Richvee

On April 26th, I attended the 42nd Annual Northeast Joint Clubs Conference and Show in New London, CT where I displayed my model of the Medway Longboat. There were over 50 models on display and and my model received the Jim Roberts Award in the judged competition. I am deeply honored to have received this award.
 
Here is a photo on the new Ships in Scale website with me on the right receiving the award from Tom Ruggiero of the Ship Model Society of New Jersey. Mike Ellison of Seawatch Books is on the left, holding the mic.
 

 
Here is a link to the full article on the Conference:  https://shipsinscale.com/2025/05/04/northeast-model-ship-enthusiasts-gather-for-joint-clubs-conference/

I will begin by wishing you all a very happy New Year.  My celebration begins today as I rejoice the completion of the standing rigging on my Flying Fish.  A number of photos are attached.
 
Now the real fun begins!   I am not expecting any of the remaining modelling. work to be easy 😬.
 
Best wishes to you all for 2025.  Thanks for looking in.

A day of celebration!  Finally finished rigging  the last of the shrouds and ratlines.  Phew!!
 

I printed out a tiny Maryland flag and made the shield for the middle of the transom. Can’t add that stuff until I get the letters on there. 

Some fresh paint in the fashion pieces and transom trim. 



While I wait for the letters to arrive, I guess I’ll turn to finishing the rail at the bow

I also need to drill the howse pipe holes. 

Work has been progressing at a decent pace. (Well, a decent pace for me😁)
I stained the rails, and added quite a few coats of glossy wipe on poly, then I went about securing the rail. 



I then turned to the sternposts, stained and added the wipe on poly. I then cut and fit the stern rail in place. Again staining and finishing prior to attaching it to the model. 


Next up was the trim, and side fashion pieces for the transom. I knew this was going to be challenging, because somewhere along the line, the taper of the wales on the sides, and the edges of the stern were not exactly symmetrical-to say the least. So I knew I’d have to do some fudging to make it look at least passable. First I cut the stern trim from cardstock, transferred it to a 3/32” thick sheet, cut and worked it to fit, trying to make the inner curve mask the fact that the sides were slightly different lengths. It ended up looking like this. 

The fashion pieces were next. These took several attempts, and a lot of fudging from the actual plans to get an acceptable look. 


Some sanding and painting is next up. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about the lettering for the transom. I ordered some dry transfer letters. We’ll see if I can apply them and get a decent result. 
 

I printed out a tiny Maryland flag and made the shield for the middle of the transom. Can’t add that stuff until I get the letters on there. 

Some fresh paint in the fashion pieces and transom trim. 



While I wait for the letters to arrive, I guess I’ll turn to finishing the rail at the bow

I also need to drill the howse pipe holes. 

Thanks for looking in and liking! Finished cutting and sanding the top rails today. Here they are just loosely placed in approximate position.
 



The starboard rail is NOT wider than the Port side. I guess camera angle is causing that.
 
I don't think I can hold off dealing with that pesky transom any longer.  I reordered some new stern knees because I broke one, and didn't set the angle of the two outside ones correctly. Now it's just a matter of getting a smooth arc across the knees and a rail secured over them. I think I'll smooth out the arc of the posts, cut the stern top rail, test fit, but not glue the stern rail in place until the side rails are mounted. 

Thanks for looking in and liking! Finished cutting and sanding the top rails today. Here they are just loosely placed in approximate position.
 



The starboard rail is NOT wider than the Port side. I guess camera angle is causing that.
 
I don't think I can hold off dealing with that pesky transom any longer.  I reordered some new stern knees because I broke one, and didn't set the angle of the two outside ones correctly. Now it's just a matter of getting a smooth arc across the knees and a rail secured over them. I think I'll smooth out the arc of the posts, cut the stern top rail, test fit, but not glue the stern rail in place until the side rails are mounted. 

She looks great. I love the shape of the hull. It looks fast.

With baseball season over there's some more time to modeling again. Next up was adding cleats, eyebolts, calvils and mooring ports to the bulwarks. Painting and installing.
 


Now that the bulwarks were in place, I added the stringers along the inside and outside that will sit under the top rail. I figured this would give me more area for the top rail to adhere to.  
 


 Outboard stringer
 

Once they were installed, I sanded the top to make the stringers and stanchions level to accommodate the top rail. 
 
Outboard stringer  is painted. looks like I may have made those scuppers a bit large. 😔
 

 
Haven't painted the inboard stringer yet, but that will be done before the top rail is installed. 
I started making sections of the top rail. Cutting the right curve to follow the bulwark, a smooth edge, and a uniform width is proving to be quite challenging. I've been cutting the curve of the rail by taping a 1/2" wide, 3/64" thick strip to the workbench. flipping the hull upside down, and tracing along the outboard stringer with a sharp pencil, then cutting that curve about 1/16" past there, giving me the 1/32 overhang and an extra 1/32 to sand the side to round. Then with a divider, measure 7/32" in and scribe a line and cut the inside of the rail, that leaves me the extra 1.32" to smooth and round off the rail. I think I'll stain these pieces before installing. They are to be stained a mahogany color, and pictures of the real ship show they are varnished with a gloss. 
 
Here's the start of the rails
 

And placed to test curve and width. So far, so good..Only took about 5 tries to get these three decent pieces done! You'll notice inboard stringer missing at the top of last picture..That's to accommodate the pin rails, which will adhere to the bulwark and the underside of the top rail. 
 

 

 
 

With baseball season over there's some more time to modeling again. Next up was adding cleats, eyebolts, calvils and mooring ports to the bulwarks. Painting and installing.
 


Now that the bulwarks were in place, I added the stringers along the inside and outside that will sit under the top rail. I figured this would give me more area for the top rail to adhere to.  
 


 Outboard stringer
 

Once they were installed, I sanded the top to make the stringers and stanchions level to accommodate the top rail. 
 
Outboard stringer  is painted. looks like I may have made those scuppers a bit large. 😔
 

 
Haven't painted the inboard stringer yet, but that will be done before the top rail is installed. 
I started making sections of the top rail. Cutting the right curve to follow the bulwark, a smooth edge, and a uniform width is proving to be quite challenging. I've been cutting the curve of the rail by taping a 1/2" wide, 3/64" thick strip to the workbench. flipping the hull upside down, and tracing along the outboard stringer with a sharp pencil, then cutting that curve about 1/16" past there, giving me the 1/32 overhang and an extra 1/32 to sand the side to round. Then with a divider, measure 7/32" in and scribe a line and cut the inside of the rail, that leaves me the extra 1.32" to smooth and round off the rail. I think I'll stain these pieces before installing. They are to be stained a mahogany color, and pictures of the real ship show they are varnished with a gloss. 
 
Here's the start of the rails
 

And placed to test curve and width. So far, so good..Only took about 5 tries to get these three decent pieces done! You'll notice inboard stringer missing at the top of last picture..That's to accommodate the pin rails, which will adhere to the bulwark and the underside of the top rail. 
 

 

 
 

With baseball season over there's some more time to modeling again. Next up was adding cleats, eyebolts, calvils and mooring ports to the bulwarks. Painting and installing.
 


Now that the bulwarks were in place, I added the stringers along the inside and outside that will sit under the top rail. I figured this would give me more area for the top rail to adhere to.  
 


 Outboard stringer
 

Once they were installed, I sanded the top to make the stringers and stanchions level to accommodate the top rail. 
 
Outboard stringer  is painted. looks like I may have made those scuppers a bit large. 😔
 

 
Haven't painted the inboard stringer yet, but that will be done before the top rail is installed. 
I started making sections of the top rail. Cutting the right curve to follow the bulwark, a smooth edge, and a uniform width is proving to be quite challenging. I've been cutting the curve of the rail by taping a 1/2" wide, 3/64" thick strip to the workbench. flipping the hull upside down, and tracing along the outboard stringer with a sharp pencil, then cutting that curve about 1/16" past there, giving me the 1/32 overhang and an extra 1/32 to sand the side to round. Then with a divider, measure 7/32" in and scribe a line and cut the inside of the rail, that leaves me the extra 1.32" to smooth and round off the rail. I think I'll stain these pieces before installing. They are to be stained a mahogany color, and pictures of the real ship show they are varnished with a gloss. 
 
Here's the start of the rails
 

And placed to test curve and width. So far, so good..Only took about 5 tries to get these three decent pieces done! You'll notice inboard stringer missing at the top of last picture..That's to accommodate the pin rails, which will adhere to the bulwark and the underside of the top rail. 
 

 

 
 

Have now finished the lower yard on the mizzen mast.  It turned out to be an exercise in frustration. 
 
The choice of using basswood in the kit for the yards was a bad one IMHO.  The narrower yards become quite fragile especially near their ends, once the various holes are drilled.  My mizzen lower yard broke about 1/3" from one end, where I had drilled 2 perpendicular holes for 4 eyebolts. 
 
I twice tried gluing the broken end back on using a combination of super glue and yellow wood glue, but it kept breaking off.  The third time I went to epoxy glue and this seems to have worked.
 

Have completed the lower yards on the forecast and mainmast, and temporarily mounted them on the model. Its finally starting to look like a tall ship.
 
Correction:  The eyebolts I inserted at the ends of the lower fore and main masts are wring and have been removed.  They are meant to go on the ends of the topsail yards only, to secure the Flemish horse footropes  see fig. 88 in kit's manual).   Foot ropes not added yet. 

Don't drive from Mystic to Boston without a stop in New Bedford. The Whaling museum is also a treat. 

Made some interesting progress over the last 2 days.  One of my biggest concerns with this model was having to construct the required iron fittings on the masts, in particular the lower yard truss and the stunsail irons.  I don't have a lot of experience working with brass or soldering very small parts.  Happily I can report that these parts were much easier to build than what I expected.  
 
The attached photos show the results so far.  I basically constructed everything using brass strips, brass rod and brass sheet, more or less following the drawings in the kit.  I can provide more detail if wanted. 
 
 

I wanted to show better quality images of the ratlines than the phone images I posted 2 days ago.   Shot with a Nikon D850 on a tripod. The second image was focus stacked from about 30 images to show everything in sharp focus.
 

 

Made good progress over the last 3 days and completed all the lower ratlines on the port side.  One of the best things I found with the sewing method was how easy it can be used to fix (replace) individual rungs that don't quite look right.  
 
I have noticed wide angle distortion in some of my photos which gives the appearance of the masts and mast tops looking out of alignment with each other.  Please ignore.

Ratlines look great. Glad you liked the sewing method. It ends up with a clean look, and so easy to adjust before gluing and cutting. I came across this technique back when I was a kid building the 1/8" scale Model Shipways Benjamin W Latham in the instruction book.  Eric Ronnberg Jr  knows a thing or two about modeling. 🙂

Have now completed the ratlines on lower main and mizzen masts on the starboard side.  Really like the sewing method. 

Thanks George and ClipperFan.   I have just completed the ratlines on the lower forecast stbd. side.   I decided to not worry about putting ratlines or not behind the futtock shrouds.  The shrouds are all so close together there I don't think you would ever see them if they had been mounted.
 
The finished assembly with 2 of the intermediate stages are shown in the 3 attached photos.  I printed a pattern with 10.5 line spacing units in Excel and clamped different sized pieces to the back of the shrouds.  Using the pattern it was easy to sew my way through the shrouds, maintaining a straight line.  As described in George's blog (pg. 15 I think), every 6th ratline extended across all 6 shrouds, the others only crossed shrouds 2-6 (counting from fore to aft).
 
I found it best to sew all the threads in place and not  adjusting them for tightness until all we're in place.  I used dilute white glue with a drop of detergent to fix all the ratlines in place.  I then cut off the excess thread at the ends of each ratline.
 
For the ratlines on the metal futtock shrouds I simple glued the thread across the shrouds.  When dried in place I tied a small knot at each end then cut off the excess thread.

 
 

@Jared
You're welcome. Honestly, I find the idea of hanging out upside down on them futtocks 40 feet in the air an intimidating thought. I'd probably squeeze my a-- into the shrouds through the lubber's hole until I got my sea legs.

Glad I could help. 

Use a needle. Obviously  thinner than the shrouds, “sew” the ratlines through the shroud. You can cut each rung long, adjust the curve and tension, then when satisfied dab some diluted white glue to hold the ratline to the shroud. Let it dry, shave off the excess on the outsides of the shrouds. 

Ten months later, Finally some progress. I didn't realize I never added photos of the stained and poly coated deck. 
I have also completed the upper bulwark sections. I assembled them off the model. I will paint them and then instal them after adding some inboard details like cleats, rings, etc. The stringers are continuous pieces over the gunport openings, so I'll add them once the bulwarks are installed. Here's a few shots of the bulwarks. Nothing installed ..Just placed for a quick picture or two. Inboard details and paint next up. 
 


Hopefully it will be less than ten months before the next update!