Richvee

I am sure you can make another.  Rich that looks pretty darn good.  Those came out great.  I know how tiny they are and that makes it even more impressive.

Made some belaying pins out of sewing pins:

Thank you Mark and Richard!
 
Thank you everyone for all the likes!
 
The railings for the ladders from the poop deck to the quarterdeck are installed and mostly done.

I ordered desert camouflage netting off EBay for the netting on the hammock cranes and the railings because it looks like the right color and mesh size for my scale netting.  The Tulle that I had previously purchased was out of scale and black, which is the wrong color.
 
In other news, I carved both poop deck staghorns.

Closing in on finishing the last two whaleboats. Some painting,  cuddy board details (Loggerhead, cleat, steering oar brace), oarlocks, thwart knees, foot brace, lifting eyes, and they'll be done. (Wow...actually there's quite a few details I still need to add  🙂)
I'll save the gear for when I need a break from rigging.
I'm going to load all 3 boats on the davits with gear, and leave the spare boat on the tail feathers empty. I know the boats weren't fully loaded until they were about to embark on a chase, but for display purposes, that's the way I'm going to go. Hey, if it's good enough for Ronnberg's KC in New Bedford, it'll be OK for mine as well. 



Once I have these little guys finished, I can temporarily set them in their places on the ship so I can get the davits at the correct height and aligned with the lifting eyes on the boats.  Then I can go ahead and get the blocks on the davits, and secure the davits permanently in place, and add the davit braces.     
 
Work has begun on shaping the boom, gaff, and yards. I'm fortunate to still be working through this crisis, but work is slow with lots of down time, so I've been bringing the yards to work and sanding and shaping to pass the day. I've got the boom, gaff , lower and topsail yards shaped, but I haven't trimmed the lengths yet. The plan is to have these ready to paint and start adding details to them as soon as the whaleboats are done. 
 

Syren rope is outstanding. https://www.syrenshipmodelcompany.com

Closing in on finishing the last two whaleboats. Some painting,  cuddy board details (Loggerhead, cleat, steering oar brace), oarlocks, thwart knees, foot brace, lifting eyes, and they'll be done. (Wow...actually there's quite a few details I still need to add  🙂)
I'll save the gear for when I need a break from rigging.
I'm going to load all 3 boats on the davits with gear, and leave the spare boat on the tail feathers empty. I know the boats weren't fully loaded until they were about to embark on a chase, but for display purposes, that's the way I'm going to go. Hey, if it's good enough for Ronnberg's KC in New Bedford, it'll be OK for mine as well. 



Once I have these little guys finished, I can temporarily set them in their places on the ship so I can get the davits at the correct height and aligned with the lifting eyes on the boats.  Then I can go ahead and get the blocks on the davits, and secure the davits permanently in place, and add the davit braces.     
 
Work has begun on shaping the boom, gaff, and yards. I'm fortunate to still be working through this crisis, but work is slow with lots of down time, so I've been bringing the yards to work and sanding and shaping to pass the day. I've got the boom, gaff , lower and topsail yards shaped, but I haven't trimmed the lengths yet. The plan is to have these ready to paint and start adding details to them as soon as the whaleboats are done. 
 

Had a nice weekend up in New Bedford at the museum. I could have easily spent half the day looking at Eric Ronnberg's 1/2" scale Kate Cory. So much interesting stuff there. 

Some inspiration to get my whaleboats going

The plastic worked well for the 2 pin pin rails on either side of the fore mast. This time they're epoxied on there. 

Halyards and downhauls for the Jib, flying jib, outer, inner, and topmast staysails are in. 
I found it interesting the topmast halyard didn't have a block at the head cringe of the sail, it was just sister hooked to the head cringe. So I just hooked the downhaul to an eyesplice in the halyard as shown below in the top of the picture. 

Jib and flying jib halyards and downhauls

That brings me to here...

Next, I think it's time to get serious about these darn whaleboats. 
But not before a a little weekend trip to the New Bedford whaling museum. The wife and I are headed up there early tomorrow morning to spend a day there...Russ--I'll ask about the plans they used to sell on line..maybe we'll get lucky and they'll have a set laying around they would sell. 

Thanks Kurt.  I was pretty happy with the look.
 
Wayne, I hope you get back at it soon. I've seen your log, you're off to a great start.  Be sure to check out John B.'s KC log, as well as the many Morgan builds on this site. In particular, Bruce's Morgan, particularly his whaleboats, are stunning.   Not only am I learning ship modeling, but I'm getting quite an education in the history of American whaling. Fascinating subject, IMO. 
 
I'm learning the hard way I shouldn't have tied off the standing rigging. I've already untied the backstays, and will probably need to undo the inner main, outer main and spring stays to re-tension them. 
 
 
It was a productive Sunday in the shipyard. Not only finished the cutting in pieces, I managed to get the blubber hook rigged. Ends are just wrapped around the windlass until final adjusting. 
 
 

Still need to lash that hook to the bit as well. 

So I have started on the tackle and pendants. After studying the MS plans,  the rigging specs booklet from New Bedford, it seems the Kate Cory's pendants were 8"c tarred hemp and not chain. So I used Syren .045 black rope, and 3.5mm bulls eyes for the thimbles and lashed it to the main mast. This illustration I found on line was extremely helpful for me in understanding cutting in tackle. 

To the left is the lower block setup with the blubber hook. The toggle strap is similar. The second is the upper block configuration, and the third is a chain option for the toggle rig. The far right shows the falls and guys.  
 
I added the bull's eyes for thimbles on the pendants and lashed it to the main mast as shown in the plans and described in the rigging Specs.
 


I've made one set of upper blocks, without the guy block strapped in yet. Chuck's 9/32 block kits add a nice touch to add detail to these 17 1/2" blocks used on the KC. 

Next up the lower double block. and figuring out how I'm going to represent the linkage between the pendants and the upper block straps as my metal work is no way up to the task of making shackles. 
 

The standing rigging is just about complete. Backstays and royal Forestay still need to be tensioned and cut. 
 
I decided to use small bulls eyes for thimbles as my metal working "skills" need a LOT of work. Hope they don't look to oversized. 

It's amazing what the camera picks up. That drop of glue on the trestle tree looks horrendous, yet hardly visible looking at the model. i'm going to have try to clean that up a bit. 
 
Next up I guess is cutting in tackle. Or whaleboats. If I get frustrated trying to rig the tricky cutting in tackle I'll switch over to whaleboats for a spell. 
 

Spring and summer is a slow shipbuilding season for me as my other interest, baseball umpire, take up a good portion of my free time. Bad weather has kept me off the baseball fields, and added some time in the shipyard. 
 
Main shrouds rigged. A few loose ends still to be cut off on the starboard side. 

Grid made from a copy of the plans, and taped to a thin plastic sheet for some stability.  Now ready for ratlines. maybe I can get them done before the Northeast joint clubs show in 2 weeks. 

I had a small dilemma with the pump just aft of the main mast. The MS plans show a pump pivot secured to the main mast. (See boom rest photo above). The plans from New Bedford has a wooden pivot post in the center of the pump lever. 

I decided on the later. 3/32 square pivot post, notched to accept a 1/16 square lever sanded round and tapered. I used some split rings I had for the lever straps. I cut them down until they fit fairly snug over the lever with a piece of 24 gauge annealed steel wire hooked to the ring for the pump spear.  Wow, those pumps are tiny! 


 

Looking at the boom rest, the fitting that comes with the kit seems way oversize.

Figured I'd take the snow day and try may hand at making my own.

I think it's a bit better than the metal fitting. I'll take it off and paint it up, and ad the iron band. Then the mast will be ready for mounting. 

While doing research on tryworks and trying to figure out how I was going to make this, I ran across this site, namely, jablackwell's Kate Cory build log. His log, along with Thomas Lauria's great site, and texxn's  C.W. Morgan added a wealth of information for me. it was after discovering all these places on line that I truly realized how much I had to learn, and how much better I needed to get. 
 
So the tryworks were built. I used the metal pots that I still had from the original kit. The brick was a thin plastic sheet of model railroad "S" scale brick wall, that I painted. The rest is wood sheet and strip wood I had from various kits, and steel wire for the slide rod for the oven doors. 
 




 
 

A little background before I start this log. I played around with models of all kinds when I was young, but this was my first effort at a "quality" model as a result. (The term "quality" is up for debate )I am in the middle of this build. I started it back in the late 80's. The hull was shaped, sanded and topsides painted. Plankshseer, rails and decking added and painted.....And there it sat as life went on. Bought a house, raised 2 kids, and late summer of '17 I dusted it off, and started adding rivets to the strip copper for the hull. Little did I know these strips should have been cut into plates. I simply simulated the plates by using the ponce wheel to run vertical rivets every  15mm.

After the copper, I started on the deck work. Hatches and companionways, wheel, skylight, galley. 
 





Next up was the tryworks. 
 

Closing in on finishing the last two whaleboats. Some painting,  cuddy board details (Loggerhead, cleat, steering oar brace), oarlocks, thwart knees, foot brace, lifting eyes, and they'll be done. (Wow...actually there's quite a few details I still need to add  🙂)
I'll save the gear for when I need a break from rigging.
I'm going to load all 3 boats on the davits with gear, and leave the spare boat on the tail feathers empty. I know the boats weren't fully loaded until they were about to embark on a chase, but for display purposes, that's the way I'm going to go. Hey, if it's good enough for Ronnberg's KC in New Bedford, it'll be OK for mine as well. 



Once I have these little guys finished, I can temporarily set them in their places on the ship so I can get the davits at the correct height and aligned with the lifting eyes on the boats.  Then I can go ahead and get the blocks on the davits, and secure the davits permanently in place, and add the davit braces.     
 
Work has begun on shaping the boom, gaff, and yards. I'm fortunate to still be working through this crisis, but work is slow with lots of down time, so I've been bringing the yards to work and sanding and shaping to pass the day. I've got the boom, gaff , lower and topsail yards shaped, but I haven't trimmed the lengths yet. The plan is to have these ready to paint and start adding details to them as soon as the whaleboats are done. 
 

Second whaleboat complete. Half way there. Special shout out to @David Lester for his use of cardstock for the stripe on the boats. Much better than trying to paint that stripe of color between the black and white. I made a red stripe for my original boat. So much better than trying to paint that line, and masking it off.  Used a blue stripe for boat #2. . 

680
 


I'll make the next two together and get back to rigging soon. 

Many years ago I had the opportunity to see Chuck do a demonstration on his painting techniques.  I remember that he had a piece of wood that had several squares drawn on it and he had a jar with water that contained several paint brushes.  The brushes had been in the jar for some time as the tips had curled due to the weight of the brush.  He explained that in art school he had to do a color pallet with one inch squares that he had to paint perfectly square and with no lap marks or brush strokes.  Failure to do so would result in failing the class.  He showed how to thin his artist acrylic paint with water and paint within the squares.  The demonstration was only 30 to 45 minutes long but he was able to build up the color after many coats of paint to reduce the opaqueness of the thinned paint.  The curled tip of the brush helped to get a fine line as he stroked the brush along the border of the squares.  He also talked about breathing and "pinky" control.  He also had a brush with clear water and a piece of sandpaper that was cut in an arc to touch up places where the paint was outside of the area he wanted to paint.  I wish I had videoed the demonstration as it would have been a good reference tool.  I have tried his painting technique and find that it works very well.  Before this technique, I was painting my models trying to cover everything in one coat and wondering why I had brush strokes and lap marks.  If you use Chuck's technique, you will find that your paint jobs and confidence will get better with each coat of paint that you apply.

Sorcery! Magic! Witchcraft!

Thanks everyone for your comments and for the "Likes".  I am really appreciative of those Medway Longboat builders that have created build logs as I refer to them often to see how they constructed a certain component of their build.  This has helped me in my build.
 
Michael and Jean-Paul, I like the Grumbacher Red as it gives a low sheen, almost matt finish.  I like the red color as it does not have the orange tint that some of the reds do.
 
Don, thank you for checking out my post and for your comment.  I am very pleased with the model and I cannot wait to see it finished.  This is a really nice kit and the instructions and materials are first class.
 
Bob and Rich, my paint job is far from perfect, but I am very happy with it.  The thin coats are the key to getting a good paint job.  I must have around 20 coats of paint on this model and it is just like painting with water colors.  I feel the more that you paint, the better your technique gets.
 
Bill, thanks for your comment.  I am following your progress on your Cheerful as I have this model on my shelf and considering it for my next build.
 
Chuck, the cedar has worked out great.  The WOP over the cedar has made it look like boxwood and I have used your technique for the painting.  I am striving to get to your level of craftsmanship, but realize that I am no where near that.  However, just trying has made me a better modeler than not trying at all.
 
Thanks everyone for looking in.  Please stay safe and wishing everyone the best of health and happiness.

You and me both Bob. I can’t seem to learn thin coats and trust the paint. I keep going over spots Instead of painting a thin coat, let it dry,  then another coat-and I get lousy results. I’ll get there. 
 
Rayland - Absolutely beautiful!! 

You and me both Bob. I can’t seem to learn thin coats and trust the paint. I keep going over spots Instead of painting a thin coat, let it dry,  then another coat-and I get lousy results. I’ll get there. 
 
Rayland - Absolutely beautiful!! 

You and me both Bob. I can’t seem to learn thin coats and trust the paint. I keep going over spots Instead of painting a thin coat, let it dry,  then another coat-and I get lousy results. I’ll get there. 
 
Rayland - Absolutely beautiful!! 

It has been a while since I posted my progress on my Medway Longboat.  The world has changed a lot since my last post.
 
I have completed the painting using many coats of thinned Grumbacher Red Cadmium Medium Hue.  I am satisfied with the outcome.  It found that I achieved a better finish using a fatter round brush than the one that I posted a picture of in a previous post.  I believe it laid down a much smoother coat than the smaller brush and the color was a consistent flat, slightly satin finish.
 





I have a few more items to complete and I will be finished with the hull.  Please stay safe.