drobinson02199

Bridge and wheelhouse finished, and shown dry-fitted in place. The kit calls for the windows, doors and portholes to be white, but I went with gray as I think it shows the detail better. The railings at the top are from one continuous wire per strand, and the wire is stiff, and the 90 degree bends are tough to get right! Regards, David

Here's the bridge now painted; closeups show the deck and sidewall patterning. Final picture adds the side wings and bridge railing. Regards, David

Getting ready to paint the bridge and wheelhouse structure. The issue is that the middle horizontal section is oversized. So I built all the structures, glued down the central top structure (which you can see in the pictures, built the side structures and bridge railing separately, and then dry-fitted them along with the pre-planked deck to figure out how far back to sand. Took some time. All you see here is the lower part with the horizontal section, and the upper center structure glued on. Next step is to paint, and to make that easier, I installed a screw underneath and attached a clamp to it so I can hold the whole thing and paint the sides in one pass. White first, then red-brown, then install the deck and varnish it, then paint and install the sides and railing. At least that's the plan. Regards, David

I finished up the sternmost structure, and it's shown here in position on the ship. What's not yet on it are a mast and two forward funnels, which need the adjacent structure for support. Regards, David

Here's an in-process pic of one of the stern structures. I'm also working on the main stack, which is an oval but had to be shaped from a larger block of wood supplied. Had to brush up on my whittling skills. 😁 Regards, David

Started on the superstructure. I started with the stern because I wanted to figure out the interaction between the deck overlay (which has simulated planking), and the structures. Glad I did, because I had to sand down one end of the lower structure to make it all fit -- but it does fit pretty well. The structures fit nicely between the overlay and the hatch coamings. By the way, I've discovered that for the hatch coamings you are supposed to use a thinner, wider wood that would create a better water-resistant fit, but I'm happy with these since I'm building a static model. Now I'll move on to fit out and paint these structures. Regards, David

And here's the rest of the hull painted, and mounted on the base. Waterline came out well. Regards, David

Main deck painted. Regards, David

Started painting the hull. Here are the bulwarks, rear deck, forecastle deck, and top part of the hull painted gray. The rectangular spaces at the bottom of the gray paint on the hull are where I had small tape strips to guide me on how far down to paint to get past the waterline. I'm going to approach the rest of the hull as follows: 1) Next, I'm going to paint the base. Usually I wait until a ship is finished before mounting the base, to protect the base from construction dust, but this ship has a large flat bottom that doesn't fit well in my foam cradle, and I don't want to paint it and then mar it by letting it sit flat on my workbench while working on the rest of the ship. So after I paint the rest of the hull, I'll mount the base and then wrap it in plastic to protect it. 2) After painting the base I'll paint the main deck. This will give the gray on the side of the hull more time to dry well before I tape the waterline. 3) Then I'll tape the waterline and paint the rest of the hull. 4) Finally, I'll mount the base. Regards, David

Something I meant to comment on above is the direction in the instructions to use scrap plywood for the bulkhead supports (and also for the part of the capping rail that curves). For a kit that cost me $600, I found this pretty annoying. Caldercraft should have included a couple of pieces of strip wood for the bulkhead supports. Instead of scrap ply, which would be difficult to make uniform, I went to my stash of leftover wood from previous models and got some strip wood that fit. Still "scrap" in a way, but a better option. Regarding the curved part of the capping rail, the instruction was to use scrap ply cut across the grain so it would bend, and fair it into the rail. I elected to use my steamer on the capping rail and bend it. But again, the idea of going to scrap wood isn't consistent with the price of the kit, or with Caldercraft's quality on, say, HMS Victory. I was surprised. Regards, David

Mounted the washport covers on the outside of the hull. Also made and mounted the bulwark support frames. The base plate where the bulwarks meet the deck is not called for in the instructions, but it's on one of my pictures from the internet and I think it really dresses that junction well. Now, on to painting the decks and hull. Regards, David

The inside of the fiberglass hull is rough with fibers running across it, so you have to use filler on the bulwarks to smooth them out. This looks messy but the sides are now smooth inside. It's the product of a three-step process: first, wood filler. Then, two coats of varnish. Finally, putty in the remaining craters and imperfections. Then sanding with 220 grit followed by 600. Regards, David

Combings fitted to the inside of the deck openings. In the manual, it says that this is for positioning the structures, and also to keep water out. But there isn't enough wood in the kit to finish the job! Since I don't care about water, I shorted two sides on the stern as you can see. Drilled all of the portholes and the mooring port openings, as well as the hawse holes in the bow for the anchors -- the latter have external fittings as shown. Regards, David

All of the decks are now in. It's something of an adventure given the limited instructions. The decks take some shaping to fit the hull. You also have to figure out where the stern bulkhead goes -- finally I measured on the main plan and converted its scale to the main ship's scale. The main deck went in last, and I positioned it (after shaping) and then installed fillets through the openings from bow sternward, measuring height from the top of the side bulkhead as I went along. I also added cross beams under the main deck to keep it from sagging in the middle. Regards, David

Started on the decks. This is the stern deck, which has to be installed flush with the hull edge, on the inside. It rests on "fillets", which you have to install, so getting those positioned well is key to that flush alignment. I will fill the gaps between the deck and hull edge wiht putty. Regards, David

Because the decks will prohibit access to the interior of the hull, I needed to pre-drill the mounting holes. Because the hull is very thin (1mm), I installed wood blocks to give the mounting screws something to bite into. The holes have been pre-aligned with holes on the mounting board. I'll use screws and brass pedestals. The brass rod you see is the propeller shaft, which I've attached a post to for stability. Regards, David

Prop and rudder assembly done. I'm building this as a static model, so I didn't have to worry about some of the running hardware. One tip: if you follow the sequence of the instrucitons (as I did), you fix the lower rudder arm and then discover that the rudder doesn't fit (look at the picture and you can see that there is zero wiggle room). So I had to bang the rudder shaft down to flush at the bottom -- fortunately it does move inside the rudder if you use a hammer -- fit it, and then carefully bang back enough to create a shaft stub to grab the lower rudder housing arm without dislodging the arm.. A better approach would have been to dry fit the rudder arm, then position and drill the top hole in the hull for the rudder shaft, fit the rudder into the arm and the hull, and then reposition and fix the arm. The white stuff is some putty to fill the gaps between the arm and the hull. Regards, David

John: Yes I did. It's the source of some of the most useful pictures I found. Thanks for sending it along. Regards, David

After a break from ship building with the Jupiter locomotive, I've returned to ships. But the HMS Victory really maxed me out on ratlines, so I was looking for something different, and wanted to build a cargo ship. The Caldercraft Brannaren looked like a good bet. Included here are the tranditional "what's in the box" pictures. The hull is pre-formed since Caldercraft intends this to be a RC model if desired -- but I'm going to build it as a static model for display. I pulled the manual and quickly realized that sparse is perhaps an inflated description of the written instructions. So I went looking in the box for a bunch of how to build diagrams -- but no dice. There are a few charts -- I've included an example of a master chart -- but for me at least there was a real gap in figuring things out from the instructions. I think Caldercraft's philosophy on this model is best summed up by the following excerpt from the manual: "Piece by piece descriptions of placement of the remainder of the fittings have been deliberately omitted, as it is thought that the drawings and photo pack adequately describe and show all placements of them." I read this and thought: great, where is the "photo pack". Not in the box. Did some preliminary web searching for pictures, but didn't find much beyond the single stock picture on the kit page at Caldercraft or Ages of Sail or others. Wrote Caldercraft about the "photo pack" but no reply. So I bore down on Google and searched really hard, and finally found a set of pics from several sources that will provide adequate guidance for construction, painting, etc.. I don't mean my tone above to indicate to any of you that this is one to steer clear of. Far from it: with the pictures I've found I'm now feeling confident and looking forward to the build. With that in mind, if anyone following this log decides to take on the Brannaren, I'd be more than happy to forward the pictures I found, as I think they are essential. I'm not going to post them here as I don't want to clutter up the log or confuse followers as to what I built and what others built. Regards, David

Jupiter is completed! There doesn't seem to be a place in the Gallery for non-ship builds, so I have put my completion photos here. This was a fun build. A nice break from ships. Regards, David

Finished the tender. Now to do final touches and get it assembled on the baseboard. Regards, David

The forward truck assembly is complete, and mounted on the tender. Regards, David

Tender body with storage boxes built, painted and mounted. Coupler attached. Regards, David

Planked the tender floor (I started to type "deck" out of habit, but this isn't a ship, is it? 😬). While the instructions say to plank the whole surface, if you do that you will have to carve out the different slots and holes. So I looked at where the tender body covers the floor and was able to hold off on planking across the holes and slots. You can see that in the picture below. Then some pics of the tender body with the floor mounted. Regards, David

Jon: No, I don't think so. I bought this to give me a break from ships, and I've enjoyed Occre's different materials approach. But my next one is going to be the Branneren from Caldercraft. Regards, David