shipmodel

Hi again, and thanks for the likes and compliments.  
 
It is going well, I think.  I am trying to create the look of a working ship, rather than one fresh off the building ways.  
 
Now that the foredeck is installed, I turned to the waist.  With the cannon rigged out they can be covered by the gangways.  But first I decided to put in the ropes that go through the hull and belay below the gangways.  It would have been much harder to do them with the gangways in place.  These are the main course tack that goes through the chesstree, and the two sheets that go through the sheaves in the hull.
 
These lines will be some of the larger running rigging ropes and, because of their locations, some of the more visually prominent ones.  They have to be good quality and look like miniature rope.  I could have laid them up on my ropewalk, but I have a few spools of treasured Cuttyhunk Irish linen line (which is no longer available for any price).   The Zane Grey and Natural colors are too white, but a quick run through Minwax wood stain in Ipswitch Pine color makes them look the right shade.
 
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Even examined closely this gives them the look of miniature rope.
 
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I fed the line through the hull openings.  The larger line (C-21) was used for the tacks which belayed to cleats, while the smaller one (C-12) was for the sheets.which belayed to the staghorn kevil.
 
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Although each line is tied off properly, they were all further secured with dilute white glue.  When dry the ends were nipped off and hidden by separate rope coils.  I make these on a simple jig.  A block of soft wood - basswood in this case, but it could be balsa - has several holes drilled in the top face and one or two holes in the front face in the same line.  Removable brass pegs fit into the holes and everything is given several coats of clear finish to keep glue from sticking to it.  Then matching lines are wrapped around the pegs with the ends friction fit into notches in the jig.
 
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As I wrap I randomly make larger and smaller loops and even the occasional figure eight.  When I have the look that I want, the coils are painted with dilute white glue.  Actually, they are first wet down with water, which helps the dilute glue to penetrate the line rather than having it sit on the surface.  When the glue is dry the top peg is removed and the coil peeled up from the jig and trimmed.  Using dilute glue means that the coils are flexible while still holding their shape.
 
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The coils are hung over the belaying points, teased into position where they look like they are hanging with the force of gravity, and secured with white glue.
 
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In the photos you can see the supporting knees for the gangways.  These were made as before by cutting and shaping a stick and then parting off individual ones.  After locating and installing the forward and aft ones, the gangways were glued in, then the middle two knees for each gangway were installed.  In the photo you can see the ropes that feed through the hull.  I left what I hope is more than enough to reach to the sails, but we will see when the rigging is installed.
 
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The final fittings in the waist were the four ladders from the gun deck up to the gangways.  They were wider at the base than at the top, and were built up as has been detailed before as a stack, then parted off.
 
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After individual ladders were parted off they were cleaned up, stained and installed.
 
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Now that the waist was complete, I turned to the quarterdeck.  The railing that was built up last time was installed, then the whipstaff.  For those not familiar, this is an obsolete steering device that predated the wheel.  It consisted of a rotating fitting called a rowel set into the deck through which a staff passed before it hooked into the end of the tiller arm.  Moving the staff port or starboard turned the rudder.  It was not very efficient, but then most steering was done with the sails during this time.
 
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A hole was drilled in the deck and a piece of pear cut and sanded to fit.  The fore/aft slot for the rowel was carved into the pear piece, as were indentations for the staff clearance athwartships.  The rowel was turned from maple, and the hole drilled to allow the staff to have a sliding fit.  I set the staff at an offset angle and glued it in place.
 
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You can also see the ladders from the quarterdeck to the poop deck on the roof of the captain's cabin.  These were made up as before, just a little taller than the gangway ladders.  Similarly, the post with sheaves for the lateen halyard was made like the fore and mainyard halyard fittings.  Along the bulwarks are staghorns and pinrails as drawn by Budriot.  I am not completely sold on the pinrails, which do not appear anywhere else on the ship, but they are certainly needed for belaying points.
 
The four 4-pounder cannon were rigged and installed like the 6-pounders on the gun deck.
 
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 Now the deck fittings that were made up almost a year ago could be installed.  These were the companionway house, the officers' bench in front of it, and the two small binnacles.
 
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The ship is now ready for rigging, which will start next month.
 
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Until then, happy Thanksgiving to all and to your families.
 
Dan
 
 
 
 

HI all - 
 
After finishing up some other projects and some chores on the "honey-do" list, I am back building the QAR.   Here is my progress.
 
I realized that I had not planned or installed any scuppers from the gun deck to the outside of the hull.  Using a set of outside calipers I located and drilled five on each side of the hull.  I lined them with lead from a wine bottle wrapped around a toothpick, glued, and slid into place.  Once the glue was dry the excess was trimmed with a sharp blade.  They fit well when they were located under the gunports, though this meant that the upper ends in the waterways at the edges of the deck were all hidden by the guns.  Here are two on the port side of the hull.
 
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Next I turned to the guns.  First were the stowed guns on the starboard side.  I played around with the test gun station that I made up a while ago to see how it might have been done.  I figured that the crew would have used the breaching rope and the train tackles which were already available.  I found that the breaching rope could be tightened up through the rings in the bulwark, which would have secured the gun pretty well.  Then the train tackles could run from the eyebolts on the carriage to the hooks in the bulwark.  Once they were tightened the remaining length of running line could be frapped (overwrapped) between the blocks.  I found that two layers perfectly used up the free line.  This seems a workable solution, but there certainly can be others.
 
Note that I have installed a lead vent cover secured with light line, which would have been used to keep water from entering and rusting the vent hole.  
 
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Here is the line of four stowed guns in the waist. The guns are secured with a metal pin through the rear axle and into the deck, which is hidden between the truck and the carriage. There are two others, one forward under the foredeck and one aft under the quarterdeck, which can only be seen at a low angle.  Those that cannot be seen were not installed.  
 
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On the port side the guns are run out, so all of them can be seen to some extent.  The three aftmost and the one in the bow were simplified.  The trucks were replaced with cleats for added glue surface and security, while the capsquares and rigging were not installed.  These were pinned in place as well.
 
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The visible guns were glued to the deck and a metal pin was drilled at an angle through the rear axle and into the deck.  The breaching rope was rigged through the rings in the bulwark and secured to itself with two round seizings.  The rope was softened with water and shaped to 'droop' onto the deck.  Once it was approximately positioned it was painted with dilute pH neutral white glue and teased into final position as the glue dried.  This also secured it to the deck.  The train tackle was rigged from the carriage eyebolts to the bulwark hooks with the running line coiled on deck.  I did not flemish the coil since I do not think that a pirate ship would be that 'shipshape' or fastidious.
 
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As long as I was rigging the guns, I experimented with loading procedures.  I was surprised to see that when the gun was fully run in for loading the back of the carriage covered up the deck ring behind it.  I double checked the length of French six-pounder cannon and the breadth of the deck and they were correct, so it is likely that this was what happened.  The only way I could make the system work was to hook the run-in tackle to the ring on the opposite side of the deck.   
 
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With the copper clips standing in for the gun crew this seems to be a workable solution.  But again, this is speculation and may not be correct.
 
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The rest of the port broadside was installed and rigged.
 
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There are no pumps in Budriot's plans, but they do appear in a photograph of Berti's model of Le Mercure.  His are round, which I did not like, so I made mine hexagonal.  This was done in a straightforward way.  A length of half inch maple dowel was cut and the end marked with a six pointed star.  The lines were extended down the dowel then the wood was carved away between the lines.  The pump bodies were cut to length and the sides adjusted by hand sanding.
 
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The well at the top was drilled, milled and darkened.  Blackened brass reinforcing rings were installed, as was a blackened brass outlet near the base of the pump.  The yoke for the handle was fashioned, installed and secured with three metal pins.  The handle was shaped and given a pivoting lifting bar at the business end that dropped into the well.  The handle was mounted on a metal axle pin through the yoke and the finished pump was given a coat of clear finish.
 
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The completed pumps were installed adjacent to the main mast location.  Their bases had to be angled slightly to match the round-up of the deck, then secured with metal pins into the deck.  The handles are angled outward where they can be accessed easily by the crew without getting in the way of the rigging to come (at least I hope that there will be no problems).  
 
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Using Pirate Pete for comparison, I am happy with the size, scale and look of the pumps.
 
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More soon.  Be well.
 
Dan
 
 
 
 

Hello to all who are following this build -
 
It has been a while since my last posting.  Summertime had a lot to do with it, but I also took some time away to work on a short-term and time critical project.  So here is a little diversion from this build.  It may merit a separate file, but as you will see later on, it is incomplete.
 
I was asked to restore a  presentation model of a modern container ship.  The CMA-CGM Vivaldi was built by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. in their Makpo Shipyard in South Korea.   Launched in December, 2004 she was 334 meters LOA with a breadth of 42.3 m (just under 1100 ft LOA, 140 ft breadth).  Its carrying capacity was not listed on the dimensions plaque on the model, but it is huge.  Here she is in a photo from the company website of CMA-CMG Shipping, which owns and operates her as part of one of the world’s largest fleets of container ships.
 
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The model was likely built in the same shipyard as a gift to thank CMA-CGM for the contract and was presented at the time of launch.  It is built to the small scale of 1:200, but the model is still 5 ½ feet long.  Given that the price for the ship was in the millions of dollars, it is not surprising that a good deal of care went into the construction of this presentation model. 
 
It was probably kept in one of their offices, perhaps in their headquarters in Marseille, for the last decade but then was presented in turn to a financing company in Stamford, Connecticut.  It was during the delivery of the model that things went bad.
 
Here is the crate that it came in.  You can see that although there is no obvious damage to the box itself, one of the bottom cleats is missing. 
 
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I was called in when the box was opened and it was found that one of the glass panels of the case was cracked and there was some damage to the model. My first overall impression was that this was not going to be a hard job.  Some of the containers had been detached from their mountings and were tipped over, but they were still on deck and in a line.  The superstructure was in place and there was no evident damage to the hull.
 
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Closer examination revealed that the devil had been playing in the details.  A large number of small pieces were lying on the blue felt base and some had even become trapped in the channel that the glass case sat in.  Fortunately many of them, including some quite complex assemblies, appeared undamaged like the one in the center of the photo.
 
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A repair proposal was discussed, a fee agreed to, and work began with the recovery and conservation of any detached parts.  Once the wrapping of clear plastic was removed the impact point could be seen.  It was clear that there had been one sharp blow which had chipped and cracked the glass panel, but without separating it from the rest of the case. 
 
Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of impact that cyano glue does not like.  With the help of JerseyCityFrankie the glass cover was removed and all of the loose parts were carefully collected.  The detached container units were numbered from the bow to the stern on sticky notes and set aside.  The grey railing units could not be immediately identified, but they were put into one container for later study.  All of the smaller parts such as the lifeboats, ladders, white railings, and various unknown pieces were put in another.
 
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Now the full extent of the damage could be seen and assessed.  Along the edges of the hull most of the railings and stanchions were broken off, leaving unpainted spots showing where they had been attached.  At the stern there was additional damage where the railings and ladders had been crushed and even some pieces of the rigid styrene components had been broken.  When everything that was loose had been removed the deck was almost nude other than two container units at the bow that had somehow managed to remain in place.  This was packed up in bubble wrap and taken back to the studio in Brooklyn, NY.
 
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The superstructure which had initially appeared to be generally sound was found to have suffered the most damage.  In additional to losing both lifeboats, most of the railing on the aft face was gone, as were numerous small parts for the lifeboat cranes.  All of the various radars and antennas on the topmost level were missing.  Most significantly, the starboard bridge wing was broken off almost completely. 
 
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Although the proper locations of many of the pieces could be deduced from what they were, there were a great deal more that could have gone anywhere.  Fortunately the company had a second presentation model of the same ship, the Vivaldi.  A series of photographs were taken of the other model to guide the restoration.
 
Here is the bow, showing the white lookout mast which had been detached on the damaged model.  The ladder and safety cage had been separated and crushed, but now I could see how they had to be repaired.
 
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Those gray railing units turned out to be catwalks that fit between the container units.  They sat on top of U-shaped pieces that supported the containers.  Photoetched ladders gave access to upper catwalks which were bordered by photoetched brass railings.  3-bar railings edged the deck all along the sides of the ship.
 
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The superstructure had 8 deck levels with a full array of electronic equipment on top.
 
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This area was going to be the most challenging, with radars and antenna that were all made up of very small parts that were quite similar to each other.  The photographs that I was sent were not completely helpful in specifying what went where.  Fortunately, using my Photoshop program I could take the image provided and enlarge it, remove the color, and play with the brightness and contrast until I could see almost all of the details.
 
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Now that I had the undamaged model as a guide I could start the actual repairs.  The first thing was to reassemble all of the catwalks.  Some were in pretty good shape, but others had been mauled, with most of the parts separated, some of the plastic parts broken off, and the photoetched brass rails badly bent.  Here is one of the catwalks with all its pieces and a second one after restoration.  There were 21 of these in all, which took up about half of the total restoration time.
 
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Now for the incomplete part -
 
The next several weeks were spent doing the restoration.  I took construction photos as I went, as usual, but had not gotten around to downloading them. [i know you can see the problem coming . . . ]  Soon after I took the last photograph, my daughter and her two boys came over.  One is the newborn, the other 2 years old.  While I was doting on the young one, the other found the camera.  He likes to push buttons.  Enough said. 
 
Let me describe what I did, and I hope you can follow along using photos of the completed repair.
 
All of the least damaged catwalks were put back together.  Since there were small variations in how the bases had broken off of the hull I could locate about two thirds in their original positions, fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle.  They were numbered and set aside.  One by one the rest were repaired until there were only two left, which were severely bent, with missing parts.  Some replacement parts were fabricated from bent wire, and others from brass shim.  Missing ladders were replaced with similar ones from the spares box.
 
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Starting at the bow and working aft the containers and catwalks were glued to the cleaned up hull.  The containers sit on the corners of the catwalk bases and on a square stanchion between the forward and aft bases located on both edges of the deck.  This gives six attachment points for the double wide containers and four each for the single wide ones.  These also broke off irregularly.  Although each container unit was numbered when it was removed, several ones were out of order, and I had not recorded the orientation of the unit.  Each one was test fit to the proposed location and the irregularities let me confirm the original locations.
 
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The superstructure was the biggest challenge.  I first relocated the lifeboats and repaired their cranes.  Railings which were bent were carefully bent back and glued.  Some that had been detached were too badly bent to repair.  I had 3-bar railing of the right size in my spares box, but the rails were a bit thinner than those on the model.  I used them to replace the railings that would not be seen easily between the aft face of the superstructure and the container unit behind it.  Then I cannibalized the model railings from that area to replace railings in more obvious locations.
 
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The photos that I miss most are those of the repair of the starboard bridge wing.  Here the impact had broken the brittle styrene that made up the bridge deck and the angled and pierced supports on the fore and aft faces.  The detached pieces had kicked around and were now mostly unusable shards.  I first carefully cut the damaged section away in a straight line across the deck with a miniature keyhole saw.  A piece of similarly thick styrene was cut to fit and glued in and the joint sanded smooth.  Artists acrylic paints were mixed to match the green of the deck  The shape of the aft diagonal support piece was traced from the existing one on the port side and cut out, fitted and finished. It was spray painted gloss white before being installed.  The end cap was similarly fitted.  All joints were cleaned up and touch-up painted.
 
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Using the photographs of the undamaged model the fittings and fixtures on the upper electronics decks on top of the wheelhouse were located.  Antennas, radars, and lightning rods were all glued in with cyano.  Nothing special here, just a delicate touch and perseverence.
 
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Final small detail parts were installed and all of the spots where paint was chipped or missing were touched up and the model was carefully examined to find bent railings and other defects.  I know that I got almost all of them, but I also know that a few got bye, but I'm not telling where. 
 
A new glass case was ordered and delivered from a local custom glass shop.  So here is the completed model ready for delivery to the customer.  It was driven back to Stamford, CT, with a nervous moment for every pothole and road repair that I couldn't avoid.  It survived completely intact and was installed in the office to gratifying compliments from the customer.
 
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Hope you enjoyed the divertimento.  Getting back to the QAR now.  A new build log post soon.
 
Be well
 
Dan
 
 
 

Hi again, and best wishes for a happy Friday the 13th –
 
Thanks for the compliments, likes, and wishes for my new grandson.  Caleb and his mother are both doing well and send their thanks as well.
 
Several smaller items were completed in this segment.  The first was the forward bulkhead for the captain’s cabin.  There are no plans or drawings of it in either of the plans that I am using, so I designed it to be functional, using some of the same details as on the stern and quarter badges. 
 

 
There is a chair rail molding with wainscoting below.  This was not scribed but laid up from individual planks.  The door is of a typical 17th Century style, with H-L hinges and decorative cross banding.  The windows are flanked by fluted columns which were built up as before.  To each side there will be a ladder to the poop deck, which have not yet been constructed.  The bulkhead is still removable at this stage, and may have to be moved back a little to give me room to install the whipstaff which will go between the cabin and the mizzen mast.
 
I have not decided whether to paint the wainscoting blue and add some decorative details.  What does the group think?
 
The cabin was also dressed up by closing in the aftmost gunport with a decorative shutter.  The central circle was made by stiffening a 1/8” birch dowel with a drop of thin cyano on its cut end.  When dry the center of the dowel was drilled out to a depth of about ¼” and then the circles were parted off on the table saw.
 

 
Next I turned to the first of the rigging fixtures – the staghorns.  Here is a section of my plans for the inner bulwarks, which was made by using PhotoShop to combine the plans from the Advice Prize with details from Le Mercure.  You can see three of the four staghorns that will be mounted on each side.
 

 
Here is an enlargement of the plans for the staghorns.  Note in the side view the extreme angles that have to be used to match the 13 degree tumblehome of the bulwarks.
 

 
I started by carving a length of pear to the shape of the horns of the fitting.  The piece was just under 3 inches long, which gave me extra material for the next model as well.  Here you can see three horns that have been parted off.  They are a little heavy, but were later reduced with a small sanding drum.
 

 
The shelf that supports the horns was built up in two parts.  In the larger, back piece, two notches were nibbled out for the horns before being closed in by the front piece.  In the insert enlargement you can see how the curve of the table saw blade gave me an angle to the back of the notch that is needed to allow the horns to angle to match the tumblehome.
 

 
With the horns inserted in the shelf the bottom piece had two notches hollowed out in its back face for the lower ends of the horns.
 

 
The lower piece was flipped over and the horns glued into the notches.  The lower piece was then sanded to its clamshell shape and the upper ends of the horns were refined to angle up and out.  You can see the differences from the left fitting to the completed one on the right.
 

 
Here you can see a finished staghorn sitting on an angled scrap block to check that the shelf will be horizontal when mounted on the bulwark.
 

 
Here is the complete set of eight staghorns for the first model.
 

 
And here is the first one mounted in the waist ready for the lines that run through the hull sheaves for the main and spritsail sheets.
 

 
Next I turned to the gunport lids for the open gunports on the port side of the ship.  I have detailed their construction before in the section on the test gun station.  This one is for the forwardmost port, which is why the planking runs at an angle to match the hull planking.  The hinge straps are blackened brass strip secured with three iron pins.  The ends of the strips were ground to about half their width so they could fit into mounting holes in the hull.
 

 
The strips were all made to a uniform size in a simple jig.  A brass strip was trapped between two guides and the locations of the holes for the mounting pins was marked off.  Once the holes were drilled the strip was clipped to length at the edge of the jig.  I found that without pre-drilling these holes it was nearly impossible for me to drill them cleanly once the hinge strap was mounted on the gunport lid.
 

 
Each lid was marked for its proper location and the mounting holes were drilled just above the open gunport.  With the lids slid into the holes the brass could be gently bent so every lid was at the same angle.  This will be a significant advantage once they are permanently mounted, as they will be much less prone to snapping off when I bump into them (which I am sure that I will).  Here they are towards the bow - - -
 

 
And the stern.
 

 
To check them, I set the guns in place.  Here is what they look like in the waist as seen from outboard - - -
 

 
And along the length of the ship.
 

 
Finally, the entire broadside. 
 

 
I was happy with the look of the model, so the guns and gunport lids were removed to safe storage until the interior deck fittings are built and mounted.
 
The first of these was the riding bitts for the anchor cable.  As you can see from the plans it incorporates the 5-sheave post for the rigging to the ramshead block that raises and lowers the foreyard.
 

 
Construction was straightforward, with each piece cut and shaped, then notched and pinned in place.  The sheaves in the post are non-working, and made by drilling 5 pairs of holes through the post with a 0.040” drill in a miniature drill press.  The bitt was then put into a Dremel and the sheave slot between the holes was carved out.  Care has to be taken to allow for the right-hand torque of the bitt, but a little practice yields good results.
 

 
The next rigging fitting that I turned to were the multiple cleat ‘logs’ that sit just aft of the fore and main masts.  These were discussed earlier in the build log as well. 
 
Construction here was straightforward as well.  Once the dimensions were decided, two pieces of cherry were cut and the ends finished with slopes.  The underside of each was sanded to match the camber of the deck.  Ten slots were cut in the underside for the lines to run through.  It is quite probably that these slots would have been radiused on each side of the log so the line would run smoothly under the fixture.  The upper corners of the log were eased as well, as recommended by JerseyCityFrankie.  Matching photoetched brass cleats were obtained from Bluejacket, blackened and mounted. 
 

 
Here is the one on the quarterdeck aft of the main mast.  It looks good as is, although I clearly have to clean the deck which is getting very dusty.
 

 
Finally, to check that things are headed in the right direction, and to give my spirits a needed lift, I mounted the decks and the lower masts.  Hull construction and detailing have taken much, much longer than anticipated, but I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.  I just hope that it is not the oncoming train known as “RIGGING”.
 

 
Be well
 
Dan
 
 
 

Log 24 -  Head Structures
 
Hi again.  It has been a bit longer since the last segment than I hoped, in part because our daughter gave birth to her second child and our eighth grandchild.  Everyone is doing fine and it reminds me that there is more to life than ship modeling.  Sacrilege, I know, but it’s hard to deny.
 
Time to concentrate on the head structures, the rails, supports, and small deck that fit around and under the base of the bowsprit.  Here is how they look in the plans.
 

 
I started with the bare stem piece cut off at the approximate height to mount the figurehead.  It had been left somewhat rough to this point before the rails were fitted.   
 

 
The stem was trimmed flat and the inside curve was sanded smooth.  A strip of hardwood was cut and fitted to the inside curve which extended up to the height of the lion figurehead’s mane.  It will support the forward ends of the two upper rails. The edge of the mane was penciled in on the wood for reference so the rails don’t interfere with the figurehead.
 

 
The top rail was roughly shaped to fit from the cathead to the stem in a pleasing curve that matches the plans, but it was not finished at this point.  In the photo you can see a piece of translucent tape which has been laid on the stem so the ‘S’ shape of the lower rail could be drawn on it.  I call this rail the ‘hawse rail’ because the hawse piece mounts just above it and I don’t know its proper name.
 

 
The hawse rail is made up of two pieces.  Here a paper pattern is being developed to establish the mating faces of the lower section against the wale and the stem.
 

 
The lower piece was cut using that paper pattern while the upper section was cut using the tape pattern with the shape drawn on.  They were both left a bit oversize to allow for a good deal of shaping and fitting.  Here they are roughly set in place.
 

 
The lower piece was ground and sanded till the mating face was flush with the wale and the piece sat at the proper upwards angle to meet the descending angle of the upper piece.  The outer face of the lower piece was left large till the upper piece was fitted.
 

 
Here you can see the hawse rail fitted, sanded and given its first coat of finish.  The upper rail has now been shaped to fit.  Simple carved decorations give the upper rail some interest.  A better photo is coming later.
 

 
With these two rails in place the middle rail was fitted, shaped and installed.  The figurehead was repeatedly put on to test the fit of the rails then removed for safety and to provide clearance to work on the rails.
 

 
The bottom rail was built up in two pieces like the hawse rail.  It is just a lot shorter as it extends only to the foot of the lion.  Here are all the rails as fitted and finished.
 

 
Now the hawse piece was cut and fitted to the top of the hawse rail.  Two holes were drilled for the anchor cables to be installed into when the time comes.  Here they are with the figurehead in place.  The carvings on the top rail can be seen clearly in the photo.  They were done with a sharp-cornered bit in the Dremel, then smoothed and refined with a curved file called a riffler.  The varying shine on some of the parts will be toned down and corrected in the final finishing coats.
 

 
As I was roughly cutting out the rail pieces, I made a second set for the port side.  All of the techniques were the same.  Here are the port side rails, except the bottom one.  I was fortunate that prior planning made it relatively easy to get the two sides symmetrical.
 

 
And here is a detail photo of the rails and the carvings on the port side.
 

 
Three support brackets were fashioned and installed between the upper rails.  Only the middle one had to have a bent shape to lie against the rails and sit next to the hawse pieces.  Here they are installed but not finished.
 

 
And here they are finished in two views.  The end points of all the rails and the intersections with the support brackets were all subsequently reinforced with metal pins and glue.
 
 

 

 
Next the deck and grating under the bowsprit were built.  A paper pattern was used to define the total size and shape of the piece so it sat level and firmly on the rail support brackets.  It was built up from two triangular pieces of grating, with solid pieces fit around it and against the curve of the hull.
 

 
You can see in this view how a hole was left along the centerline for the gammoning which will hold down the bowsprit.
 

 
Two seats of ease were fashioned from solid birch pieces with cherry tops.  The bowsprit has been temporarily installed to check the fit.  A wooden ring, like a mast coat, will dress up the entry into the hull when it is permanently installed.  You can see a small mark on top to locate the central gammon cleat later.
 

 
So here is the completed head structure.  There will be a wire railing installed for the safety of the crew while using the heads, but that will wait until the gammoning is installed so it does not interfere with my stubby fingers as I work.
 

 
Next on the schedule – the captain’s cabin, the open gunport lids, and the channels and deadeyes.
 
Hopefully it will not be so long till the next report.
 
Be well
 
Dan
 
 
 

Hello again –
 
I have just completed the construction of the stern, which was complicated enough to merit its own log entry.
 
The design is a bit of an exercise in imagination, without any hard facts to go on.  The Advice Prize draught has no information at all; the stern outline is shown as part of the station lines plan, but without any decorations or indications of the shape of the counter, transom or even the top of the taffrail.  Budriot’s drawing of the stern of Le Mercure is excessively florid, with lots of carvings, an intricate nameplate, and even flaming finnials at the upper corners of the taffrail.
 

 
Not only is this much too ornate for the QAR (and for Le Mercure, which was a merchant ship), but the heights of the windows do not match the deck heights taken from the Admiralty draught.
 
After playing around in Photoshop for a while a simplified layout was designed with many of the same elements that went into the quarter badges.  This was passed before my masters and approved.
 

 
The first section worked on was the lower transom just above the counter.  The wide moldings were set matching the locations of the similar ones on the sides of the hull and the field between them was painted blue.  The decorative boxes were taken from the plans and cut from cherry veneer.  Wood glue was sparingly applied and they were taped down until solidly attached.
 
The light colored ‘flowers’ were carved from 1mm boxwood.  They do not appear to be fleur-de-lis, but I could not make out any further details in Budriot’s drawing.
 

 
Above the top molding were the windows in the captain’s cabin.  There is no false light in the center because the rudder head ends in the gun deck below the cabin.  The field was painted grey and the moldings, fluted columns, and capitals were cut and applied using the same techniques as for those on the quarter badges. 
 
There are six columns framing five windows.  I did the two outermost ones first because they have the biggest angle to vertical.  Then the remaining area was divided into five equal spaces and the central two columns were mounted vertically.  The last two were fit by trial and error to sit halfway between the inner and outer columns.  They were cut and recut several times until I was happy with the look of the windows that were formed.  As before, the windows were glazed with white glue that was painted on.  While it was tacky the mullions were cut from birch and laid in.
 

 
At the top of the taffrail you can see the added piece of basswood that was cut and fitted to give it the double recurved shape from the plans.  The joint was filled and sanded and the field was painted blue
 
 

 
Moldings were pieced together above the windows and along the sides.  At the top, sections of molding were steam bent to the curves and attached.  Ribbons of cherry veneer were shaped to the curves of the moldings and edged with a thin molding strip.  In the center a pair of volutes (similar to fiddleheads) were carved and applied.
 

 
The volutes are a little intricate, but I got a lot of help from the illustrations in “Carving Figureheads & Other Nautical Designs” by Alan & Gill Bridgewater.  If you can picture a snail shell seen from the side, that’s what they look like.
 

 
The stern was now complete, but the upper area cried out for some sort of contrasting decoration.
 

 
I could have made simple circles, like those on the Mercure drawing, but I decided to get a little fancy and carve a pair of laurel wreaths, symbolizing victory.  I got a simplified image of a wreath off the internet, resized it and duplicated it a number of times before printing.
 

 

 
The paper image was cut out and spray glued to a piece of 1mm boxwood, which was itself glued to a piece of dark contrasting scrapwood.  Using a sharp cornered bitt, the outline of the wreath was cut through the box until the dark wood showed all around.
 

 
This left the paper and boxwood standing up from the background ready for detail carving.
 

 
Using a medium sized bitt, notches were cut to indicated the locations of the leaves, and the paper was removed with a drop of mineral spirits.
 

 
A smaller bitt was used to define the leaves and cut the indication for the central stems.
 

 
A pointed diamond burr was used to further refine the leaves and to slope the lower edges so there was some depth to the carving.   
 

 
The burr left some soft and fuzzy edges, so once the piece was separated from the backing piece with a drop of acetone, it was cleaned up with a knife, needle files and a fine sanding stick. 
 
Here are the pair of wreaths attached to the model.  With them, the stern is now complete.
 

 
The headrails will be the next area to be tackled.  Until then . . .
 
Be well
 
Dan
 
 
 
 
 

Hi again to all, and thanks for the likes and comments.
 
I replaced the images on page 5 that disappeared, but I ended up with some duplicate images that I could not remove.  Just ignore them.  I am also having trouble with line spacing, so this is stretched out more than it should be.  If anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know.
 
When the last segment ended, a month ago, the ship had the basic hull structure done and planked as was the visible portion of the gun deck.  The initial cambered deck structures were in place, ready for planking. 
 

 
There has been a good deal of work done since then, so this segment is fairly long.  
With the quarterdeck structure in place I could do the upper gunports with their square wreaths.  They were located from the inside of the bulwarks such that the 4-pounder cannon would run out through their centers.  A series of small holes were drilled around the perimeter of the port to allow the square lining tube to slide through, as I had done for the larger lower ports.  Fit was done carefully, but did not need to be precise, since the outer edges would be covered by the port wreath and the inner edges would be covered by the bulwark planking that would be added later.
 
The wreaths have simple decorations done with small carving bitts in the Dremel.  The circular carving was done with a sharpened brass tube.  An image of the first one was sent off to the museum for review.  Once it was approved, the rest were shaped and installed.
 

 
Next came the gangway ladders and hull loading skids on both sides of the hull.  These require 10 vertical pieces, all fitted to the curve of the hull and notched around the several horizontal moldings and wales.   It started with a paper pattern cut from an index card.  Where I cut it too large at the bottom a small piece of sticky note pad was laid on to cover the gap.  Then a wooden pattern was cut from the paper one and fitted to the hull.
 

 
Once I was happy with it the top surface was blackened to remind me not to use it on the model (I will need it for model #2).  I cut and stacked 5 layers of cherry with the pattern on top.  These were all given a coat of clear finish and then “spot welded” to each other with CA glue, one of the few times when CA was used. 
 

 
The inner faces with the notches were cut on the band saw, then the outer faces were shaped with a tabletop belt sander to match the profile of the pattern.  In the photo you can see the small piece of wood with perpendicular faces that was used to keep the stack aligned and vertical during the shaping process.
 

 
Once they were shaped they were popped apart with a blade between the layers.  The clear finish does not let the CA enter the grain, so there is no wood splintering or loss.  This is a technique I use frequently when multiple parts are called for.
 
The first side of the ladder was installed on the hull and secured with metal pins.  Treads ½” long (18” in scale) were glued to the hull with PVA glue and the second side of the ladder was fitted to them and to the hull. 
 

 
Once the three skids were installed they were reinforced with shorter pieces at their lower ends, similarly notched and fitted.  This is the port side, with the gunports open for the eventual installation of the broadside.
 

 
And here is the starboard side with closed gunports where the cannon will be shown housed on deck.
 

 
In the photo you can also see the sheaves for the sheets of the fore course and spritsail, as well as the chesstree for the tack of the main course.  The chesstree was made of cherry, carved with various drill bitts and carving tools, then secured with glue and metal pins.  This may be overkill, but for museum work I try to insure that pieces will not fall off any time soon.
 

 
You can also see the details of the gunport and its lid.  As with the gunport lid on the stern ports in the counter, the hinges are made from 1/16” brass strip with the hinge barrels coiled with wire bending pliers.  Three holes for bolts were drilled in each and they were chemically blackened before installation.  I have not tried the copper/liver of sulphur technique that Ed Tosti and others use, but it looks like something I want to try.  No matter how well I clean the brass before immersion, the finish always comes out uneven.  Eyebolts were made up and installed in the lower corners and the lifting ropes were tied.  The central one leads through a hole in the hull and ties off to a cleat above the gunport.
 
The iron fittings for the recoil rope and train tackle protrude from the hull and have diamond shaped washers.  They are mounted quite low on French ships, as you can see in this photo of L’Hermione, the reproduction ship that is the subject of a series of current articles by Roger Marsh in S-i-S.    Although that ship is larger and almost 70 years later than QAR, these fittings seem to be consistent.
 

 
On the inner side of the bulwarks the gun tackle fittings are also a bit different.  Rather than an upper eyebolt for the train tackle there is a hook in the bulwark.  This matches the fittings recovered during the excavation of La Belle by the folks at Texas A&M.  Here is how it is represented on L’Hermione.
 

 
And here are the fittings on the model.  I did not mount the breach rope rings loose since they will all either be hidden or in use.
 

 
Next I turned to the quarter badges.  These are a combination of the simple one from the Advice Prize and the florid one from Budriot’s Le Mercure.  Because the interiors will not be seen, I did not have to piece them together, as Chuck is doing with his Winchelsea, but could make them solid.  Here is the final layout which is sized to the moldings on the hull, along with the base plate of 1/16” thick cherry and the structure piece made from 3/8” basswood.
 

 
The basswood was cut to be 1/8” smaller than the base plate all around, then the side panels were angled down from the central flat section to the edges.
 

 
An initial color coat of blue for the panels was painted on, with a dark grey for the backing of the light.  The window is framed by fluted columns topped by molding capitals.  Here you can see the several pieces that made them up.  The flutes were cut as channels in a long strip on the table saw, then parted off with the miter guage set to the proper angle.
 

 
Once the columns were set, the upper rounded framing piece was shaped and the moldings were cut and applied.  Then the basswood piece was mounted on the cherry base plate.
 

 
Additional pieces of cherry veneer were cut and installed around the perimeter of the piece, as were the window mullions.  The decorative elements were shaped to fit the spaces below the black molding.  A modified scallop shell was carved at the bottom of the drop.  Window glass was simulated by painting the panes with white glue and letting it dry while lying flat.
 

 
Here are the two mirror image quarter badges.  They are not precisely symmetrical since the hull moldings are slightly different on the two sides of the model.
 

 
Once completed, they were offered up against the hull and the moldings beneath them were chiseled off to let them lay flat against the hull planking.
     

 
The deck structures were laid in and tested for their final locations.  The grating and other fittings on the quarterdeck were laid out, which gave me the final locations of the mast holes and the length of the captain’s cabin and poop deck.
 

 
The three removable deck pieces were planked in the same manner as the gun deck, although the tops of the binding strakes were not raised above the rest of the planking.  A square hole was cut into the quarterdeck for the grating, which was sunk till it matched the level of the binding strakes.  The outboard sections were made from sheets of holly veneer with the planks scribed in.  This simplified the process of tapering the planks immensely on the quarterdeck and poop deck pieces.   Deck beam locations were penciled in and fasteners for each plank were drilled, filled, and sanded flush.
 

 
For the foredeck the cherry margin plank was installed first, then the central planks and binding strakes.  The outboard pieces were cut overlarge to allow me to shape them as if they were nibbed into the margin planks.  Once they were cut they were offered to the deck and the outline of the nibbing was drawn on the margin plank.  The overlaps were carefully chiseled out of the margin plank till the holly pieces fit tightly into their spaces.
 

 
Caprails were cut from 1/16” cherry.  These were fairly simple straight pieces, although the width tapered from 10mm (15”) at the waist to 7mm (10”) at the extreme aft where the rail meets the transom.
 
With the quarterdeck located and planked, the square holes for the anchor davits could be cut.  Above them the curved caprail was shaped from five pieces of cherry, scarfed together, the given a final shaping after installation.  In the photo some temporary straight anchor davits are laid in, but will be removed and replaced with bent ones in the final fitting out.
 

 
So here is the current progress.  Not visible are the steps for the fore and mizzen masts that lie under the decks, as well as the mounting block for the bowsprit.  These were drilled and carefully aligned so the masts would line up along the centerline with the correct rake for each. 
 


 
Next I will detail the transom and put together the headrail structures.  I hope to bring this to you soon.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Hi again to everyone following this log.  Thanks for all the support, comments and likes.
 
Here is the work that has happened in the last week.  I usually put two or more weeks of work into a log entry, but I am going on vacation with the family all of next week, and didn’t want to postpone it.
 
At the end of the last entry I noticed some symmetry problems at the bow.  The thin molding was low on the port side, and the starboard bulwark was too high.
 

 
Here I have corrected the problems.  I think that the fix is satisfactory, but I will continue to examine the model to see if there are any others that need work.
 

 
Next I started on the planking for the gun deck where it will be visible in the waist.  The insides of the bulwarks were planked just like the outer surface of the hull, with individual planks of birch veneer glued on with contact cement.  Planks were trimmed to cover the gunport frames and linings.   Treenail fasteners were done in the usual manner.
 

 
The planking of the deck in the waist is a little different.  Budriot’s plans indicate that the central section of the deck was made up of thicker planks than the rest of the deck.  The outermost of these planks were let into the deck beams beneath and are known as binding strakes.  They helped lock the deck to the deck beams and strengthened the entire core of the ship.
 

 
On the model I did not lock them into the structure so they are not binding strakes, but they are made of thicker stuff than the planks.  Examination of photos of contemporary French models in the Musee de la Marine (Budriot, Historic Ship Models)  indicates a pretty consistent look to this section of the deck.  The binding strakes and the gratings are dark, even painted black, while the central planking is lighter and matches the color of the rest of the deck planking.
 

 
I started with the gratings which I made earlier.  These were made on the English pattern, so I crowned them and set them down into the raised strakes so they are nearly flush.  These are the first of the early pieces to be permanently attached to the model. The binding strakes are cherry, like the coamings for the gratings, while the central planking is holly.   This is a veneer and was glued to crowned sections of basswood to match the curve of the gratings. 
 

 
Once this section was in place and pinned to the deck substrate, I drew the locations for the deck beams, starting with those at each end of the gratings and filling in from there.  They laid out with a pretty consistent pattern of 4 scale feet center to center.  
 
Now I used the holly veneer to plank outward from the center section.  I was going to saw up a bunch of individual planks and do the deck as I had done the outer surface of the hull.  But then I decided to try using one large sheet of veneer with the planks marked and scribed on.  After a satisfactory test piece was made I decided to go for it.
 
A paper pattern was made that fit the area from the binding strake to the base of the bulwark.  This was laid out onto a piece of holly veneer, but not cut.  Using a long metal ruler as a straightedge a series of 6mm wide planks were laid out on the wood.  With the veneer clamped under the ruler a pencil line was drawn with a 0.5mm mechanical pencil so all the lines would be a consistent width.  Without unclamping I scribed the line into the wood with two light passes using the back of a #10 blade.  The markings were made permanent with two coats of spray satin finish.
 

 
With the planks lined out I cut and trimmed the veneer piece until it fit snugly into the space from binding strake to bulwark.  I test fit the piece in place and lightly marked the beam locations onto the veneer.  Using the straightedge and a small square the butt joints were marked out, penciled and scribed as before.  I used a 3-step pattern with a 1-3-2-4 stagger.  I don’t know if this is historically correct for French ships of the period, but it looks right.
 
After a final sanding to smooth the deck substrate several coats of thinned contact cement were painted onto the deck and the veneer piece.  When dry the piece was laid in place and burnished down to the substrate.  This is a permanent bond, like a kitchen counter, but the treenails that will be installed doubly guarantee adhesion.
 
At the base of the bulwarks a margin plank, finish plank, and chamfered  waterway were installed.  They are cherry and contrast nicely with the birch of the bulwark and the holly of the deck.
 

 
Now all the fastening holes could be drilled.  Careening the model in the cradles gave me access without straining.
 

 
As with the hull planks, I used square treenail sticks pressed into round holes and clipped short, leaving just nubs of wood above the surface of the planks. 
 

 
When all the holes were filled they were painted with dilute white glue.  When the glue dried the nubs were cut off flush with a small sharp chisel.  The fastenings are birch which subtly contrasts with the holly without becoming overbearing.  The fastenings in the cherry binding strakes were made of walnut, also for a bit of contrast.
 

 
With the waist planked it will soon be time to work on the upper decks.  Here I have laid up the substrates for the three sections.  They are made up of two layers of 1/16” basswood glued over a curved form.   The laminated pieces held their shapes quite well after the glue dried.   Paper patterns were used to get the right outlines.  The pieces were cut on the band saw and refined with a bench disc sander.
 

 
With the deck pieces temporarily installed I fitted out the waist with cannon, the ship’s boat, and my figures. 
 


 
I don’t see anything when I examine the model or in the photos that looks obviously wrong, but my eyes are getting old and I am a bit biased.  If anyone sees anything, please tell me now while I can still get at it to change it.
 
Thanks
 
Dan

Hi to all, and thanks for the comments and questions.  Please keep them coming.  Many eyes and brains will always spot problems that one set will not see until it is too late to easily correct them.
 
The last entry ended with the hull planked and the upper works painted as requested by the museum. 
 

 
The next task was to install all of the plank fastenings.  French practice at the time, as far as can be determined 300 years later, was to alternate wooden treenails with iron spikes.  That is, each time a plank crossed a frame there were two fasteners, one iron, one wood, set at a diagonal to each other.  At the neighboring frames to either side the pattern was flipped over, so if the first frame had a treenail at the top, the neighbor had a spike at the top.   Butt joints between planks were secured with four fasteners, two of each kind, also set diagonally.
 
Here is what the finished pattern looks like on the model.
 

 
The experiments that I did on the practice gun station led me to the following sequence, which got the thousands of fasteners done in a reasonable amount of time:
 
After installation, the planks were given a coat of pale stain, then a first clear coat to protect them from glue spots and dirt.  This coating also helped when it came time to remove the pencil lines that were drawn to indicate the frame locations under the planks.   Without it the graphite gets into the grain of the wood and is really hard to remove.
 
Next, the holes for all of the treenails were drilled.  I used the cordless Dremel 1000 which has a pistol shape.  It lets me simply point at the desired spot and just lean forward to make a 1/8” deep hole.  With some good music in the background and a repetitive chant under my breath, I would develop a rhythm that made the chore go pretty quickly.      
 
Multiple strips of treenail stock were cut from cherry veneer on the Preac.  They were 0.025” square, or about 0.035” on the diagonal.  The holes were drilled with a 0.0325” bit so that the strips could be inserted to the bottom of the hole with a friction fit and then clipped or snapped off.  Again, music made the task bearable.
 
Once all the holes were filled they were painted with heavily diluted white glue.  It was thin enough to wick down the sides of the strips to the bottom of the holes.  This not only secured the treenails to the planks and the hull, but it swelled the fibers so that the square strips now filled the entire round holes.  No lengthy, fiddly pulling through a drawplate was necessary.  This is a good thing, because I am really terrible at it.  I usually end up with more splinters on the floor than treenails in the cup.
 
Once the glue dried the stubs of the treenails were cut close to the plank surface using a small chisel, then they were sanded flush, which also removed the pencil lines.
 
Now the holes for the spikes could all be drilled, using the treenail locations as the guide.  This time the holes were only 0.025” diameter and were filled with 0.022” soft iron wire.  Clippers were used to cut them as close as possible to the plank surface.  Here I am filling the holes in the planks of the counter with the model turned upside down.
 

 
Once a large section of spikes were inserted they were peened or pressed into the hull until they were almost flush with the surface.  Then they were painted with a second clear coat of finish.  This not only secured the spikes from coming out, but darkened the tops of the treenails so the cherry stood out from the birch of the planking.
 
Even without doing the fasteners under the painted sections there are over 3,000 fasteners in the hull.  Using this sequence, the fasteners were done, start to finish, in three 6-hour workdays. 
 
With the planking done, the gunport linings were fitted using the square wooden tube as explained in the earlier log for the gun station.  Here is how it came out after staining to match the planking.
 

 
And here are two cannon protruding from their ports as they will be in the finished model.
 

 
As we all do, I use the photographs to check my work.  Some things seem to appear only under the light of a flash.  Here I am checking the symmetry of the bow.  It looks generally good, but there are two problems that I have to correct.
 

 
First, the thin molding just above the wale does not match, port to starboard.  The port side is about 1/16” low at the stem.  It will be pried up and relocated before re-gluing and final pinning with metal spikes.
 
The second problem is less clear.  The cap of the starboard bow is higher than its corresponding shape on the port side.  You can see it a bit better with the photo taken from a lower angle.
 

 
The cap molding will be removed, the shape adjusted, and the molding replaced.  Otherwise, I am happy with the symmetry of the hull both here at the bow, and here at the stern.
 

 
You can see that the two ports in the counter have been detailed.  Although the hull details will mostly be done later, it was easier to do this area while I could still turn the model over and work on it upside down.  
 

 
The ports have two half-lids with four hinge straps each and a lanyard to open the top half.  These were made in the same way as the hinge straps for the companionway that was shown in an earlier log.  I used my orthodontic pliers to bend 1/16” brass strips which were then drilled and chemically blackened before gluing and pinning with wire.  The four rings above the lower molding are for the preventer chains that will attach to the smaller rings on the sides of the rudder just above the white stuff.
 

 
The rudder itself is built up from two pieces of cherry which were cut, shaped and tapered according to the plans.  The gudgeons and pintles were bent up from 3/32” wide brass strips, blackened and drilled, then secured in the usual manner to the rudder and the hull.
 
At the transom you can see the paper pattern for the latest iteration of the stern gallery of windows.  This was originally taken from the Mercure plans, but heavily modified to fit the internal deck layout of the Advice Prize.  It was pushed, prodded, resized, and details were changed and changed back again in Photoshop before being printed out to test size and suitability against the spacing and layout of the hull moldings.  More changes will be made, I’m sure, before I am completely happy with it and can start cutting wood.
 
 I’m having to do a lot of testing like this to reconcile the shape and layout of the Advice Prize with the details from Le Mercure.  Here I have installed rough place-holders for the quarterdeck and forecastle deck so I can plan the layout in the waist.
 

 
The museum asked that one broadside of cannon be mounted through the ports with the lids opened.  The other side will have the guns “housed”.  But when I tested the layout of the guns with their muzzles hard against the bulwark it was clear that there would be no room for the ship’s boat on the centerline.  A check against the plans confirmed that this was so.
 

 
Instead, I suggested that the cannon not in use be housed fore and aft against the bulwark.  This is one way that it was done on the real ships.  Now, with the opposite cannon through the port, there is enough clearance for the boat and to work the guns.
 

 
And here is what the broadside looks like before the gunport lids and the rest of the hull details are installed.
 

 
Finally, lest you think that I work in a clean and orderly manner as implied in the heavily cropped photos in the log, here is our dining room table on a fairly neat day.   It looks much worse on a daily basis and for months at a time.
 

 
I can’t say enough about the forbearance and good humor of my wife.  Without her this would not be remotely possible.  I can only wish you all the same happiness with your spouse or significant other.
 
Be well
 
Dan

Hi to everyone who is following this log, and thanks for your interest.
 
Druxey - I believe in catch and release.  She will come back, I'm sure.
 
Now that the hull structure was fully shaped, smoothed and primed, I turned to the main wales.  French practice, as derived from some of the contemporary models, was to have two strakes of dark, heavy planks run the length of the ship, separated by a strake of slightly thinner planking that was not as dark.
 
I selected cherry for the outer strakes and birch for the inner one, to match the woods used on the rest of the model.  The upper cherry strake was laid in sections along the line of the hull paint and glued down.  It will be pinned for security later.  A good deal of care was taken with this first strake as every following strake takes its curve from this one. 
 
Once I was happy with the first wale strake, the middle strake of birch was laid against it, then the lower strake of cherry.  Because of the curvature of the hull, the edges of the planks all had to be undercut so they could lay tightly against each other. 
 

 
The curvature of the hull also made clamping difficult.  The lower strake is substantially under the curve, especially at the bow and stern.  Since the bulwarks do not go down to the level of the wales, I could not get any direct clamping access.  I came up with a system of cantilevered scraps of wood to do the job.  Here at the bow the problem was not that acute, and you can see how the force from the spring clamp is exerted between the upper fulcrum and the load at the lower edge, even though it is around the curve.  It’s crude, but it worked.
 

 
At the stern the more extreme curve required raising the fulcrum and, at the aft end, even adding an angled caul to hold down the wood.
 

 
Each section of the wale was joined to its neighbor with a long scarf joint.  These were all marked out with a pattern cut into a plastic strip so they were consistent, cut on the band saw, and cleaned up by hand.  The forward end of the middle strake was as thick as the outer strakes, probably to reduce the chance of the anchor fluke catching an edge, much like the billboard did in later ships.  It was finished off with a decorative scallop, a detail again taken from another contemporary model.
 

 
Now that the wales had been set, the planking began.  I used birch veneer with a thickness of 0.025” – about ¾” in scale.  This had some good attributes, but required some new techniques.  Doing it this way owes more to the art of marquetry than the engineering of a ship.  The thinness of the planks means that they can be cut easily from a veneer sheet with the Preac using a fine toothed blade, and even shaped with scissors.  But they are somewhat delicate until they are glued to the hull.
 
They are also quite prone to warping if they come in contact with any moisture, including water based glues.  So to secure the planks I used contact cement.  I had used it before for the copper plates on models of later ships, but never on wood.  First I had to clear its use with the museum.  I found a study online from the Minnesota Historical Society which approved its use in conservation applications, so I was given the go-ahead.   
 
I thinned the glue with mineral spirits and painted a coat onto the hull and the backs of the planks.  When it was dry I colored the edges of the planks with an indelible marker.  The hull got a second coat of glue.  You can see it as the shiny area above the planking on the primed hull and the yellowish area below the wales.  When this second coat was almost dry, the plank was seated in place.  This gave me just a little wiggle room to adjust the fit of the plank yet still gave lots of adhesion.
 

 
Once the concept had been proved out, I planked the stern and counter so that the hull planks could run past their ends before being trimmed to fit. 
 

 
Below the wales the planking was carried down about an inch below the final location of the waterline.  The ends of the planks will be feathered into the solid hull and covered by the “white stuff” of the lower hull.
 

 
At the bow the planks do not all run into the stem, as in English practice.  Following the lead of Budriot, Petrejuus, and Frolich, the last five planks have hook scarfs and run up to the lower edge of the lower wale.   
 

 
Once these shapes had been resolved for the port side by trial and lots of error, I transferred the shapes to the starboard side.  A piece of translucent tape was laid over the planks and the outline of each plank was drawn on it.  Here I am doing plank #2.
 

 
Once the shape was drawn, the tape was removed and laid on a sheet of veneer.  This was done for all five planks.  It did not matter that the tape overlapped since all the tape would ultimately be removed.  I packed them against each other so there would be little wasted wood.
 

 
They were cut out with a new blade in the knife and fit together quite well.
 

 
With a little fine tuning they laid quite well against the starboard hull and match the lines of the port side planks.
 

 
The planks were continued up the hull, cutting out the openings for the gunports as I went. 
 

 
Just above the gunports is the line for the channel wale.  This is a wide and thick molding made from 1/16” thick cherry.  There also needs to be a lot of thinner decorative molding.  The moldings were made in the usual way.  I ground the profiles into a used hobby blade with a thin cutoff wheel in the Dremel.  Others use old hacksaw blades for this, but I have a lot of old knife blades and it lets me use a handle, which is easier to hold and helps with my trigger finger issues.  
 

 
After the profile was scraped into the stock the pieces were stained and set aside.  At the bow there is a significant curvature, so the sections of the moldings were soaked in hot water for about an hour then clamped to a handy form – a roll of masking tape.  When dry there was some springback, which left the piece matching the shape of the hull.
 

 
The curved pieces were soaked again briefly to soften them, then attached with neutral pH white glue and lots of clamps.   These clamps are some of my favorites.  They are plastic coated and have a firm but not hard grip, so they do not mark up the wood.  I used to find them in the paper clip section at Staples, but they have all but disappeared.  I found the last set in the kitchen section at Target, marketed as chip bag clips.
 

 
So here is the port side of the hull fully planked, but before establishing the waterline or installing all the treenails and metal spike fastenings for the planks.
 

 
The plans indicated a ¾” drop at the keel from the gripe at the bow to the sternpost.  The model was blocked and leveled and the waterline penciled in with a height gauge in the usual manner.  Below it the planks were feathered, filled, sanded, hardened, sanded some more, etc., etc., until they disappeared into the surface of the hull.  The line was masked with tape and several coats of off-white enamel sprayed on.
 
At this point the museum decided that the wales and moldings up to the channel wale should be painted black and the planking, but not the moldings, above the channel wale should be French blue.  This meant some tricky edge painting, and it covered up all the work I had done on the scarf joints in the wales.  Oh well . . . The silver lining was that I did not have to show plank fastenings under the paint, although the thinner moldings were pinned for security and strength. 
 
Here is how it looks today, with a paper pattern for the future quarter badge.
 

 

 
More soon.
 
Dan
 
 
 
 

Hi all.  Thanks for the likes and the compliments.  They helped me weather the weather this snowy winter.
 
The last time I showed the hull was at the end of January, and it looked like this.
 

 
Here is how it looked five weeks later, including getting snowed in for a week with the model in the shipyard.  This is how it got there.
 

 
After the bulwark pieces were cut, fitted and bent to shape, they were left to dry completely, then removed from the hull so the deck structure could be addressed.  After carefully levelling and squaring the building board and the model on it, the level was placed across the deck.   The symmetry and camber of the deck was read under the straight lower edge of the level.
 

 
To insure that the readings were accurate I drew the centerline and a series of perpendicular lines athwartships.  The level was placed on each line and high spots were identified then sanded down.  Using the lines and the edges of the basswood lifts as guides, the deck surface was smoothed and given the proper camber and sheer.
 

 
Now I prepared the model for its ultimate mounting.  It was flipped over and I drilled two ¾” holes into the centerline and about 2 inches deep, spaced well apart.  Into them I glued 1 inch long pieces of dowel that had been drilled out to accept 3/16” T-nuts on their upper end.  They were mounted so they came just proud of the surface of the hull.  Once the glue was dry they were sanded flush. 
 
The stem, keel and sternpost were cut and fitted.  They are 3/8” maple and secured with bamboo pegs into the hull.  No attempt to make scarf joints was made since the lower hull below the waterline will be shown with a coating of “white stuff” as teredo protection. Matching holes were drilled in the keel to allow 3/16” bolts or threaded rod to screw into the T-nuts to hold the model down to its ultimate cradle. 
 
Unfortunately I did not pause to record this work.  I was distracted by a very pretty assistant, a friend of my granddaughters, who showed some real interest in what I was doing.  To her I am Poppy Dan the Boat Man.  She was that third hand that comes in so handy from time to time.  Maybe she will keep at it.
 

 
She has just helped me install the aft bulwark pieces into their final homes.  They are glued into the rabbets in the lower hull and pinned with bamboo dowels.   Temporary internal supports are screwed to the deck to maintain the 13 degree tumblehome.
 
Next I turned to the gunports.  On my gun station practice piece I cut out the opening cleanly on the band saw.  This was impossible with the bulwarks, so the openings were roughed out with a zip-bit in a Dremel.  It made quick work of cutting the openings, but was prone to wandering, especially when it crossed one of the slots for the kerf bending of the bulwarks.  These  were squared up with a rasp and various files.
 
Unfortunately, my skills were not adequate to squaring and locating the openings precisely, nor smoothing them well enough to fit the inner lining tube.  I reasoned that if the lining tube would give me a square opening, then a larger tube would give me a square frame for the lining.  I put together a tube for the frames from 1/8” basswood which was sized so the lining tube slid neatly inside it.
 

 
Now a larger opening could be cut in the bulwarks and the frame located inside it.  The frame could be adjusted within the opening with shims before being glued in place. The inner lining tube was slipped through to insure that the frame was set vertically and at the correct height.
 

 
All of the port side gunports were done in this way.  The lining tube was used again for the starboard ports to make sure that they matched the port side in location and height.
 

 
Not only were the ports matched using the lining tube, but with the cannon that will ultimately be installed through them.
 

 
At the forward end of the bulwark pieces a slot was cut up its edge before it was installed.  A matching slot was cut in the aft edge of the forward bulwark pieces and a hardwood spline inserted across the joint to align the pieces and prevent future movement under the planking. 
 

 

 
The forward pieces were installed and pinned in place, the spline glued between the pieces.  The two forward gunport frames were cut, dressed and installed as before.  At the stern the transom piece was installed and blocks for the counter were cut, installed, and smoothed, ready to be covered by planking.
 
The upper two inches of the bulwarks all around were sanded to narrow the top edge to scale 9” and a hollow was sanded into the exterior of the aft bulwark at about the level of the gunports.  The effect is subtle, but the combination of the two operations created the shallow “S” curve and tapered top timber shape seen in the plans.
 
The entire exterior of the hull was filled with Durham’s Rock Hard Water Putty as were the kerf slots on the inside of the bulwarks in all areas that will be visible in the finished model.  Several rounds of sanding, filling, and more sanding were necessary to get the lower hull to a proper smoothness. 
 

 
When it was done the filled areas were hardened with Minwax Wood Hardener for strength and longevity.  When it was dry there was a final sanding and a first priming.  This revealed some more spots that needed to be filled, sanded and hardened.  After a few more rounds the hull was given a final priming ready for painting.
 

 
Looking at the plans it is clear that the lines of planking all take their curves from the line of the main wale.  I decided to define this with the top edge of the hull paint as a test of the location and sweep of the curve.  It was plotted from the plans and masked off above the line.  Several coats of off-white enamel were sprayed on, giving the lower hull a hard finish that will support the final color coats.   The demarcation line for the wale looked good .
 

 

 

 
Finally, the fun of planking and detailing the hull can begin.
 
Dan

Hi Michael -
 
Yes, another good idea.  I will play with them all the next time around. 
 
Moving ahead, I have been thinking about the methods and materials that I will have to use when it comes time to mount and rig the cannon.    Once the bulwarks are in place on the hull the tumblehome is going to make rigging the cannon difficult.    Then there are the deck and hull plank details that have to be worked out. . . . etc. . . etc.   I decided that making a mock-up of a gun station would help me work out some of the kinks.
 
The first issue was how to cut the gunports through the bulwarks and create the rebate for the lid.   I wanted them all to be the same size and square.  The method that worked for me was to create a square tube of 1/32” wood glued at the corners.   Here you can see it slid through a hole cut in the bulwark.  With a small piece of bulwark like this, I could cut it on the band saw before attaching it to the base plate.  On the model I will have to pierce each gunport and use a coping saw to cut the square hole.
 

 
Here it is from the side.  You can see that it runs parallel to the deck, so the lintel and sill will be level.  With it in this position I marked out the line where the box and the outer bulwark face met.  The box was removed and cut along the line.
 

 
The cut face was sanded, and the box reinstalled in the hole, but slid in just short of the outer face of the hole.
 

 
In the closeup you can see the even and smooth rebate formed this way.  The back side was marked, the box removed and cut down, then reinstalled and glued. 
 

 
When the glue was dry the back side was sanded smooth with the inside of the bulwark.  The rough edges and gaps will be covered by the bulwark planking.  All the gunports  should be identical if I slice similar sections from the same tube.   
 

 
Construction went very quickly.  Too quickly.  I forgot to stop and take photos.  Here is the completed gun station.  It represents one of the midships cannon in the waist with the high bulwark and the gangway overhanging the gun. 
 

 
If you look at the bulwark, you will see that it has been raised about 1/8" from the first few photos.  It reminds me not to take measurements from the plans without checking them against the rest of the details that have to fit.  This would have been a disaster if it happened on the actual bulwark piece. 
 
The deck layout is taken from the plans, with the raised binding strake used by the French set just outside of the grating.   While doing this I discovered that the gratings that I made earlier will have to be modified.   The French did not use the high coamings which the English did, and which I built.  The QAR would have had gratings set into the deck, but crowned even more than the deck camber/round up.  I took an extra piece of grating and sanded it down at the sides and across the back until it fit the curved profile. 
 
The deck is laid in holly, with birch bung covers.  I know that there are good arguments to be made for making them pronounced, and just as many for making them invisible.  I chose to take a middle course and try to make them visible, but not distracting. 
 

 
Here is the cannon rigged with its breeching rope turned into rings in the bulwark.  The rope was laid up from DMC cotton line to a diameter of 0.6” (scale 6 inch rope).  It was stained and sealed with Minwax.  There is still some fuzz, but I am working on a few solutions. 
 

 
The gun tackle are hooked to eyebolts.  The blocks are 4mm singles from Warner Woods West (6” in scale).  The hooks are tied into their strops and the block closest to the bulwark has the running line tied into its becket.  The line is J.B. Coates “Dual Duty Plus” that measures out to 0.015” This is a little thin, but I prefer the look to that of a thicker line. 
 
I could not find acceptable photoetched hooks on the market, so I made them from 0.020” iron wire.   The sequence below shows how I use my orthodontic pliers to bend the wire around to meet itself, then the eye that was formed is bent back to center on the shaft.   To make an eyebolt it is clipped off at this stage.  To make a hook I continue the bend to stage 3.  Moving the pliers out just a bit the wire is bent back toward the eye, then clipped off, opening the hook. 
 

 
The smallest hook I can make this way is just under 5 mm (7” in scale).  This is a bit large, but acceptably small, and the 50 that I needed were done pretty quickly. 
 

 
The outer bulwark planking was cut from birch veneer with the edges colored with indelible marker.  I experimented with contact cement as the adhesive.  I painted a thinned layer on the bulwark substrate and let it dry.  The planks were painted  but installed when the glue was still a bit tacky.  This gave me quick adhesion but just a little ‘wiggle room’ before it set.   The bad news was that the contact cement dissolved the indelible ink and threatened to spread it to the surface of the planking.  I will change to a water based marker in the future. 
 
Treenails were drilled and installed, then the planking was stained.  I used Golden Oak, but did not thin it enough and I think the color is too dark.  Neither the treenails nor the moldings show up to good effect. 
 
The gunport lid was made up as usual from several layers of wood glued with crossed grain.  The hinges are blackened brass strip pegged with iron wire.  The strips were left long beyond the back edge of the lid and were ground down to square cross section.  These pins were inserted and glued into holes drilled into the plank just above the lintel of the gunport.  Hinge barrels were made from short sections of blackened brass rod.
 
Small eyebolts were made and fitted to the outer corners and a bridled lifting rope tied.  The lead is through a hole in the bulwark above the gunport and belays to a cleat above the gun.
 

 
Of course, Pirate Pete had to show up to inspect the work.  He seems to fit well into the scene. 
 



 
 
He even looks the right size for the gangway, although he can use a rope railing on the caprail.
 

 
Overall, I would say that the two days spent on the gun station were well worth it for the time that will be saved over the long run, and the problems that will be avoided.
 
Be well
 
Dan
 

Hi all -
 
David, thanks for the link.  It was an interesting article and fills in some gaps in my knowledge of the history of the ship and Blackbeard.
 
Now it is time to turn to the armaments.  On any pirate ship model the cannon are going to be significant points of visual interest and the QAR is no different.  After Blackbeard’s capture of Le Concord, he took the armaments from his prior ship and added them to those already on his new flagship.  Contemporary accounts put the number of large cannon at 20, with an unknown number of additional smaller ones.  Archaeological evidence from the wreck site confirms this. 
 
Several six-pounder long guns have been recovered and conserved, as well as a few four-pounders, a one pounder and a swivel gun.  It was therefore decided to arm the QAR with 20 six-pounders on the gun deck, with four four-pounders on the quarterdeck and two one-pounders on the forecastle.  Ten swivel guns will be mounted on the rails along the quarterdeck and forecastle.
 

 
The cannon that have been examined turned out to be a mix of English, Swedish, and French manufacture, which is not surprising.  Blackbeard, like all pirates, would have obtained his armaments from whichever ships he had previously captured, which might themselves have had a mixture of cannon.  No carriages were recovered, but the decision was made to mount them on French style carriages since she was originally a French ship and possibly retained most of her larger cannon.  Here are drawings comparing the French and English styles.
 

 
As you can see, the basic differences are that 1) the French style has a solid base plate and bumper, which widens the footprint of the carriage a bit; and 2) the breaching rope runs through large holes in the cheeks rather than looping around the cascabel.   The rounded curve on the bottom of the English cheeks is not unique, and I have seen carriages with them on contemporary French models.
 
With so many cannon to build, I looked to the aftermarket to see if anyone had barrels that would scale out to the 6 ½ to 7 ½ foot length of the six-pounders that were recovered and still be historically accurate in shape and detail.  The length scaled out to between 2.16 and 2.5 inches.  I found that The Lumberyard (www.dlumberyard.com) had cast Brittania barrels that were just the right size.  They are listed as 32-pounders if you are working at 1:48, but the shape is correct for the smaller caliber at my larger scale.
 
I carefully examined enlarged photos of the barrels and was impressed with the detail and accuracy of the reinforcing bands, cascabel shape, and bore.  I ordered 40 of them, as well as 12 others for the smaller cannon.  They did not have acceptable barrels for the swivel guns, and I am still looking for them.
 
The Lumberyard also sells laser cut carriages to fit the barrels.  They were made in the English style, but I thought that I would try to modify them to the French style.  I knew that I could always scratch-build the carriages, but the pre-cut ones would save a lot of effort if they could be made accurate enough and of the right style.  Here is how it went:
 
This is how the barrels and the carriages came.  The carriages come four to a sheet, which worked out perfectly.  The barrels and carriages for the smaller guns are identical in everything but size.  A lot of thought and care went into designing the carriage pieces, including providing two different sizes of wheels/trucks.  A tip of the hat to Dave Stevens.
 

 
And here are the pieces for one cannon after being separated from the laser cut sheet.  They came out easily and a little help with a sharp blade was only needed once or twice for all the pieces.
 

 
The barrels are excellent castings with no flash and almost no evidence of the mold line.  But whatever blackening method was used did not ‘take’ on the metal.  It was uneven, crusty, and could be rubbed off with a finger.  A bit of work with a dry paper towel took the blackening off down to almost bare metal.
 

 
To re-blacken them, the contract specifications call for chemical blackening of all metals rather than paint.  I first tried a product called Blacken-It, which was a disaster.  The metal took on a grey, chalky surface, while an unidentified tan substance precipitated out of the solution.  I had much more success with Pewter Black.  I experimented and found that I had to use a fairly strong solution, much stronger than the corresponding solution of Brass Black that I use for brass.  The surface that was produced was more uniform, but some of the blackening could still be rubbed off if I put some effort into it.  To seal it several coats of clear matte finish were sprayed on and the end results were acceptable.
 
Here you can see the barrel at the top as it was received.  The next one down has all of the blackening removed with a powered toothbrush.  Below it is the barrel after the trunnions have been cut down and reblackened.  Finally, the finished barrel after clear coating.  Only the vent hole has to be drilled.
 

 
The carriage conversion started with making the base plates and bumpers.  The tapered base plate was cut on the table saw with the miter gauge set to 5 degrees.  The bumper was cut, attached with PVA glue, then crowned using a disc sander.
 

 
The cheek pieces were sanded smooth and the burn marks from the laser were sanded off.  Holes were drilled for the eyebolts and the breaching rope through the side of the cheek, and holes for the bolts holding the cheek pieces together were drilled down on two of the steps of the cheek.  A simple jig was fashioned that held the base plate up so the axle notches would be clear, and located the cheeks against the bumper.  The vertical cross piece at the front held everything square.  A clamp made from a bent hair clip held it all together as the glue dried.
 

 
Axles and wheels were next.  As they came out of the wood sheet, the axles were square.  They needed to be rounded to fit the holes in the trucks.  To do this I found a piece of thick walled brass tube with the correct inside diameter.  Four teeth were cut and filed into one end and a sleeve was put around it as a guide and depth stop.
 


 
This was chucked into the bench top drill press and the ends of the axles were fed into it from underneath.  There was surprisingly little resistance as it cut, and I was able to control the workpiece with just my hand.
 

 
It made short work of the job, and much neater than I could have done by hand.
 

 
The trucks from the laser cut sheet were modified to make them look as if they were made up of four half circles bolted together with six metal bolts.  The effect is subtle, but noticeable if not done.  Next to them are several of the eyebolts located in a store here in NYC.  The eye is 0.095” o.d., which scales up to 3 ½”, which is quite accurate.  I could have wished that the wire was a bit thicker, but the difference is hard to see.  At $2 per hundred it sure beats making them all by hand.
 

 
A test cannon was done to see that everything worked, and a detailed instruction sheet was written up, then all the carriage pieces were packed up and given into the hands of JerseyCityFrankie, who agreed to assemble all the carriages.  He did an excellent job, as you can see from some of his progress photos.
 



 
Frankie also shaped and installed the quoin wedges.  The handles are brass belaying pins treated with Brass Brown solution.  All that was left to do when I got the completed carriages back was to make and install the capsquares and their fittings. 
 

 
I started with a strip of 3/32” x 1/64” brass and developed a jig to shape it.  The strip is held between the guide strips and pushed up to meet the stop on the right.  The die has a short piece of steel rod set into it which matches the groove cut into the base piece and is the same diameter as the trunnions. 
 

 
The steel rod is placed over the groove.  With a few taps of a hammer the curve is bent into the brass.  The first few tries showed me that if the base piece remains flat the short end of the strip does not bend flat but springs back a bit.  To correct this the end of the plate was angled and some finishing strikes with the die held at an angle took care of the problem.
 

 
Two holes for the eyebolts were pre-drilled in the capsquare while it was still on the strip, then it was parted off.  You can see in the inset that the curve is not as rounded as I might have liked, but the difference is not noticeable in the finished piece.
 

 
The capsquares were chemically blackened and tack glued in position.  The pre-drilled holes were extended down into the wood of the cheeks.  Two U-bolts with one very short leg were bent and installed.  In the inset you can see that the one toward the rear of the carriage replicates the visible portion of the eyebolt that hinges the capsquare, while the other replicates the eyebolt for the pin that holds it down.
 

 
The final detail was the pin and chain for each capsquare.  Some very fine brass chain with 36 links per inch was blackened, and bits of thin wire inserted in links about half an inch apart.  The wire was bent back on itself and pinched together to form a cotter-pin shape.  One pin was left long and inserted into a hole just below and behind the trunnion, while the other was cut short and slipped into the eye of the forward bolt.  The gun is now ready to be mounted and rigged.
 

 
And here it is with my scale figure for comparison.  I think it came out quite well and will dress up the waist of the model nicely.
 

 
Actually, there were two types of carriage that were made.  On the finished model only the eight guns in the waist will be visible.  These are the only ones that needed to be fully detailed.  However, just to be safe I detailed the four cannon that might be partially visible under the overhanging quarterdeck and forecastle.  The remaining eight will only have the end of the barrel and the forward face of the carriage visible.  For these no bumper was installed and the capsquares were replaced with simple U bolts.  The trucks were replaced with wooden chocks that raise the cannon to the correct level and will provide enlarged glue surfaces when the cannon are installed.
 

 
So here is a complete set of all the six-pounder cannon for one of the models.    The remaining small cannon will join them shortly.
 

 
This was a longer entry than usual, so feel free to ask if I have not fully explained any of the materials or methods.
 
Be well
 
Dan
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 

Hello again –
 
I got some time during the football games to write up the next installment.  I hope you enjoy it.
 
With the grating sheets made, I made the coamings.  My method here also relies on the table saw and uses no measuring with a ruler.  This time it is based on the specific grating to be framed.  I make the coaming to fit the grating rather than the other way around.  I get a much tighter fit that way.  
 
Here is a piece of grating that has been cut from a sheet.  The edges have been sanded flush and it has received a first finish coat to protect it from any glue stains.  It looks square, but it is slightly longer than it is wide.
 

 
As mentioned, the grating material is poplar.  For contrast I selected cherry for the coaming and cut stock 1/8” x ¼”.  Four pieces of coaming stock were cut longer than each side of the grating piece.  They will be joined with half lap joints at the corners.
 

 
The table saw blade height is set so cuts made from the top and bottom of the coaming stock just meet in the middle.
 

 
One end of each piece has a half lap cut into it.  The length does not matter as long as it is longer than the thickness of the coaming stock.  First, the shoulder was cut using the rip fence as a depth stop.
 

 
Then the lap was made by making multiple passes moving away from the fence to nibble away the unwanted wood.
 

 
A spacer strip was located that was wider but shallower than the lap that was cut.
 

 
Using the spacer and the grating piece the fence was set for the shorter sides.
 

 
A sacrificial stick supports the coaming piece as the shoulder for the second half lap is cut.
 

 
The coaming piece was turned around and the unwanted wood from the second lap was nibbled away.
 

 
The matching short piece was done, then the saw was reset and the longer pieces were done in the same manner.
 

 
Using the grating piece itself to hold the pieces square, they were test fit, adjusted as needed, assembled and glued.  When the glue was dry, support pieces were glued to the inside edges.  Doing only two sides is enough.  If you want the grating to be removable just make sure that the supports are glued only to the coaming.  Here I have glued the grating in place permanently. 
 

 
The corners were trimmed, the piece was turned over and sanded smooth, and all edges and corners were eased.  The bottom edges are left raw and will be sanded to the curve of the deck when installed.   The piece was finished with matte varnish.  
 

 
And here is the set of three for one of the QAR models.  In the insert the lap joint is clearly visible.  The joints were also treenailed for strength.   Two diagonal corners of each coaming were drilled but not filled.  During assembly longer treenails will go through them and into the deck for security.  A length of treenail stock is packed with the set ready for final assembly.
 

 
As you can tell from the brevity of the text, this all goes quite quickly with a some practice.  All of the work making the six hatches and gratings took only a little more than a day.  Doing the photographing and writing these build log entries took longer.
 
I hope that this was instructive and provides another technique to add to your tool box.
 
Be well
 
Dan
 

Hi all, and thanks for the comments and likes.
 
The next set of independent pieces to be made were the three hatches with gratings.  One two-part one goes on the quarterdeck, while the other two go on the gun deck under the boat in the waist.  My method for making gratings is a bit unusual in that it there is little or no measuring done with a ruler or calipers.  Everything is done relative to the thickness of the saw blade that is used.  I developed this method because I only have a Preac saw.  A milling machine might make the whole process easier, but I work with what I have.
 
The first thing is to set up the saw to make square section sticks of wood whose dimension will be about 2  inches in the scale being used.  This then has to  match the thickness of a saw blade that you have.  For the small grating I used a slitting saw blade that was 0.032” thick. 
 
To set the saw I sandwiched that blade between a second blade and the rip fence.  The fence is snugged up and locked down.  The cutting blade does not have to be the same thickness, although in this case it was since I have two blades of that same thickness.
 
[These first nine photos are in black and white because they are taken from another presentation on making much smaller gratings].
 

 
Several sticks 0.032” square were cut from a sheet of hardwood.  Only a few are needed.  Then the blade that matches the sticks is mounted in the saw, if it is not already there.   Two of the sticks are sandwiched between the blade and the fence which is snugged tight and locked down.
 

 
One stick is removed and a short section of the other is held firmly against the fence and tacked in place with extra thin cyano.  Care is taken to see that the fence is not glued to the table.
 

 
The fence is removed, leaving a guide strip parallel to the blade and one blade thickness to the right. 
 

 
A rectangular piece of hardwood sheet is selected and held against the guide strip and the miter guage.  The blade height is set up to cut just a tiny bit deeper than halfway through the sheet.
 

 
The wood is run over the blade, cutting a channel one blade thickness from the end.
 

 
The wood is flipped over and the slot that was just cut is placed on top of the guide strip. 
 

 
The wood is run through again, cutting a second channel two thicknesses to the left of the first channel.
 

 
The balance of the sheet is cut in the same way, making a series of channels parallel to each other and spaced two blade widths apart.
 

 
Here is the grating sheet for the QAR. At my scale I needed sticks and channels that were about 0.055”.  I took one of the 0.032” blades and stacked it together with a 0.023” blade, making a 0.055” dado blade.
 

 
Actually, for the small grating I used Portia Takakjian’s technique.  This involves cutting lots of square sticks as well as cutting cross channels across the first ones.  The cross channels are filled with the sticks and everything is glued together.  When dry the solid back of the sheet is ground off with a sanding drum.  This works well for a small grating, but the wider blade did not cut as cleanly so I kept getting tearout.  Also, I needed more than 25 square inches of grating and did not look forward to grinding off so much wood.
 
Instead, I removed the guide strip and set the saw to cut 0.55” using the blades as spacers again.  Strips were parted off the sheet until the material was used up.  I call them toothed strips for obvious reasons.
 

 
Three quarters of the toothed strips were cut into thirds and interlocked with the remaining long strips.
 

 
This created a grating sheet about 2 ½ by 7 ½ inches.  This was only enough to make the gratings for one of the models, so a second grating sheet was made in the same way.
 

 
From the sheets I cut out sections for the grating sizes that I needed, sanded the edges flush and gave them a coat of slightly darkened matte finish to protect them from glue stains when the coamings get built around them.
 

 
Overall, this method worked well for me, and I will try it in smaller scales in the future.  A tip of the hat to Charlie Files, inventor of the Preac, wherever you are.
 
I will have the log of making the coamings in a few days.  Until then, be well.
 
Dan
 
 

Hello and Happy New Year to all -
 
This past month has been full of grandkids and holidays that got in the way of what is the most important thing in life - ship modeling
 
I did manage to complete both sets of the masts, which are packed away until rigging time.  The fore
 

 
The mizzen
 

 
And the Bowsprit and jib boom
 

 
Meanwhile, I have been studying the rigging diagrams and reading Anderson and others.  The first question came when I realized that some of the lines, including the halyards, run from the mastheads to belaying points on deck at the base of the mast.  To do this they have to pass through the platform of the top.  Budriot's plans and the tops that I made from them have no openings aft of the masthead. 
 

 
I figured that I could solve this in one of two ways - I could simply drill some holes for the lead of the lines, or I could take apart the tops and remove some of the planking to make a larger opening, a much more complicated procedure.  I consulted with some knowledgable modelers including Rob Napier, and Bob Giles sent me some photographs of the tops of the St. George (1701) model at Annapolis. 
 

 
I also looked at the photographs of the model of Le Sans-Pareil (1757) in the Musee de la Marine.  All of them agreed that removing the planking was the only way to go.  So, with some anxiety, I pried off the trestletrees and crosstrees from under each of the tops.  Fortunately they came away with only one slight greenstick fracture that was easily repaired.  The cleats were shortened, then I used a razor saw to cut through the plank aft of the lubber hole.  The enlarged opening was cleaned up with a blade and sandpaper before the trestletrees and crosstrees were cleaned up and re-attached.  Here they are.  
 

 
Next, the gratings and coamings.  I have worked out a new way to do them which gives me better results in this larger scale.
 
Be well
 
Dan  

Hello again. 
 
I trust that everyone has recovered from Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and all that tryptophan in the turkey.  Not to mention all the family that may have descended on you as they did to us.  I have a greater appreciation than ever for the wit and wisdom of Winston Churchill. . .
 
I did manage to get in some work on the hull.  The lower portion of the first hull was fully shaped using templates as usual.  The aft portion of the gun deck was built up with tapered stacks of basswood to match the rise of the sheer line, then sanded down to make a smooth curved surface at the centerline.  A camber (round-up) of the deck of 1/8" from the centerline to the bulwark edge was plotted from the plans.  I marked and sanded this into the gun deck surface.  When I was happy with the underwater shape and the deck curves, the hull was given its first coat of sandable primer.  Rough areas, uneven curves, and other problem spots were dealt with and re-primed.
 
Although the hull will probably be tweaked some more, I started working out the bulwarks and hull sides above the gun deck.  Here you can see that the main bulwarks have been cut from 1/4" basswood to the shape taken from the NMM draught.  From the transom and taffrail to a point just aft of the forecastle the ship's sides were a consistently flat shape.  There will be some curves sanded into them later, and they will be bent to match the perimeter of the deck, but for the internal support, the basswood pieces are more than adequate.
 

 
At this point they are still flat and straight.  They sit with a tumblehome of 13 degrees using the blocks and clamps to get and idea of what they will look like and how they will fit.
 
Here I am cutting the rabbet that the bulwarks will sit in.  Since I do not have a router, I cut the horizontal channel using the Dremel grinding disc.  I have the large circular saw blade, but the thought of freehanding the cut with the agressive teeth was a little too scary.  It took a good deal longer, but if I had slipped I figured that all I would get would be a sanding injury, not an opened vein.
 
Once the horizontal channel was ground, I used a wood chisel to make the vertical cuts that removed wood and established the rabbet.  It was cleaned up with sanding blocks, then the inside face was angled to match the tumblehome.
 

 
Back in Brooklyn I returned to the masts.  Here are the two topmast blanks.  As shown on the plans, the mast shaft is offset towards the aft edge of the square heel.  In the photo you can see that I used the Preac to cut down the forward face of the square blank. 
 

 
At the heel you can see it more clearly.
 

 
The port and starboard faces of the stick were cut down half the amount that the forward face was, which squared up the stick again.  Now I could mark it out, cut the tenon with the table saw, then plane it octagonal as was done with the lower mast.
 

 
The square stick was shaped to a cylinder.  Then the upper and lower edges of the wider section that holds up the trestletrees was cut on the table saw.  I whittled the wood down till it matched the cut channels.  Then the balance of the wood was removed with sanding drums, sanding sticks and sandpaper.
 


 
At the heel you can see the construction sequence clearly.  The three sides are reduced with the table saw, then shaped with the sanding drum to fair the offset round shaft to the square heel.
 

 
Once the heel is shaped, a fid hole is drilled through and squared up with a needle file.  Two mock sheaves are drilled and shaped on an angle that ultimately lines up with eyebolts on the cap.  These are for the leads of the lifting ropes.  The completely shaped topmasts were give a coat of finish and set aside.
 

 
The mast caps were shaped from the plans from pear.  They have the Continental humped form, with holes and grooves along the edges of the cap for the lifting ropes.  They were made from a forward and aft piece, with a notched seam held together with iron straps.  Straps also crossed the bottom, fore and aft faces of the cap.  Here is the blank with the hole for the topmast drilled.  The other has been shaped and the seam between the forward and aft pieces scribed as before.  The piece was finished and the straps glued on.
 

 
The straps were drilled for 0.020" iron wire pins.  These were inserted and cut off long before being glued.  Once the glue dried they were cut almost flat, then peened smooth.
 

 
Four eyebolts were drilled and mounted on the underside of the cap through the supporting straps and the caps were complete.
 

 
The topmast trestletrees were cut and shaped to match the plans.  The crosstrees were shaped from wider pieces of wood so they could splay out, then half-lapped into the trestletrees.  Holes for the shroud lines were drilled before they were tapered per the plans, then finished.
 

 
The topmast cap was cut and shaped much like the lower caps, but these were one piece units with iron straps that could be opened when the topgallant mast was taken down.  This is useful, because the truck at the masthead won't fit through the opening without opening the strap.
 

 
So here are all the components of both main masts.  The second topmast, the upper one in the photo, had a knot in it that took up the stain badly.  I will minimize it with a darker finish, but in the fullness of time it will be replaced and used as one of the spare spars that will fit along the open waist in the finished ship.
 

 
Here they are all set up.  From the deck the mast reaches some 31 inches to the truck.  This is going to be one mother of a fully rigged model.
 

 
There will probably be a longer break until my next post.  I will be building the foremasts, which are almost identical to the main masts, so no new techniques will be used.  I will be back when they are done.
 
Happy Holidays to all.
 
Dan
 
 
 

Hi all - thanks for looking in.
 
Another week, another report.  The hulls are not going as well as could be hoped, so here is another deour.
 
To go with the tops that were built last time, I am now making the masts.  I took a plank of rock maple and cut it down to the dimensions of the masts and spars that I measured from the Budriot plans.  They are cut as square sticks sized to the largest width of the ultimate mast or spar, then cut to length.  As long as I was cutting, I cut duplicates for the two models.  Here are most of them, from the 5/8” x 19” of the main mast, down to the 3/16” x  6” of the main stunsail boom.
 

 
These were all cut on a Hegner Mk 4 multi-tool.   It is a mid-sized tool that fits between the Preac and a full sized table saw, and is perfect for the size of the QAR models.  It has a table saw, router, disc sander, and a Jacobs chuck that can power a flexible shaft grinding tool or an add-on lathe unit.  I picked it up used and it came without an instruction manual, but I am figuring it out as I go.
 

 
After all of the pieces were cut, I turned first to the main mast.  It is a fairly simple tapered cylinder.  I planned to use the lathe on the Hegner, but it will only take 12” work pieces, not the 19” of the mast.  Without access to a larger one I went back to basics to carve the mast.
 
The first step was to cut the tenon for the mast cap while the blank was still square.  The blade height and rip fence were adjusted on the table saw and the tenon was quickly cut out on all four faces.  Then the blank was made octagonal.  This was done in the usual way by marking out the 2-3-2 divisions down the length of the blank with a dividers.  With a sharp block plane the corners were taken down to the lines, resulting in the eight sided stick on the right.
 

 
After the corners were marked up as sight guides, they were taken down and rounded with a coarse disc in a hand-held random orbit sander.  I didn't find it difficult to do this, since it only had to be accurate enough for a first approximation.  I paused frequently to mark up any high spots that I felt when I spun the blank between my fingers.  Then they were sanded down and the process was repeated till it felt round.
 

 
Once the round blank was achieved I went to the plans and determined that the diameter just under the cap was 7/16”.  This was marked onto the top of the mast using a circle guide.  Using a coarse sanding drum in the Dremel I took the mast down to that size in a sharp taper right at the top.  I would pull the drum towards me, grinding off a thin slice from the mast, then rotate the blank a little and repeat.  One corner of the top tenon was marked so I would not forget to make a complete circle before checking my progress.
 

 
From there I moved down the length of the blank: grinding a strip with the dremel and turning the blank a little bit, grinding and turning, grinding and turning.  In essence, I became a very slow lathe.  After doing this for a while I would smooth out any humps and hollows that developed by sanding the blank on a sheet of sandpaper which has been glued to a piece of plexiglass laid flat of the workbench. 
 

 
This process would have taken much longer if the mast had a straight taper from base to cap.  However, the plans had these two little beehive drawings which had to be the tapering diagrams.  They were only designated ‘a’ and ‘b’, but after comparing them to the plans I determined that the one on the left fits the three lower masts, while the one on the right fits only the bowsprit.
 

 
This tapering process continued for what seemed like a very long time until I could slide the mast up through the top with the masthead extending above the top as indicated on the plans.
 

 
Now the pieces to support the crosstrees and top were made.  Unlike English practice, there are no hounds, cheeks or bibs.  Instead, the French at the time used only a front fish that fit to the mast and slid up between the crosstrees.  A two-part bolster was fitted to each side and treenailed to the mast and to the front fish.  Here are the plans.
 

 
The fish was made out of pear and treenailed to the mast with walnut dowels for contrast.  The fish is also held in place by a pair of wooldings that lie in broad grooves carved into the face of the piece.
 

 
The bolsters are also pear and treenailed with walnut.  The only technical point here is that it was made in one piece, not two.  The staggered separation line was drawn on in pencil, then the back of a #11 blade was used to scribe the lines, which tattoos the pencil marks into the wood.
 

 
The mast is reinforced by alternating iron mast bands and wooldings.  The bands are made from 1/16” wide brass strips which are wrapped around the mast and sized to fit, then chemically blackened.  They are attached temporarily with glue before holes are drilled for metal pins.  Each end of the strip where they meet gets one, and a third is placed on the opposite side of the mast.    The pins are annealed iron wire which is inserted, glued, and clipped short before being peened smooth.  You can see one on the band near the bottom end of the front fish and another just below the light reflection on the other band.
 
Working in a large scale like 1/36 will allow me to build some details much as they are made in full sized practice.  The wooldings are a case in point.  A cherry strip was cut, soaked and bent around the mast before being glued in place.  3” rope (1” diameter) is wrapped 13 turns around the mast, packed tightly against the wood strip, and cinched tight.  A second cherry strip is added to the other side of the wrapping.  A painting of dilute PVA glue secures everything.  Once the glue is dry, everything was given a coat of the finish and rubbed down.
 

 
The top was fit back on the masthead to see that everything fit properly.  The inset shows how the front fish comes up to the level of the top of the crosstrees and takes the place of the spacer that, in English practice, separates the masthead from the heel of the topmast.   There is a third mast band that should be around the masthead just above the top, but the platform would not fit around it so it was removed until the top is permanently attached to the mast. [sharp eyes will also notice that the crowsfoot holes are towards the back of the mast.  This will be turned around before the top is attached].
 

 
So here are two of the shipyard workers just skylarking on the main top.  One seems to see a friend on the ground.
 

 
It’s a good thing that Dread Pirate Peter hasn’t spotted them.  He has some pointed questions to ask about the location of crowsfoot holes.  And why the bands and wooldings stop halfway down the mast.
 

 
Auf wiedersehen . . .
 
Dan
    

Thanks for all the nice compliments. 
 
Michael -  I will trade some of my carving skills for your metalworking expertise.  I just finished reading your log of the Bristol cutter and was blown away. 
 
Ken -  yes, the jaw is the major problem, but the width of the eye sockets also seemed too broad.  Here is the face after narrowing.  The lion is coming along nicely, but has a ways to go.  If my artistic skills are up to it, I want to get a ferocious expression, but that may be hoping for too much. 
 


 
After putting the lion to bed for a while, the next independent pieces that I turned to were the mast tops.  By 1710 in France they were circular but without the earlier raised rim.  They are built with the usual overlapping plank construction, a flat rim and radial cleats.  Here are Budriot’s plans, which are almost identical to Lees’ and Marquhardt’s.  This is the main top, but the fore is identical, other than being scaled down just a fraction.  The mizzen top is smaller, but the construction method for all three is identical.
 

 
To build them, the first piece to be made was the square filler piece.  It is just a piece of 1/8” thick scrap, sized to the lubber’s hole on the plans.  The cryptic symbol on this one is left over from its use as a jig for a previous model.  I cut this carefully on the Preac, as it will guide the rest of the construction.
 

 
The planks are 1mm thick birch, cut to width and long enough to span the diameter of the top.  On the real ship they would have been cut thick then carved down to make the lap joints, leaving a raised portion in the center.  Instead, I took a piece of the planking and cut sections the length of one side of the filler guide.  These were then glued to the center of the planks with the edges matched up.  When the glue was dry one edge was colored with a black marker.  A completed one is just above the filler guide piece.
 
The cleats in the lower left are mass produced since the fore and main tops take 16 each and the mizzen top takes 12.  I cut a rectangle of 1mm cherry sheet with the grain going in the short dimension.  Then I glued another strip on top of one edge with an overhang equal to the width of the rim with the grain also running in the short direction.  Now I could part off 1/16” wide cleats with a narrow blade in the table saw until I ran out of material. The cleats are left raw at this point and will be shaped and tapered later.
 
To start the platform construction, four of the lap planks are positioned around the filler guide.  Two of them (top/bottom) have the thick section turned up and the other two (left/right) have the section facing down.  They are glued at their overlaps and clamped tightly around the filler guide.
 

 
When they are solid it is easy to lay in the other down facing planks and glue them to the underneath planks and to each other.  After the clamps are removed the platform was flipped over and the remaining planks were glued across the first sets of planks.
 

 
The center of the filler piece was located and the outer perimeter of the top was drawn with a compass.  This was cut close on the band saw and left rough, to be taken down to the line on a disc sander after the rim is installed.
 
With the compass still set for the perimeter size, an arc was drawn on a rectangle of the cherry sheet, this time with the grain running the long way.  The compass was closed the width of the rim and a second curve was drawn inside the first but with the same center.  Three more pieces of cherry were stacked under the first and glued together at the upper corners and lower center only, not where the rim pieces will come from.
 

 
The inside curve was cut on the band saw then smoothed to the line with a sanding drum in the drill press.  The outer curve was cut large, to be sanded down after installation on the platform.  After completing the second cut the pieces separated automatically.  The rim pieces were cut to one quarter of the circumference of the platform using the plans to make the initial cuts, the fine tuning being done during assembly.
 
With the platform, rims and cleats made, I assembled them with neutral pH PVA glue.  Care has to be taken to see that the cleats are equally spaced and the rim pieces match up to each other, but otherwise construction is pretty straightforward.
 
The shafts of the cleats were made overlong so their tails extended into the lubber’s hole.  These tails were clipped off and the shafts tapered from the rim to the hole with a flap-wheel sander.
 
All of the corners and edges were cleaned up and rounded with a sanding stick then the top was given its first coat of finish.
 

 
Here I used Floquil clear flat, but with a few drops of my stain mixture (50% Natural, 25% Cherry, 25% Early American) added.  The finish enhanced the color of the cherry while the light stain brought the tone and hue of the birch into the same color family.  It even slightly enhanced the grain of the birch, as if it were older wood.  This is exactly the effect that I was looking for.  I think that I will be using this color palette a lot as the build continues.
 
The trestletrees and crosstrees were cut to length from 3mm x 6mm pear.  I used the Preac to cut the notches in the trestletrees to accept the crosstrees.  Tapers were sanded on all eight arms as shown on the plans, then they were installed on the underside of the platforms.
 

 
Holes for the crowsfoot lines were drilled through the forward rim.  I spaced them a bit closer together at the center to account for the anticipated narrowing effect as the top curves away from the euphroe.  I’ll see how that works out when it is rigged.
 
The elongated holes for the upper deadeye strops were roughly cut by drilling two holes side by side then using the drill bit to nibble out the wood between them.
 

 
Finally, I indicated the nails that hold the two layers of planking together where they overlap.  As with the boats, these were indicated by drilling shallow holes with a #80 (0.012”) drill.  A wash of stain mix was flooded over the holes and immediately wiped off.  It darkened the holes without changing the color of the planks.  This is a technique that I will use again as well.
 

 
There will be additional holes to mount a number of blocks under the tops, but I have not studied the rigging plan enough yet to locate them.  For now, here are the six tops ready for storage till needed.
 

 
I'm up in the country this weekend, so hopefully I will soon have some progress to share on the hulls.
 
Dan
 
  

Hi again -
 
Good to see and talk to some of you at the NRG conference.  Had a good time and the speakers on Saturday were great.
 
Not much to report.  A good deal of work went into doing the second boat, but it replicates the building of the first one, so it was not the subject of a build log entry.  Here are the two, side by side.  The second was made of cherry, so it is much darker than the first.  Since they will be on separate models that will not be displayed together, they do not have to be identical.  I actually prefer the first.  The lighter color of the wood lets the caulking and fastening details stand out a bit more.  But the darker one is closer to the color of old, unpainted boats that I have seen. 
 



 
I won't get to work on the hulls for another week, so I am starting on the figureheads.
 
The Advice Prize draught does not have a figurehead of any kind.  Although the actual ship probably did, the Admiralty was not interested in decorations.  They just took off the hull lines so that later English ships could benefit from any foreign design advances.  Budriot has a lion for Le Mercure, shown here.
 


 
This is going to be the basis of my figureheads, but a number of others are being studied.  Here are three from models in the NMM collection.
 



 
All of these are too florid and intricate, I believe, for what would have been a pretty basic ship.  I am also studying the lion that was carved for the Gotheborg replica ship. 
 

 
Finally, I am using a cast lion fitting from a ship model company that I used to own.  It is the wrong size so I can't simply cast two duplicates, but it should be a good carving aid since I can turn it in my hand to get any view that I want.
 

 
Construction began with three pieces of hard pear wood glued together.  All are 3/8" thick, with the outer ones much longer than the middle one, forming a channel that is the width of the stem.  A properly sized copy of the Budriot lion was printed out and glued to one side.  The basic outline was then cut on a band saw.
 

 
The saw marks gave me horizontal landmark for the eyes, nose and mouth and they were pencilled in.  The lower body is narrower than the mane, so some of the wood was band sawn off.  The crown was similarly defined in a rough way.  A false stem of basswood was made which has a tight friction fit between the lion's legs.  It will act as a handle and will support the fragile feet and legs as the carving progresses.
 

 
Next time the carving begins.
 
Be well
 
Dan
 

The stove is ready for paint:
 

 

 

 
The best scale effect for the lining plate lattices was pedestrian typing paper cut into narrow strips and CA’d in-place.  I sanded coarse scratches into the planking, so that the exterior will pick up the Van Dyke Brown distressing well.
 
I still need to make the “metal” deck sheathing that goes beneath the stove sleepers, but that is a simple thing.
 

 
I’m close to being ready for paint on the aft, starboard bulwark.  I took even greater care in fitting this last piece because I did not want to deal with any putty at all, on the outside seam.  Paint touch-up was a real pain for the three bulwarks prior.
 
More to come!  Thank you for your interest and for stopping by.

Assembly of the steering-stands
 
Progress has been slowed down somewhat due to travels and bread-winning work …
 
Much time has been spent painting various details, often beginning with a basic layer applied by airbrush and then detailing with a hairbrush. In many cases several coats of paints and washes are needed. In particular parts that are meant to resemble varnished or oiled wood will need a base-coat followed by washes of darker paint and again followed by several coats of varnish to increase the ‘depth’ of the colour. ‘Oiled’ wood is finished off with Vallejo satin varnish, while ‘varnished’ wood is finished off with a 1:1 mixture of Vallejo gloss and satin varnish. The satin varnish is not glossy enough to simulate varnished wood.
 
Below are a couple of shots of the assembly of the two steering stands from the laser-cut parts produced earlier. The steering wheels and the brackets are painted in Prince August (Vallejo) transparent ‘mahogany’, while the gratings were given a base-coat of Prince August (Vallejo) ‘wood’, followed by washes of Schmincke ‘ochre’ to simulate teak.
 
I have to take some better close-up shots, but the steering-rope leads into flared down-pipes fashion from 0.6 mm OD/0.4 mm ID brass tubes by widening one end.
 
 
 

 
BTW, the steering rope looks a bit like an anachronism in 1876, when steering chains and even steam-steering was available. However, it seems that warships have retained this simple mechanisms for a while, presumably because it was easier to repair battle damage off-shore.
 
To be continued ....

Thanks, gentlemen. These antique small machines are actually a secondary hobby, which justified kind of the expenses  ...
 
**********************
 

Fitting out the barbette
 
As small update: I have further kitted out the barbette with the ladders that allowed the gun-crew to scramble over its sides into it and with the racks for the ready-ammunition. Also installed were the gratings over the stairs down into the crew-accommodation below the barbette (which also housed the cranking mechanisms for turning the gun) and over the hatch through which the shells would be lifted up. These gratings are somewhat conjectural, as the existing drawings could also be interpreted as showing stairs. However, I assume that hatch down to the turning mechanism must have been covered to prevent crew from tumbling down, but also open to allow voice communication with the guys cranking away. For the access to the shell-room, the grating must have been hinged in some way. There was a small gallows-like crane above it to allow the shells being lifted up.
 
Also, there is a box in one corner with a kind of rack attached to it. Their function cannot be deducted from the drawings and the hand-written explanations are not readable in the scans available to me.
 
 
Barbette with shell-racks, ladders and hatchways installed
 
The next step will be to install the various portholes in the deckhouse and the hull. Their actual look is quite well-known, as one specimen has been recovered some years ago from the wreck of SMS SALAMANDER off a Dutch beach and which is now in private hands and of which I obtained pictures. However, on the model only a narrow brass ring will be visible from the outside. They were actually very small, only about 16 cm in diameter, which translates to 1 mm on the model.
 
My idea was to dip thin-walled pieces of brass tube into Acrifix 192, as was done for the skylights, but this Plexiglas glue is too viscous to penetrate into the 0.8 mm diameter opening of the brass tubes. Have to figure out a different way …
 
To be continued ....

I finished up the fcastle rail on the starboard side.  That left only a few fittings to make which are all added to the fcastle rail.   These include the spanshackle cleat.  This is made in three laser cut layers.   It will be painted black and positioned on the rail following the plans.  Under this cleat are two posts to help support the rail.
 

There is also the "cat block" .  This is laser cut and is 1/4" wide.  But you will need to sand a curve into it that matches the curve of the rail.  If you saved the laser cut sheet for the rail this is perfect for tracing the shape.  Then sand it carefully to match.  Insert the small sheave and paint it black.
 

The last remaining fitting is another sheave as part of cleat....I am having a brain fart and recall its name currently.  It is positioned along the bulwarks on the inboard side of the spanshackle cleat.  This has been laser cut also and all you need to do is add the small sheave disc.  Then paint it black...but below the caprail it should be painted red.
 
You can see it in the photos below.
 


In addition I have added all the eyebolts and the spanshackles.   The spanshackles are made from 22 gauge SQUARE wire.  If you cant find any square wire you can use regular 22 gauge wire.  Use the plans to find the locations for the eyebolts and the size for the spanshackle.
 
This pretty much finishes the fcastle details and chapter 9. The only thing I have yet to do is the cover boards for the stack opening.  Those should be made out of any scrap 3/64" thick strips or sheet.  This wont be laser cut because everyones stack will be positioned slightly different.   
 
Some overall pictures of the hull up to this point.  Next I will start chapter 10 which is finishing up the qdeck details and rail.
 
 
 

 

@druxey
Hello,
thanks for the interest and the nice comment, and all the others also for the many LIKES.
 
Continuation: Garnet tackel - Palan d'etai
To check that the garnet tackels do not collide with pendants and guys, I attached them provisionally before final assembly. As already described, there is nothing in the monograph of J. Boudriot about the attachment of the granet tackle to the tops. Accordingly, I am guided by the representations in the Atlas du Génie maritime and by the photos from the original model. Accordingly, it can be seen that the attachments of the two garnet tackels to the tops were made on the starboard side.


In the next picture a single block for guidance and the pendant with the tackle can be seen in detail:


After the garnet tackle installation is complete, I will begin lashing the chaloupe and pinasse. The exact details of this still need final clarification.
To be continued ...