the red underground. They still need treatment, but I think I will go for gildet ornaments, frames and moldings.

Matthias

Für deutsche Leser: meine Unterlage ist übrigens nur die Mecklenburgische Kirchenzeitung und keine fromme Kampfschrift.

(Sorry, I just explained for german readers, that my underpacking ist just the regional church magazin and no religious tract)

Yesterday I just sandet everything again with steel wool, I am unhappy with the colour I use, it has a sort of ugly glittering, which is not what I want. I will go and get a more dull colour and try to add the dull shine afterwards maybe with a wax polish or varnish, I have to try different options. I also sandet the little inbord frames and added som gilding paint on one of them, to see how that looks like. For the wooden parts I use spreadable ( I hope that is the right word) shellac, which has a lovely shine.

Matthias

Thank you for your comments.

In February we have been at NMM / Greenwich. I must say, I was a bit disappointed, for ther were just a few models on display. I thougt, I would see all the famous models like HMS Amazon and HMS Winchelsea ;), but no, they are obviously all stored away. What a pity.

But anyway I saw Prince Frederics barge, and it is such a Beauty. I like the dull shine of the red painted parts of the interior and the contrast to the gildet ornaments. Here are three photos I took so you see, what I mean.

It has been About 6 weeks now, that I startet building the Queen Anne Barge, I purchased in 2018 from Chuck Passaro. It is a very special and beautiful model kit he created. The instructions are excellent. For those of us, who are still curious about new techniques and challenges. there can be learned a lot.

I don't start my build log right from the beginning, because I somehow missed taking photos at the early stages. It is probably not too interesting anyway for there are other and better build logs about this model. At the moment I am at the point to deal with varnish and colour, so things get difficult, because one can ruin a model at this stage very easily. For now just some images.

Matthias

In the meantime I have got the permission from Aust-Agder-Museum to use the Images, so here we go:

Hi Doug,

I have no reaction from the Aust-Agder-Museum yet, so I just send you the link for the

drawing of LEON.

https://digitaltmuseum.org/011012548813/ukjent

the ships bell

https://digitaltmuseum.org/011022541446/skipsklokke

a nice model

https://digitaltmuseum.org/021025899933/fartygsmodell

By the way, today I posted some photos of my own model. 

Matthias

While building the Brigantine LEON, a couple of problems and questions occured to me, which I hope to solve by sharing the progress of my work on this forum. Thanks to Doug McKenzie for encouraging me to do so, I probably wouldn't have done so otherwise.

I am already busy with the hull for a long time, due to little spare time, and I didn't took photos from the beginning.

So I start somewhere in the middle.

I have the plans from H. Underhill, wich I purchased from "The model dockyard.com". I scanned them and zoomed them to 1/48.

The quality is not very good and not very precise, but it is all I could get.

So here the first pictures:

I painted the hull black, I didn't know the photo of LEON at that time, showing it being painted light grey. Now I consol myself by thinking, she might have been black in her early days.

The Planks freshly glued to the plywood support.

View inside

Building the deckhouse

I am not shure about white or gold for the ornaments. It was at least just a cargo vessel.

At the Moment, I am thinking about, if I should paint the bulwark white from inside or not, and how to build the railing on the aft ship section.

One other Question I have ist: Where belongs the ships bell?

Hi Doug, the photo, Chuck posted, ist exactly the one. It has some handwritten informations about the ship (see below). The Aust-Agder-Museum at KUBEN in Norway has some items about LEON. A bottleship-model, the ships bell and the drawing I was talking About. I wrote to them to ask for permission to use the Images. If they allow, I will post them here. 

I will think about the build log, perhaps I will start one.

Matthias