Gregor

I might even beat Glenn to the order-button, depending on our respective time zones 🙂

I literally began to stroke the spines of my books (I nowadays own a set of five bound books with all novels in it) - but I digress...

There were figures of Aubry an Maturin mentioned in an earlier post by Chris. I began to visualize them, sitting at the stern, playing music together. This would be a wonderful touch, as it symbolizes the heart of their friendship. Now I bet all of you have this silent movie in your head, the long, endless voyages in the south sea -  impossible to unthink 🙂 .

Cheers,

Gregor

How I would love to build Surprise, maybe with a little cut-out to show the orlop – not for the gore, but because it’s an important place in the books (think writing journals undisturbed by ship’s noises, Padeen’s discovery of opium that has an enormous impact of part of the whole story…).

The only ship that’s higher on my wishlist would be HMS Beagle, with captain FitzRoy and a young Darwin discussing on deck...

Gregor

(I know Darwins voyages are post-napoleonic - but the ship was ordered in 1817 and basically from this period. The later additions (rig, deck, metal fittings) it would produce an interesting variant for a Vanguard kit.

Yesterday night I found your post about your method of drawing and laser cutting frames by mere chance. I was fascinated, because I have some experience in drawing with Adobe Illustrator, but not with working in 3D.

Until now, I used Illustrator for tracing the lines of frames in plans that I bought, just to make bulkheads and keels. Now I traced all the frames of "La Belle 1684" in plans of Jean Boudriot (published by Ancre) - this time, instead of laser cutting, I had the opportunity to cut them out using a CNC milling machine for a small hull model in 1/64 (as you know, you can easily export a drawing from Illustrator in dxf format, but this file has then to be worked on before feeding it to the machine).

Tracing by hand has its limits (even with the clever support using bezier curves), the problems begin with the plan itself (distortions, errors), followed of course by limits of my own. Creating a correct hull in 3D helps making sure that all the parts fit in. It seems that Shade3D and Illustrator are capable of working hand in hand.

As always - the better the source, the better the outcome. By tweaking and sanding, my frames seem tho fit, but not with the precision one could wish for. That's why I will read your manual with utmost care (and try it out with my newly arrived copy of Ancre's "La Volage").

A admire your generosity, and thank you with all my heart.

Yours,

Gregor

In the last few months my home office has taken up more space. During this time, I pursued another small project: A gunboat from 1801, a Swedish-Russian design (A.F. Chapman), a kit from Master Korabel in 1/72nd scale.

But finally, I will begin the rigging of La Topaze. Some details were still missing: The rings for the belaying pins around the masts (they measure 6 mm in dameter), and the railing supports.

Now I’m out of excuses. My old serving machine was dusted and is ready…

Cheers

Gregor

Hi Jeff

In 1:48 the hull's length should be 54 cm, in 1:36 then 72 cm (according to Ancre's website: https://ancre.fr/en/monograph/30-monographie-de-la-belle-barque-1680.html#/langue-anglais). 

I very much hope, Tom, there will be a kit in 1:48. It would be a unique opportunity to build a fully framed model of a small ship in a relatively small scale. I'm hoping and looking very much forward to this kit.

Cheers, Gregor

Thanks for this review - I'm eagerly waiting for the reappearance of the La Belle kit, as I just bought Ancre's monography from another modeler. I had to give up space for Homeoffice, so HMS Enterprize is simply too big for me. What I really admire here is the clever kit-design, excellent for people like me with more romantic dreams than useful modeling skills.

I wish Tom total success with his enterprise, may there be soon an agreement!

Gregor

Finally, a small update: Both pairs of carronades are installed. Each is about 20 mm long.

Here on the deck of La Mutine...

... and on the deck of La Topaze.

Have a nice weekend,

Gregor

Thanks, Tony, you are very kind.

And no, the base is simply black MDF, and two pieces of blackened brass rods - it's not in naval style of dark wood and shiny metal, but I like the simplicity. 

And next? My two schooners are finally getting armed and should be rigged someday... (and there is the lure of a Swedish gun boat, still in its box from Master Korabel - a gift to myself and a souvenir of last summer's travels there).

Gregor

Here is the finished boat, with a few more details. I really can recommend Gérard Delacroix's plans, and I hope to motivate a few of you to buy them and build your own.

Cheers, Gregor.

The gun barrel, the reason for the strange scale (1:62) is exactly 50 mm long (a little less than 2''). Its carriage fits into the slides.

A (real) lead cover was hammered and formed over an (inexistent) flint lock for protection.; an idea I took from Johann's phantastic build of La créole (

For the side tackles I used Chucks 3 mm blocks.

To be continued and finished soon...

To be continued soon...

Small details:

At this pint, the boat weights 31 grams.

To be continued soon...

These gun boats were huge! They were 13 meters long (42 feet). A standard ship's cutter of 6 meters looks quite small in comparison.

I was very lucky this summer, when I visited the city of Karlskrona, in Sweden. There is an excellent Museum, with a collection of small boats in a dedicated shed (difficult to take pictures inside...). There I found a sloop, built in 1833, of roughly the same size as my chaloupe! This was really impressive.

To be continued soon...

The interior, part two:

To be continued soon...

The interior:

Floor boards were separated by paper strips while glue dries.

The interior was then varnished with Danish oil.

To be continued soon...

A litte more than a year ago I started a side-project. I bought the plans for this small boat on a whim, after visiting an excellent exhibition at Rochefort, France (thats where the famous frigate Hermione has its home port).

The model is about 22 cm or 8.66142 inches long.

Building this little gun-boat gave me great pleasure and quite a few headaches, mostly due to my choice of a small scale of 1:62 (I scaled the plans down to fit the gun barrel from rb-models in Poland). 

The plans and explanations (ancre.fr) are excellent, available in several languages - even in my native German. Here I will keep my explanations short. I recommend the - as always - very instructive log by Tony 

with further references.

My chaloupe is made from pear, painted in French style of the time (with the exception of the imperial green on the inside, which would made it more historically accurate).

So here are the first steps:

Keel parts assembled (2 mm pear)

The frames (1.2 mm pear) were watered, bent over a soldering iron and pinned on the form (with a shortcut at the stern, where no frames were needed for this model), covered with glossy synthetic-resin varnish.

Planking was done with 0.5 mm pear planks

To be continued soon...

It's nice to be back, Tony (and discovering your Chaloupe, too). 

I bought  the wheel, 17 mm in diameter, from Caldercraft. It was a perfect fit for La Mutine.

Stove ans pumps were made from a wild mixture of materials: A wooden dowel, washers and polystyrene profiles for the pumps, with a brass rod and tube for their handle. A wooden cube, a thin polystyrene sheet and paper, brass rod, polystyrene profiles and lots of glue. Then paint, to cover it all. I hat great fun making them.

Gregor

It has been almost a year since I updated my log. I even worked on another project:

Still, some small details were added to my schooners.

First and most important, my childhood dream: A wheel! While La Topaze only had a tiller, La Mutine had a real wheel fitted. If I were to speculate, the reason for this might be found in the heavy rigging. La Mutine was probably much harder to steer than the sweetsailing Topaze (as trials in 1823 have shown).

Iron pumps and stoves followed (only a chimney in the case of La Topaze). 

La Topaze got her anchors.

And then, finally, both got their names! Carving failed, so I had to search for another method. I experimented with laser cutting, added putty, paint and metal letters (1.5mm).

Gregor

Hi aviaamator

My small cutter was a kit (http://www.falkonet.ru/boat2). With a little tweaking I made it look like a French boat called Youyou ("little darling") of 5 meters. I followed the tip of French modeler Bruno Orsel, who sent me the plan (sorry about the quality) he found in a French archive. Boudriot's drawing shows a bigger cutter of 6 (or 6.5) meters, as shown in the Atlas du Génie maritime, page 119.

source: https://web.archive.org/web/20120113075641/http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/atlas/rec.php

As La Topaze has no cover for her spars and oars, I had to make them in order to lash them down beside the cutter – so I made the complete set.

There are still some details missing (pumps, decorations). But the next step will be a simple one: a chimney for Topaze’s galley.

I wish you all a happy New Year!

Gregor

I even added some details I dreamed up: You can find covered spars and oars in bigger, contemporary ships like La Créole (plans G. Boudriot), and animal cages under the small cutter. So that’s my gift to the Mutine for her next voyage to the Indian Ocean.

This bench for officers (quite typical in French ships) stands as a symbol of slow progress:

But still, I managed to add a few details to my decks.

A closer look:

Both ships now have their binnacles: Topaze a very traditional one, Mutine the new, modern version. Topaze’s compass is 25cm in diameter, that of La Mutine 25, according to the Atlas du Génie maritime.

Small stuff: a standard compass of 20 cm in 1/64 is really fun!

Thanks, Tony, you are very welcome!

The planking of the decks was another, much bigger project that had me worried since autumn. There are no straight planks, all are curved. Also, it seemed that both the Mutine’s planking pattern and the model of the Topaze in Paris are different from the plans of Jean Boudriot’s Jacinthe.

A friendly model train builder came to rescue. He owns a CNC-mill and cut my planks (I had to learn the differences between drawing graphics with AdobeIllustrator and a CAD-tool, much wood was used up because we had to learn the differences between plastic sheets and maple wood and so on).

Caulking was done with a soft pencil. After gluing the planks to the false deck, I scraped the decks with micro slides (cut edged glass – dangerous for your fingers when breaking, bad for the deck when you are bleeding).

The Topaze got her six portholes I had prepared in advance. And now I’m looking forward to build all the small stuff you find on deck.

Cheers,

Gregor

With a bad conscience, finally an update on my project. It’s slow going anyway, but some headway was made.

After both hulls were coppered, I embarked on a small holyday project: the cutters. Jean Boudriot shows on his plans a cutter of 6.5 meters (“petit canot” in French). The maker of the Topaze model I’m copying in smaller scale proposed a smaller boat of 5.5 meters, based on his research. In French, it’s called “Youyou”, which translates in something like “little darling” or other nice things you would call a baby.

I even started by cutting out the bulkheads when I discovered a nice little kit, made in Russia by Falconet (http://www.falkonet.ru/boat2). It has exactly the dimensions of my Youyou, and very easy to build (excellent explanations with enough pictures so you don’t have to understand Russian, which I don’t). But this is a scratch building log, so I made a semi-scratch French Youyou out of a Russion cutter. A cut at the stem and an addition at the stern gives a new silhouette, new rudders were made, benches altered, and after some other small changes I had two French boats as used in the 19^th century.

The little kits, by the way, are cleverly done, the planks are laser cut and perfectly fitting, the pear wood in excellent quality.

That’s it for the moment, another entry will soon describe the planking of the decks.

Gregor