shipmodel

Work since my last post has centered around fabrication of the forecastle bulkhead.  Below the main deck, this is a watertight bulkhead which is of course invisible on the model.  The section between the main deck and the forecastle that will be visible is pierced by a number of openings;  several windows and two doors.  The bulkhead drawing notes that these are wooden doors.  I have assumed a typical raised panel design shown for deckhouses elsewhere on the model.  The doors provide access to living spaces within, the starboard door to the large owner’s suite, the port to a hallway.  Quarters for deck officers and other “fore end” watch standers are along this hallway.
 
The photos that I have posted show that the openings for the windows are not rectangular.  This is not a mistake.  Careful measuring of the openings on the bulkhead drawing shows that these openings are skewed to follow the camber of the deck.  After considerable head scratching I finally concluded that the window casings which would be rectangular are hidden behind the bulkhead.  Why the shipbuilders chose to add this non-functional but graceful touch is a mystery.  The “glass” in these windows will be represented by a piece of 1/8” Plexiglass that will be sandwiched between the brass bulkhead and the wooden hull.  The Plexiglass, with its protective paper is shown in the first photo.  It is screwed to a block of wood to allow its backside to be machined to allow it to fit tightly against the brass bulkhead piece.
 
The owner’s suite, while not a visible feature of the model is interesting.  Great Lakes ships have long hosted passengers; valued customers, family members of crews, Owner’s and their families, etc. who were anxious to escape the summer heat of midwestern cities by sailing on the cool Great Lakes. These vacations were usually prim and proper but occasionally led to some mischief.  The Nicholson Steamship Company specialized in using retired ore carriers fitted with special decks to transport new cars from Detroit to markets along the Lakes.  In the excellent account of the Company published by the Dossin Museum, a retired Nicholson Captain tells of the time that the Company agreed to host a group of wives of Detroit area Buick dealers unaccompanied by their husbands.  The ladies arrived, unpacked a huge supply of alcoholic beverages, and appeared on deck wearing little or nothing!  It was of course the captain’s job  to lay the law to maintain order.  Even today a “cruise” on one of these lakers is prized as a fund raiser at local charity events.
 
I’m sure that all readers of posts on the forum are aware of the extent that digital photography reveals (some would say exaggerates) defects beyond what can be seen by the naked eye.  This means that the camera can also be a valuable inspection tool. The series of photos shows the progression using this process.
 
First, Parts that will make up the subassembly to be soldered to the previously built forecastle bulwark

To be continued
 
Roger
 

Continued: Fore yard- Studding sail boom irons - Cercle de bout-dehors de vergue
In the meantime, I also made the studding sail boom irons for the fore yard. In this context, I would like to go into a little more detail about the method of making the hinges for the two-piece mast clamps. In the studding sail boom irons for the fore yard, the hinge lugs were still bent. In the meantime, I have refined the method, as can be seen in the following photo collage. I think the pictures speak for themselves:

 
To finish this part, here's a picture with the studding sail boom irons for the fore yard already blackened.

 
Finally, only the studding sail boom irons for the main yard remain to be made. 
More about that soon ...
 

Wow, it's been 6 months since my last post!
 

This next post is sort of a moment of truth. It’s time to grind out these numerous bulkheads down to forms that resemble the actual shapes of the interior framing of the boat. Which is no small task given the volume and number of these bulkheads. Numerous tools were considered for the job. The work in the above picture was done with the drum sander attachment to a Dremel.
 

Here are some hand tools I tried, in an effort to see how safely and efficiently wood could be removed.
 

But it was pretty clear that the job called for more than just a Dremel. It was time to invest in a Foredom rotary tool. The Foredom is essentially the same kind of tool as a Dremel with a flex-shaft, but there are an amazing number of handpieces that can be attached to a Foredom.
 

So I set up the workbench outside, with a hanging stand for the motor and a bullnose bit attached to the handpiece. This tool works very well and generates huge amounts of sawdust.
 

It makes quick work of grinding down the frames, but I had to make a deal with myself to only go so far with this tool. It could very easily do serious damage if I lost control of it.
 
In the bow, there are four frames just aft of the bow filler blocks that I will not grind down.
 

As a reminder, certain of the frames had been previously brought down to their proper molded dimensions, to serve as guides for future fairing of the frames between them. Three of these frames are visible here.
 

As I got closer and closer to proper molded dimensions, I decided to temporarily glue sacrificial blocks that were of the target thickness of the frames in those areas.
 

I could mark these with pencil and watch to see when I was starting to hit their surface in order to get an idea of when I was getting close.
 

Sort of like topography lines on a topo map, the blocks are lined up on the points at which each frame should have a certain molded dimension.

It was a lot of work bringing the frames down to their proper dimensions. Here I am using sandpaper to take off the really coarse marks left behind by the bullnose bit.
 

 
 
 

This was how I handled the forward third of the hull. In the middle third, I kept the bulkheads in place for the moment, because I wasn’t certain of the stability of the hull.
 

In order to stabilize the ground-out bow segment, I moved on to installation of the deck clamps. In this picture, the measuring blocks for the molded dimensions of the frames at the level of the sheerline have been removed. In their place, new blocks have been installed that properly space the deck clamps from the sheerline.
 

Using these blocks, the initial stringer of the deck clamps was installed. (I guess this particular piece would be called the deck clamp, and then additional pieces inboard of it would be the beam shelf.)
 

These spacer blocks were then removed.
 

Here the thickness guide blocks are being removed from the areas where proper thickness has been achieved.

That is a very satisfying look.
 

If you look closer, though, you can see the difference between the frames that were made from sandwiched layers of Castello boxwood and those made with Baltic birch plywood. Also visible are beads of squeezed-out glue from planking installation.
 

Now I moved on to the stern third. The two aftmost bulkheads will stay in place.
 

Once again, the bullnose bit was used initially.
 

And then thickness guides were installed. I really needed a faster way to bring the frames down to proper thickness, without the violence of the bullnose bit.
 

I had seen this device used by other builders on their build logs, and it appeared to be ideal for getting into small areas better than any other attachment. It requires a different handpiece attachment to the Foredom (a right angle attachment) and is a bit of an investment, but the same handpiece can be used for other useful things like an angle grinder.
 

 

After smoothing the frames, the deck clamp was installed.
 

Then on to the midships portion of the hull, with the same technique. Here I am using a hand held thingie to which I could apply adhesive-backed 60 grit sandpaper for fairing of the interior surfaces of the midships frames.
 

These support blocks did their job of supporting the free-floating frames in the unplanked portion of the hull.
 

The midships portions of the deck clamps are being installed.
 

Then the keelson was manufactured in 3 parts. It was carried to just short of the deadwood.
 

The keelson installed.
 

 
 

Deck clamps and beam shelves fully installed.
 

Time to remove the support pieces of wood between the frames.
 

 
 

In addition to the unplanked frames, a portion of the deck in this same area will be omitted to show the deck beams, carlings, and ledges.
 

Primer has been applied to the exposed frames.
 

I applied some paint just to see how it would look, and the appearance indicated that smoothing with filler would be necessary. Doing this helped to make the frames look the same as one another, whether they were sandwiched boxwood or birch plywood.
 

This was after 2-3 coats of brown paint.
 

Since the deck will be partially unplanked, I also applied the paint to the portion of the interior that would be visible through an unplanked portion of decking.
 
This picture gives a preview of some of the deck beams and carlings. This process will be covered in the next post.
 

Given that this balcony doesn’t wrap to the quarters the way the middle balcony does, I thought it would be easier to first attach the corbels.  Fitting these is a little tricky because they toe-in toward the centerline, a little, and they have to match the raking angle of the quarter gallery, fore and aft, and they have to be beveled athwart-ships to match the camber of the balcony platform.

I thought I had done a pretty good job of matching all the angles, however the outside corbels looked a little droopy:

Especially the port side:

The solution was to add a piece of .030 styrene to the tops of the outside corbels and re-fair until the angle of the balcony platform matched that of the quarters.  The hardest part of this was paring away the glue squeeze-out and repairing the paint.
 
The window plate is probably the thing that gave me the most problems.  It is very fragile, and I broke both doors off at different times.  Then, when I CA’d the acetate in-place, I developed a little bit of CA frost on several of the window panes:


I probably could have avoided this problem if I had either used a quick-set CA, or used an accelerant.  I like the medium-set CA glues because they give you a small window to make sure the part is correctly positioned.
 
The frost blooms were not super noticeable, but they were nonetheless disappointing.  I kind of wanted to scrap the piece and start over, but that would also necessitate casting new pilasters in resin, as I did not have another scrap stern plate to pull from.
 
Well, fortunately there’s a simple solution to this problem, and it works like magic.  One approach would be to dissolve the CA with gasoline and re-paint/re-built.  Or, I could simply paint a little petroleum jelly over the blooms and let them sit for 5-10 minutes.  Then, I cover the head of a q-tip with a t-shirt scrap and wipe the PJ off the surface.  An un-covered Q-tip gets into the corners.  This simple trick worked perfectly!
 
The next hurdle of this window plate was that I had pretty radically underestimated how much needed to be trimmed from the window edges so that they would fit within the transom framing.  The only way to trim these, after they had been glued to the plate, was to grind the edges with a diamond-coated bur and sanding sticks.  This was tedious, and I managed to dislodge one pane, but I somehow avoided breaking the plate, so I kept going.
 
The next thing that had to happen was cutting back the center pilaster so that the Arms of France would not intrude into the space for the big tafferal carving:


Again this is difficult to achieve without breaking the window plate because the blue plastic of the kit window pilasters is, for lack of a better word, chewy.  
 
With all of that out of the way, I could finally glue-in the balcony platform, and plank-in the transom bulkhead:



There remain a pair of supporting balusters that I have to fit between the middle balcony rail and the upper balcony platform.


Now, I can paint the transom planking red and figure out whether I’ll be able to salvage the kit railing, or whether I will have to make one from scratch.
 
I’ll get all of that together, and then I’ll go back to the head to complete the headrail installation and head grating.  That may be all I manage to accomplish before the show, but that will be significant progress, since the last time I showed the model.
 
Thank you for looking in!

Thank you to all for your kind words !
 
**************************************
 
Completion of the Boats
 
Sorry for the long hiatus, but again real life with various obligations and diversions got in the way. Also, there has been a lot of correction work and making small details that are not a lot to show, but take time.

 
I adjusted the colour of the seats etc. somewhat and also worked on the rubbing strakes. For this I got myself a couple of markers with acrylic pigment paint (Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens with fine hard tip and soft brush-like tips) in various ‘wood’ colours, which really turned out to be useful for touching up etc.
 
 
Then I turned my attention to the oars and with a bit of trial and error managed to produce relatively reasonable laser-cut parts. Each oar is lacquered together from three layers to simulate the shaping. The round was build up with more varnish and they were finally painted in wood colour and the iron band around the blade simulated with my 0.1 mm marker pen. Not sure, whether they should be black though, as the original specification called for copper bands. There are a lot of unknown details. I know from the sources that the oars should be stowed ready for use in order of the benches, the outer pair for the first bench in the bow and so on. However, I don’t know how they would have been secured for the sea, probably with a rope around the benches. However, laying out the oars like that would have meant that there would have been no space for the men to step into the boat when lowered. So, I arranged them in bunches alongside.
 
I also realised that I forgot the spur for the heel of the mast, so this was added.

 
While arranging for the hoisting chains on the covered boats was easy, here it is a rather flimsy affair and I am not sure that it will work, as they are only glued. Likewise, the stays. The chains were simulated by drilling together two 0.2 mm wires until the pitch was about (without measuring) the length of a ring in the chain. Two of those drilled-together wires were drilled together. The overall appearance is roughly like a twisted chain.
 
Boats need rudders, so I drew one and cut it from Canson-paper in the usual way. When hoisted, the rudders are unshipped and stowed in the boat. However, I don’t really know where and how.

 
Stowage of various items is another uncertain point. There are a lot of items in the surviving inventories, such as an anchor, a small water-cask, a compass and a boat-hook, but I do not know how and where they were stowed. So I will omit them from the already quite crowded looking jolly-boat. The only thing I made were four fenders that are hung inside the boat.
 
 
With this the jolly-boat is complete.
 
In parallel I worked on the second cutter that also will be shown covered. As this is the same process as for the other covered boats, I do not show the process again. Just a couple of shots of the collection of finished boats. 

 
To be continued ....

I have painted and distressed the corbels and the upper window tier.

I found myself swearing early and often, as I repeatedly broke off the doors from the window tier.  There isn’t much plastic connecting them, and until they’re glued into the model, they are exceptionally fragile.

I appreciate the tip, T_C, but presumably my bitumen is making its long journey across the Atlantic like the swarthy pilgrim it is.  As I wait, I continue to construct the stern.  I made up and fitted the next transom header, so that I can glue-in the window tier:

Although the winding out of square continues, it does so marginally and the eye really doesn’t see it:

With the header in-place, I could begin to focus on the design of the most challenging aspect of the decor:  as the French call it - the Couronnement.  It is somewhat hilarious to me that after all of this effort to make the hull wider, the tafferal ends up being only fractionally wider than the stock stern plate:

This development is the result of fashioning the internal gussets that support the aft bulwarks, at an angle that promoted a more realistic tumblehome for the after castle;  the stock kit is a little more vertically slab-sided in its approach to this detail.  Here, you can see the comparison between the tafferal width I thought I’d have (at the start of the project) and where I ended up:
 Despite this not un-satisfactory development, Tanneron and Heller (following suit) chose to represent the backboard (tafferal) as improbably tall for the refit of 1689.  So, in other words, I was going to have to re-fashion this area anyway.
 
Towards that end, much earlier in my modification of the upper bulwarks, I cut away the poop royal sheer-step (5/16”+), only to replace it by 1/2 that height of a more realistic, low, sheer rail that is more reflective of the times:

However, the more significant  shortening of the tafferal comes from lowering the side support for the outer lanterns, so that they are aligned with the sheer rail, as opposed to above it.
 
The first step was to re-draw the goose-neck cornice because I never liked Heller’s interpretation of this detail:

Next, I had to define the field for Apollo and his quadriga, which meant defining the height for the bar of astrological symbols along the top.  On the stock kit, these are a continuation of the side lantern supports which I will re-cycle for this build.  However, to follow the height of those boxes does not leave me with a large enough field for the main carving, below; see the dotted line proposed in the upper right.  So, I decided to cheat that line upward about a 1/16”.  It will necessitate hand-painting these astrologic symbols into these tiny paneled recesses, but that is okay.
 
The really good news is that I will be able to re-shape the swagging vestments of Europe and Asia to fit the new cornice shape:

This is really great because, as it is, I have to re-carve The Americas and Africa because the stock figures are too tall and Africa has the wrong posture.
 
The next task was to see whether my original drawing of Apollo could be reduced enough to reasonably fit my field.  Here is the full-size drawing:

I did a series of reductions, at 50, 60, and 70%.  Seventy percent was close:

As compared to the kit carving:

But, I felt it encroached too much on the upper and lower boundaries of the field.  I settled on 67%:

As compared with Berain’s drawing:

I’m not totally satisfied with the scrolled vollute.  It’s too big. I’ll have to re-work the clouds to conform more neatly with the lower moulding, but I am happy with the scale of Apollo and his horses.
 
It is not as wide as Berain drew it, but this will allow me to better create my gradient sky from light cerulean blue to dark azurite, up top. radiating outward in all directions, from behind Apollo will be fine needles of sun-light  in gold and silver gilt.  Apollo and his horses will be all gold and the clouds will be temperamentally white and grey.  Once I am satisfied with the scroll, I can photocopy the drawing and make a reverse copy, so that the port side can be matched to its mirror for a perfectly symmetrical pattern.
 
My motivation is to have the stern fully framed and perhaps even painted by the time of Joint Clubs on April 30th.  I think this would be a satisfying resolution to everything that came below:

In other news and notes, I have made satisfying in-roads into Dassie’s Architecture Navale.  I now have a pretty solid understanding of the proportional derivation of the principal elements of a ship, although there is still much translating to do.  This essentially amounts to re-typing all relevant passages into Google Translate because the photo capture feature never results in nearly as intelligible a translation as the more tedious path.  My French is improving though, as a result, and full transcriptions are becoming less necessary as I develop a vocabulary of French ship nomenclature.
 
I am simultaneously doing the same translation work on the 1685 Le Have du Grace dimensional survey of what is presumed to be the pre-refit Soleil Royal.  It is extremely helpful that this document (which I downloaded from Gallica) has a numbered drawing that details all of the principal parts of a ship and it’s framing.
 
What is fascinating is that the neither Le Havre du Grace nor Dassie’s prescriptive formulas correspond with what was supposed to be SR’s original length of keel:
 
As built: 142’
Le Havre du Grace: 140”
Dassie:  136’
 
I have been applying Dassie’s formulas to SR’s particulars, as I go, and ultimately I will have a more complete comparison with the Le Havre de Grace document.  This is all ground previously tread by Michel Saunier, and in-fact, I still have a copy of his exhaustive tabulation of all the dimensions of every aspect of the ship.  He emailed this to me years ago.  I still think this is a worthwhile exercise, though, to better understand how he arrived at where he did with his model.
 
Anyway, it keeps me occupied.  Thank you for your interest, your likes and your comments.  More to follow!

Continued: ship's compass
Some time ago I was concerned with the question of what the part at the back of the binnacle of the La Créole is. There is much to be said for a soft iron corrector, the so-called flinders bar. Lighting would also be conceivable based on the shape. The discussion, including in the MSW, does not yield a clear result. After I got to see historical compass housings in the meantime, where the lighting was arranged below the compass rose, I personally tend to think that this could have been a lamp. Also because of the fact that this corvette was a wooden ship, i.e. had little iron to influence the compass, and on the other hand lighting seems to be quite useful and necessary. In the end I can't say for sure.
So I decided to just build this thing and leave it up to the viewer what he thinks it is.
On this occasion I revised the compass and remade the wooden case. The lamp ? or the soft iron corrector? was made from a round brass rod ø 1.5 mm analogous to the photos of the Paris model available to me.
 


Sequel follows …

Hello again to all, and thanks for the likes of my last posting.
 
Now that the containers had all been built and detailed, it was time to mount them to the ship.  The photos show that above the curved support trestles there was a set of second trestles that supported the containers themselves.  Here in this first photo you can see this ribbed piece, one for each set of containers.  Above the second trestle is a retaining board (or at least that is how I interpret the photos).  This first photo was taken before the piracy incident and shows that the retaining boards also had ribs along their length.
 

 
Notice in this photo that was taken at the time of the incident that the retaining boards are smooth and have no ribs.  I have no idea when the change was made, but since I was modeling the diorama as of the time of the event, I used smooth boards.
 

 
The first step was to build the second trestle assemblies that support each set of 12 containers.  Lengths of 5/8” tall I-beams that fit the look and the relative dimensions seen in the photos were cut to a length just slightly longer than a container.  These then had to sit on top of the trestle supports with enough clearance to allow access to the crane guide rail.
 

 
Each of the I-beams lengths was marked in pencil for 7 ribs.  These were individually cut from 0.03” square strip and glued over the pencil marks.  I used a very small dot of white glue on one end of the rib and put each in place.  When the glue dried I went back and fed a drop of plastic cement by capillary action under the rib.  A gentle press welded the rib in place.  I found that white glue alone made a mess as I moved the rib into position, while using only plastic cement did not give me enough open time to fiddle the pieces into place.  A horizontal reinforcing bar was added just above the halfway point and the assembly was painted in a khaki tan.  I have no evidence for this color, but it sets off well from the bronze of the support trestles and the steel of the containers.
 

 
To get the spacing for the lower trestles on deck I first had to put together the blocks of 12 containers that would sit on the second trestles.  These blocks are in turn made up of four ‘triples’.  I found that it was easiest to get consistent results if I assembled three containers onto a flat plate.  I could align them against a square jig and use thin spacers between them as the glue dried.  Two of these ‘triples’ were similarly attached to a larger plate with a bit larger space between them.  Then the final two triples were stacked on top.  Once all the blocks were made up I took three and dry fit them on top of the trestles on the aft deck.
 
I was very pleased to see how well they fit, given the tight tolerances of the model.  The outside aft corner of the trestle had to leave enough space to walk between it and the deck railing.  The result is perhaps a tad narrow, but looks acceptable.  Without moving anything the centerline and outer corners of the lower trestle were marked and drawn on deck.
 

 
The blocks of containers were removed and each pair of second trestle pieces were joined together to form a pallet.  This was done with I-beam cross-pieces that fit inside the flanges of the trestle pieces.
 

 
Shim pieces were added to the cross-pieces to make up for the differing sizes of I-beam and the pallets were painted.  Now a full block of containers could be attached to each pallet.
 

 
In a similar manner the lower trestles were connected with I-beam cross-pieces that were sized so the trestles fit on deck exactly as marked and the pallets of containers fit exactly between the crane rails.  Once everything was triple checked the trestle assemblies could now be permanently attached to the decks.
 

 
The pallets were set in place on the trestles and the retaining boards added.  These were painted a slightly lighter tan color than the pallets, but the difference is hard to see.  Here at the bow the forwardmost block of containers was not supported on a pallet, but just on I-beams.  This matches what is seen in the photos, but I have no idea why they are different.  In this later photo some additional details have been added, including the guy wires for the forward mast, the railing along the side of the deck, and the fairleads and bollards for the mooring lines.
 

 
The last major element to construct was the pair of rolling cranes to load and unload the containers.  These will be covered in the next segment of the build.
 
Till then, stay well.
 
Dan

Thank you, guys, for all of the ideas and input.  Dan, as a glasses-wearer for most of my life, I had that same thought about bending eyeglass arms in sand.
 
I took a look at Heller’s on-line part order form, and that all seems very straight-forward.  I may, yet, try another more gentle heat approach.  I’m leaning toward securing the straight part into a rounded form and submerging in merely very hot, and not boiling water for a period of time.
 
In the meantime, It was necessary to make new corbels for the upper balcony.  The stock is made up from a piece of .0625 and a piece of .020 styrene laminated together:



Below is the kit’s stock corbel for this balcony level:

I ordered my Bitumen of Judea from an Italian vendor, who subsequently emailed to say that he couldn’t ship this small bottle of combustible material.  So, then, I tried to order from a UK vendor.  We’ll see whether that order sticks.
 
I’ve made the window panes and have begun painting the third-gallery window plate.  There’s a whole bunch of stuff that is very nearly ready to go together.
 
Thank you for your interest, the likes, your comments and suggestions.

Hi Ron - 
 
As always, I truly admire your perseverance, commitment, and craftsmanship.  Please keep up the great work.
Your carving of the scroll is beautiful, clean and crisp.  I tried a complicated headpiece on my Oneida, but couldn't carve small enough to do it.  I ended up just using a simple volute scroll.  In any event, since she was built in the small undeveloped hamlet of Sackett's Harbor, and in a hurry to launch before the British, I'm not sure that she would have had anything complex.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 
Dan

Hi Marc - 
 
I remember from my youth that the optometrist always used to bend the plastic eyeglass frames after heating in a tray of hot sand.
Maybe it would be more controllable than boiling water.
It seems to be available for $1.95 for a 1  pound bag here - https://www.homesciencetools.com/product/sand-fine-white-1-lb 
 
Your work is impressive as always.
 
Dan

Hi Ron -
 
Just found and finished reading your log.  You are making great progress and I really like the way you constructed the capstan.   
 
I got interested in Oneida some years ago, and ultimately did a lot of historic research on the First Battle of Sackett's Harbor, which was the first naval battle, and may have been the first of any battles in the War of 1812.  Quite a significant little scrap, which kept the British/Canadians from taking control of the Great Lakes.  Oneida's gallant captain, Commander Melancthon Woolsey, is a true unsung hero. 
 
I also built a 1/96 scale model of her per Chapelle's plans.  It has the raised deck and pivot gun, later removed by Woolsey.  After I found that piece of information construction was halted, and other projects have prevented completion of the masting and rigging.  Here are a few photos for comparison, if they are of any help to you.
 
Be well
 
Dan
 

Hi Marc - 
 
I remember from my youth that the optometrist always used to bend the plastic eyeglass frames after heating in a tray of hot sand.
Maybe it would be more controllable than boiling water.
It seems to be available for $1.95 for a 1  pound bag here - https://www.homesciencetools.com/product/sand-fine-white-1-lb 
 
Your work is impressive as always.
 
Dan

Hi Marc - 
 
I remember from my youth that the optometrist always used to bend the plastic eyeglass frames after heating in a tray of hot sand.
Maybe it would be more controllable than boiling water.
It seems to be available for $1.95 for a 1  pound bag here - https://www.homesciencetools.com/product/sand-fine-white-1-lb 
 
Your work is impressive as always.
 
Dan

Hi Marc - 
 
I remember from my youth that the optometrist always used to bend the plastic eyeglass frames after heating in a tray of hot sand.
Maybe it would be more controllable than boiling water.
It seems to be available for $1.95 for a 1  pound bag here - https://www.homesciencetools.com/product/sand-fine-white-1-lb 
 
Your work is impressive as always.
 
Dan

I’m a little stalled on the bow, while I await delivery of Liquid Bitumen of Judea, for staining of the hawser cables.  And, so, I have returned to the stern.
 
I’ve made up and fitted the upper stern balcony base:


Relative to the balcony below, you can see to some small degree how the starboard side projects slightly further aft.  It is not so visually disruptive that I absolutely must decrease the starboard depth of this upper balcony to compensate.  If I have to, I will do so later, but in the meantime - I am doing a bit of an experiment.
 
I am trying to see whether I can salvage the ornamental facade of the stock upper balcony, while successfully incorporating the round-up of the stern.  The stock part is flat-faced, but I have two of them to pull from.  As it happens, I can see a path toward filling the center section and the step-back panels to either side:


After cutting out the floor and rough-wasting:

After cleaning up the top scarf and wasting the bottom moulding:
 

If I were to extract the outboard panels from my extra balcony, and splice them-in the same way, then I can perfectly fill the span with what would be a relatively labor-intensive thing to make from scratch.
 
The deck camber is right-on.  The difficulty lies in introducing the round-up.  I had a spare middle balcony, so I cut out the floor and tried to induce a heat-bend over an open flame.  The results were not so good:
 







The variable thicknesses of the part lead to unequal heat distribution of the flame, and when the part becomes malleable, it happens very suddenly.  If you’re a second too late, the thin parts become irreversibly distorted.  I don’t think this is the way.
 
I will cut out and join the additional segments I need, and I will join and glue them together.  I may glue the whole thing to thin backing plastic, and then I will try taping the assembly to my camber form, which is almost identical to the round-up pattern.  I will see whether a natural bend can be induced over a period of time.
 
For a moment of Zen, here’s the Tanneron model on her waterline:
 

 
 

And here are the results of my efforts.

Yes, we should allow M. Budriot some leeway in his efforts, but we should also draw a line at some lazy techniques that affect the work of those that he is writing for.   
 
In my case I used his plans for the light frigate Le Mercure when I was building the Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard's flagship.  Although I found his detail drawings to be excellent, both in drafting and historic accuracy, there was a major problem with the hull.  It seemed as though he had simply scaled down the plans for a somewhat larger frigate.  This meant that as drawn the gun deck would have been 4 feet high.  I had to digitally remove one of his lower decks to move everything down to give me enough headroom for the sailors to work the guns.  This then affected the height and spacing of the gunports, which affected the shroud chains, etc.   All in all, it added a good deal of unnecessary work.  All of the details are in my build log if you are interested.
 
I was not overly concerned with this once I had corrected it.  Since no one knows exactly what the QAR looked like, I had a lot of freedom to make reasonable interpretations, unless they contradicted some piece of the actual ship that had been recovered from the sea floor.  However, for those in our community who build to the highest tolerances and the best historic research, I can only advise caution with M. Budriot's work.
 
To use an often quoted truism - "Trust But Verify." 
 
Be well
 
Dan

I finished the remaining yards.

I know, I should resign before I am sacked.
 
No - that is the domain of my lady wife and I don't need the competition.
 
I think at present he has a full time job with Eberhard.
 
Keith, Druxey,  Hakan, Pat, Noel, Phil, Gary - thank you all for your very kind words.
 
I finally tackled attaching the netting. 

I gingerly started to remove the pins and as my wife said the lace didn't disintegrate.
The netting attaches at two points on the cranse iron, at multiple points on the jib stays and then to the brace for the stays.


Once the pins were removed the lace was very flimsy and this added to the difficulty of getting it taught. I started by attaching the fore and aft lines working alternatively on each side. I then started working fore to aft with the port and starboard stay attachments. I removed all the stray ends as i progressed.


It took me the best part of 2 afternoons to get the net looking suitably taught but I was very pleased with the result and in particular the contribution of my better half.




Not much more to do now but I do need to make a start on the display cradle.
 
 

Thank you all - unfortunately I failed - it's not finished - Christmas got in the way.
 
But here is how she stands.
 
I had made the telegraph, wheel, binnacle and instruments some time ago but not fitted them in case of damage.


So I glued them in place.

I then stared thinking about attaching the netting to the already crowded cranse iron. You can see the attachment eye at the 7 o'clock position.

I am nervously approaching the task of removing all the pins from the netting. I think it will all collapse in a tangled heap but the Admiral assures me otherwise.

Merry Christmas.
 
 
 
 
 

I reached another minor milestone over the past weekend.  I finished the forecastle deck and bulwark assembly.  This included adding since the last post, the bulwark supports, the mooring pipes, chain plates, and the round caps  on the curved bulwark ends.  All work is soldered brass.
 
The bulwark supports required a judgement call.  They are clearly shown on several drawings for the main bulwarks, but not for either the poop deck or forecastle deck bulwarks.  I did not include them for the poop deck but here there are other supporting structural elements.  I included them on the forecastle deck for several reasons:
 
There are no other supporting elements for this deck, and the aft ends of the bulwarks are completely unsupported.
 
The forecastle deck is exposed, especially if the boat heads into the wind to ride out a storm.
 
I found several photos of Great Lakes vessels of the same era equipped with these braces.
 
Results posted in the photos below.  Next, the forecastle deck bulkhead.
 
 

Mooring Pipes:  The forecastle deck bulwarks are pierced with four oval holes for mooring cables.  All of these are reinforced with heavy cast inserts.  Two of these handled cables that passed to a steam driven capstan on the deck.  These two openings were also reinforced with large cast hourglass shaped fittings on the inside of the bulwarks.  The main deck also features two of these same fittings.
 
I had been thinking for a long time about the best way to make these:  casting from a carved wooden pattern, sheet brass bent around a former, coppersmithing by flaring a tube, etc.  I finally settled on the following system that worked.
 
Using a large machinist vise that closes accurately I flattened a piece of K&S brass tubing to the correct oval shape with the inside opening equal to that of the fitting.  I found that this tubing flattens easily to the required shape without buckling.  To get a consistent shape I made a simple stop to limit the closure of the vise jaws. The stop was made from from 1/32” and 1/64” craft plywood glued up in a stack.
 
I next drilled a hole in a block of wood.  The diameter of the hole was just large enough to hold the flattened tube vertically.
 
To make the smaller pipes, I wrapped one piece of annealed brass wire around the flattened tube to form an oval and cut it.  I then soldered it in place and cleaned it up with a file.  Done!
 
The larger hourglass shaped pieces were more complicated.  First of all, the ID of the large inside fitting needs to be large enough for the OD of outside fitting, the smaller fitting described above, to nest inside.  K&S tubing is available in telescoping sizes.  Therefore, telescoping sizes each correctly flattened should nest.  I therefore, flattened the next larger size of tubing using a thicker stop calculated to produce the correct ID.
 
Again, I set the flattened tube up vertically in a block of wood, but this time I formed three wire loops.  Beginning with the bottom loop, I soldered each loop to the flattened tube and in the case of the second and third tubes to the next tube in the stack.
 
It was then just a case of shaping the stack with needle files to get the correct shape.  Some refinement will be necessary when the pipes are finally fitted in place
 
Here are the results.
 
Roger
 

 
 

The path to enlightenment and a conjectural SR 1670 begins, in earnest, right here:

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a happy and safe holiday.

Just beautiful, Marc.
Bravo!
 
Dan