Jump to content

Gregor

NRG Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    223

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Gregor

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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.
  5. 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...
  6. Gregor
    To be continued soon...
  7. Gregor
    Small details: At this pint, the boat weights 31 grams. To be continued soon...
  8. Gregor
    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...
  9. Gregor
    The interior, part two: To be continued soon...
  10. Gregor
    The interior: Floor boards were separated by paper strips while glue dries. The interior was then varnished with Danish oil. To be continued soon...
  11. Gregor
    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...
  12. Gregor
    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
  13. 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
  14. 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
  15. Gregor
    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
  16. 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.
  17. Gregor
    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.
  18. Gregor
    Small stuff: a standard compass of 20 cm in 1/64 is really fun!
  19. Gregor
    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
  20. 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 19th 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
  21. Gregor
    ... then I'm glad I can offer more than one hull, to please the diverse tastes of my viewers! Gregor
  22. Gregor
    Thanks, Tony, you are kind. The important difference is that on Mutine's hull the tiles overlap (historically correct), but on the model this has a three-dimensional effect. On Topaze's hull, I put the tiles precisely along each other, so the copper skin is flatter and smoother.
  23. Gregor
    Finally, the coppering is done! One advantage of building two sister ships is that you can apply on the second hull what you have learnt on the first. You can see the difference between the Mutine and the Topaze, where I laid the tiles much more carefully. Sorry for the quality of my pictures - they were made with my old smartphone. Now the rudders have to be attached, an then I will be able to turn them around in an upright position again... Cheers, Gregor
  24. Gregor
    I've built some small stuff, and tried out different methods for coppering the hulls. When drawing the planking pattern of the decks, I decided to follow in both schooners the pattern of La Topaze (based on the contemporary model in Paris. The plan of La Mutine shows more, even narrower planks). As a historian I have to deny that the plan of La Mutine is "proof" of her actual appearance. Proof would require corroboration sources, such as a "devis d'armement", a document that describes dimensions and details and is part of the contract with the builder. I don't know whether the archives of Lorient dockyards survived WWII, but that's where such a document would be. But I think it can reasonably be assumed that her appearance as shown in the Atlas du Génie maritime, an official publication, could pass the scrutiny of critical eyes at the time. There are details open to interpretation or even missing, but in general it should be correct representation of a schooner of its type. For my project, thats enough. Here's what they are looking like at the moment: The pattern on the plank over Mutine's capping rail was laser printed after I found paper of the correct colour. As always, several attempts had to be made... The copper tiles are made from self-adhesive copper tape. In France, they were bigger than in England or Holland, and in 1:64 they are 25 x 8 mm. On a french ship, you start at the stern a bit above the waterline. Cheers, Gregor
  25. Gregor
    Congratulations and many thanks, Tony - I couldn't agree more with your conclusion. Every Sherbourne builder will make his very own version, learn a lot in the process and will be all the richer for all the valuable discussions with his fellows. As you were one of the motivators, back on MSW1, for me to pick up a Sherbourne kit, I very much enjoyed following your log here, and the discussions we had. I always admired your drive to learn every aspect of model making, and do everything by yourself. And not only that: By explaining how you achieved your results (and not hiding your errors) you have shown that a beginner can build a very beautiful model that will get a place of honour in his home. I wish you much pleasure with your next project. All the best, Gregor

About us

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

SSL Secured

Your security is important for us so this Website is SSL-Secured

NRG Mailing Address

Nautical Research Guild
237 South Lincoln Street
Westmont IL, 60559-1917

Model Ship World ® and the MSW logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,929,264 & No. 6,929,274, registered Dec. 20, 2022)

Helpful Links

About the NRG

If you enjoy building ship models that are historically accurate as well as beautiful, then The Nautical Research Guild (NRG) is just right for you.

The Guild is a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to “Advance Ship Modeling Through Research”. We provide support to our members in their efforts to raise the quality of their model ships.

The Nautical Research Guild has published our world-renowned quarterly magazine, The Nautical Research Journal, since 1955. The pages of the Journal are full of articles by accomplished ship modelers who show you how they create those exquisite details on their models, and by maritime historians who show you the correct details to build. The Journal is available in both print and digital editions. Go to the NRG web site (www.thenrg.org) to download a complimentary digital copy of the Journal. The NRG also publishes plan sets, books and compilations of back issues of the Journal and the former Ships in Scale and Model Ship Builder magazines.

Our Emblem ®

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

Nautical Research Guild ® and the NRG logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,999,236 & No. 6,999,237, registered March 14, 2023)

×
×
  • Create New...