jpalmer1970

9 hours ago, Thukydides said:

What is the brand and how do you like it? Is it very precise? 

It is from a company called Arrowmax. They sell a couple of different versions of the drill and you can choose to get the drill stand with it or not. I find it very useful and much better suited to our purposes than a dremel or other drill like that. The Arrowmax I have only rotates at 550rpm so it is much better for drilling small holes compared to the several thousand rpm of the dremel. It also takes 2.35mm drill bits and the set it came with seem to be pretty solid - I have only broken one of them and that was entirely my fault. They are much better quality than the cheap PCB mini drill sets you get on eBay. 

I bought my drill from Amazon but I see the prices there are ridiculously expensive now but you can get them much more cheaply Here.

The work on the build this week mainly focussed on some of the many little metalwork fixings on the deck. I firstly collected together all of the metal fixtures supplied with the kit such as the cleats and the stanchions etc and gave them all a spray coat of grey primer. I then separated these out into two groups - one that needs to be pained black and the other that needs to be painted a brass colour. The group that need to be blackened were then given a spray coat of satin black paint and then a coat of satin varnish. Hopefully I can paint the other group of pieces with the brass paint this weekend. I also have to paint some of the copper Amati ringbolts a brass colour too, so I will do all of that together.

There are various brass structures the instructions call pinracks which I constructed out of 1mm and 1.50mm brass wire. One pair of pinracks is also made out of 2mm wide brass strip and each holds two belaying pins. Interestingly, the bottom section of the belaying pins is only just under 2mm in diameter so I decided to pare those down a little so that I still had some metal left in the 2mm sheet after I had drilled the holes for the pins! I used the mini drill press for drilling the holes for the belaying pins and the eyebolts that secure it to the deck. I started with a 0.50mm drill bit for all of the holes and then enlarged the ones for the belaying pins by working up in size through a variety of drill bits to 1.3mm. The brass strip was then carefully bent into shape and the belaying pins put in place.

Other things that were constructed at this time include the fore sheet bar and also the wooden supports for the binnacle and the bowsprit knightheads/support. I have also started gluing some of the cleats onto the outside of the cockpit coaming and also attached the mooring rope guides at the stern and prow. All of this is pretty fiddly work and takes me a surprisingly long time!

There are lots of eyebolts that need fixing into the deck but I am holding off on gluing those in place just yet until I work out which ones are actually going to be used for the rigging. I have drilled the holes for them but I want to keep the deck as clear as possible whilst the rigging is being undertaken and little things like eyebolts can easily get in the way and cause snags etc - they can easily be inserted into the holes in the deck later on. 

The pair of pinracks and the bowsprit knightheads haven't been attached to the deck in the picture above, and are only standing on the deck to show where they will eventually be placed.

I also obtained a length of 4mm diameter Tasmanian oak dowel and so I was able to roughly cut out the sizes needed for the bowsprit and various spars. I am looking forward to tapering these and the masts once I have all of this metalwork safely in place.

Well done - you are a brave man to flip the model over to work on the rudder at this stage of the build ! Micropore medical tape can be used as a cloth type material too - I used some of that for the tiller cover.

I'm looking forward to seeing the next steps in your build.

I have one of the Arrowmax mini electric drills and stand and find it to be very useful

https://am-smart.com/en-au/collections/hot

With the hull painting completed I was able to return to a bit of construction work. I had previously attached the propellor to a thin dowel and so this was now glued into the hull. I was also able to attach the rudder - the short nub at the top of the rudder was glued into the hole in the hull and a thin brass pin was fitted through the bottom of the rudder and into the hull. A dab of the green paint covered up the end of the brass pin.

Now it was time to move back to the deck. The instructions call for thin pieces of walnut to be added to the inside of the main hatch and the fore hatch to form ledges onto which the hatch covers can be mounted. The walnut strip is fixed in place so that the top of the strips sits 2mm above the deck. For some reason the middle hatch doesn't need these supports, at least as far as the instructions indicate. It may be because the cover for this hatch is the butterfly hatch and perhaps the walnut may show through more easily through the brass bars? It isn't clear if that is the reason but I stuck with the instructions and did as I was told.

I then soaked the two pieces of the cockpit coaming in warm water for a short while so that they could be bent into a slight curve and mounted them to the deck via the three slots previously made there. The main hatch was also placed on the deck and weights and clamps were used to keep the whole structure together whilst the coamings dried and took on the shape needed.

After the coamings had dried the whole structure was removed from the deck and the coaming pieces were given a coat of wipe on poly. After this had dried the whole structure was then glued in place and weights and clamps reattached to hold it in place whilst the glue set. The middle hatch was also glued into position. At this stage the fore hatch is only sitting in place on the walnut ledges as I still have to fit the metal skylight ring to it before the final fitting can be undertaken.

I also have started considering the construction of the masts and yards. The kit provides various sized walnut dowels for these but in my case the 6mm walnut dowel that is required for the mainmast was rather bent. Luckily I have some 6mm Tasmanian Oak dowel which I thought I might use instead - and this is straight! I cut some lengths for the mainmast, topmast and boom from this. I will need to taper and resize these on the lathe in due course. The other yards and masts need a 4mm dowel and I'll see if I can find another oak dowel to use for these. 

Coming along nicely!

I continued working on the hull painting by masking the whole hull except for the white band. It was difficult to tell if the line left by the tape in the white paint was raised or indented so I decided that the best first step was simply to sand the whole of the white section. I approached it carefully with a soft sanding stick with #400 grit paper and I soon found that this evened out the surface nicely. A quick clean up to get rid of any dust was followed by another two coats of white spray paint. This gave me a nice smooth white section and I was pleased to see that when I removed the masking tape I hadn't made any marks in either the green or black sections of the hull.

As mentioned previously there were a few chips at the top of the hull in the black paint and so I touched those up with a small paintbrush and then remasked off the deck area and gave the whole hull (and the rudder) three coasts of gloss varnish. I was pretty pleased with how this all turned out and was very grateful that the varnish hadn't spoilt the previous paintwork. It was a great relief to have the painting and varnishing work finished as this isn't something I'm confident with. My next model is going to be just wood and WOP!

So back to woodwork! The next step was to install the gunwale rails around the edge of the deck. These are 3mm wide pieces of mahogany and I used the plywood former that the false deck had come on as a guide to the curve that needed to be set into the rails. Using a little water and the heat from a travel iron I was able to bend the two rails to the approximate shape required (they sprang back a little bit when released from the clamps holding them to the guide).

I wanted to use PVA glue to attached the rails to the hull but I couldn't work out an easy way to clamp the rails to the gunwales whist the glue set that didn't risk marring the hull or the deck. I contemplated using rubber bands but decided I didn't want to risk my nice paintwork! In the end I decided the best way to fix the rails was with CA - though I try to avoid this where possible. The forward section of the rails is pretty straight so I glued that part first and held it in place by hand whilst the glue quickly set.

I then applied more CA down the rest of the rail, holding each section in place with my fingers until the whole of the rail was glued into position. Each rail was then given a coat of WOP so that they matched the rest of the mahogany pieces on the deck.

The instructions now call for you to install the skylights and cabin and coamings etc on the deck but I decided that whilst the deck was completely accessible it might be a good time to pre-drill all of the various holes required for pins, ringbolts and stanchions etc. The ringbolts supplied with the kit are made from 0.7mm brass but to my eye they look a little thick and chunky. I have some Amati copper eyebolts that are only 0.5mm thick and these seemed to be more in scale to me. I will of course have to decide whether to leave them the copper colour or blacken them or even paint them brass colour - I was recently able to purchase some Vallejo brass paint. The pictures I have found of Pen Duick online seem to show all of the metalwork on deck to be that greeny grey colour that bronze(?) goes after being out in the elements for so long. Anyway that is a decision for another day.

One other feature of the deck to consider at this point is the installation of what the instructions call the deck windows. These are little rectangular skylights set into the deck to allow a little more natural light into the cabin. In the kit these 'windows' are represented by little rectangles of grey metal - practically the least useful thing you could use to represent a window.  

I certainly don't feel that I want to use these in my model as they will just look like four lumps of metal set into the deck. There is a possibility of replacing them with little pieces of acrylic or perspex but I am not sure about that either to be honest. It would be possible to cut out the appropriate shape in the deck planking and fit in a thin piece of perspex but this will then only sit on the false deck and I'm not sure whether it will end up looking like a window or not. I'm not keen on cutting through the false deck too as I think it will then be difficult to glue the perspex squarely in place without having anything to support it from underneath. I am tempted to leave the 'windows' off the build entirely at this time - but again that is something that I can reconsider further down the build.

Here is the current state of the build.

On 10/13/2023 at 5:22 AM, allanyed said:

I did look up Sam Willis and he appears to be a prolific writer with good reviews.

He is also the presenter of the Mariner's Mirror, the podcast produced by The Society For Nautical Research and Lloyds Register Foundation.

Was it a secret research trip? Will we see a Vanguard Models cruise liner next year? 😁

Looking very good. Top work!

2 hours ago, BobG said:

The cockpit coamings have a very slight inward bend to them and the laser cut wood pieces were flat and stiff.

Yes they aren't easy pieces to fit. I was lucky and had cut the slots in what appears to be the right line, I was just a little out on the start points for some of the slots so I had to lengthen them a little but the extra gap is covered by the coaming. Soaking or heating the pieces to get the curve is a good idea. 

10 hours ago, Thukydides said:

If it is an indent what you could do is brush on some varnish on the area. This will level and fill the area. Then sand and mask and paint again.

 

In either case give it a few days before trying anything. It is looking really good.

Thanks Thukydides. The line appears to be an slight indent so I will give your varnish trick a go. I am grateful to you for you advice on this.

I continued with work on the Pen Duick by cutting out the six slots in the rear of the deck into which the cockpit coming sits. I had roughly marked these out when i planked the deck but now that I had constructed the main companionway hatch I was able to see exactly where the coaming would sit. Some care fun work with the mini chisels, the #11 blade and some fine sanding sticks enabled me to cut out all six slots.

Then it was time for more painting! The next job was to mark off the area for the green coat to the lower part of the hull. Again I used a combination to Tamiya tape and 'tape for curves' to mark out the edge between the white and green sections. I also used the laser level along the sides of the hull but this didn't work as well on the stern section due the angle of the hull there and so I had to eyeball the curve around the stern and hope that I got it right. After a bit of backwards and forwards with the tape I eventually found what I thought was the right curve. I used Vallejo Model Air 71.331 Faded Cockpit Emerald Green for the lower hull - I believe this is the same colour as used by @BobG on his build. I applied with paint with my airbrush and was pleased to see this went on pretty smoothly as far as I can tell. I am a real newbie as far as airbrushing goes and am still learning my way but I was fairly pleased with how it went.

There are of course a few areas that need touching up before I can add the varnish coat but that is only to be expected. There is a tiny tiny green mark in the white section on one side of the prow but hopefully I can clean that up. I did note that the making tape I used when I applied the black paint has left a little impression mark in the white band and I'm not quite sure what that happened as I left the white hull for several days before I moved onto the black. I am pondering giving the white section another coat of paint but I'm not sure how well I will be able to mask off the green and black sections and so I could end up making things worse. Maybe I can give the white section a very light sand to clean up the marks instead? There are also a few nicks in the black paint at the top of the bulwarks but that should be an easy fix (hopefully).

Thanks Thukydides. It is more luck than skill I think! And there is still plenty of opportunity for me to mess it up!

3 hours ago, Thukydides said:

When you say it is tempting to secure everything too tightly are you referring to the final tension or just that you tightened stuff to much when you were first putting it on?

Yes the final tension when you secure the shrouds to the hull. And also with any of the rigging and stays and lines generally. It is easy to pull the masts or spars out of alignment with even a tiny bit too much tension. Even after I tied off the rigging I left extra length on all the lines and only finally cut them to size once all the rigging was set up to account for any late changes I may have needed to make.

The shrouds look great, though I think larboard and port are different terms for the same side of the boat?

I really enjoyed this part of the build. It is tempting to secure everything too tightly though, at least it was for me, so do watch out for that when you do eventually get everything fixed in place.

I remember now why about 40 years ago I gave up making plastic model kits – I just don’t really enjoy painting that much! I’m not sure whether I don’t like painting because I’m not very good at it, or whether I’m not very good at painting because I don’t like it. Either way, I was reminded of this during all of the time I have spent painting the Pen Duick for the last week or so… 🫤

I used a spray can to give the whole hull a covering of white, even though only a very small section of this will eventually be on show. I tried using very light coats but of course at some point I was just too heavy handed and had a section that had a run in it. So I had to sand that back and there were also various parts that I thought needed smoothing out a little more, so between coats I occasionally added a little filler in small places. More and more light coats (I learned my lesson!) were added until I was happy with the coverage and the finish. All of this took a week or more to achieve given that the somewhat unseasonal early heat we have been having here in Australia limited the times of day in which I could paint. 

Eventually I was able to turn to marking off the hull to apply the black section of paint at the top of the hull. The kit instructions or plans don’t really give too much information on the positioning of the demarcation lines between the black, white and green sections of the hull but they do seem to suggest that the central white band spans the area where the top of the rudder meets the hull. I looked a few images online of the Pen Duick undergoing restoration and found a different answer there. In those images the white band is positioned above the rudder / hull meeting point. I decided to go with this second option and set out to mark the top of the white band using a pencil waterline marker. However, it soon became apparent that this wasn’t going to work in this case because of the almost horizontal plane of the underside of the hull at the stern of the model. My pencil holder had no ability to angle the pencil downwards and could therefore only draw a horizontal line on a basically vertical surface – fine for the waterline of an 18^th century frigate but no good at all for a 19^thcentury racing yacht. I decided to go high tech and used a laser level to project the line onto the hull and then marked it out using Tamiya tape and a special 'tape for curves' at the stern.

After masking off the rest of the hull with more tape and some plastic sheeting I then added the black paint to the area at the top of the hull. You will also see from these images that I had by now also cut and fitted the 4mm brass bar to fit into the pedestals on which the model will stand. I am never quite sure when is best to remove masking tape when painting models? Leave it until the paint has dried or take it off as soon as there is enough paint is on the model? I hedged my bets and took the tape off about 10 minutes after applying the final coat of black – again I had applied several light coats. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I managed to achieve a pretty good clean line between the black and white paint.

Setting the model on the pedestals on a temporary base board I then started taking off the masking on the deck. I had my fingers crossed that no paint, spray filler or wood filler had managed to get onto the deck. For most of the length of the hull the bulwarks do provide a very effective barrier against this but at the rear of the deck there is no bulwark at all. Removing the masking went well and whilst there are a couple of small places at the stern, especially on the port side, that needs a bit of attention, I was pleased to see that the deck was still nice and clean. I did lose a very small dot of black paint on the starboard side where the cut out for the bowsprit lies but this should be an easy touch up later on hopefully.

In between all of the painting and waiting to do painting I had had time to progress with working on the deck fittings. I made up the section comprising the main hatch and companion way and then added mini hinges to both of the butterfly hatches.

The image below shows some of the deck fittings simply placed on the deck – nothing will be permanently attached for some while yet until the rest of the hull painting has been finished.

I believe the poles are stanchions and I guess the rope may have a specific name but rope seems to work 🙂 Do be careful of them though, they are likely very easy to catch on things when you are busy rigging. I left them to the very end of the build to avoid damaging them.

It is a fantastic build and I'm sure your masting and rigging will be of an equally high standard.

Thanks HOF. I am still unsure whether I will add the sails or not. If I do, I will attempt to make them from scratch as the kit supplied ones are undersized. I am also missing one sail from the kit so to have a full set I would need to make one at least. The chances of me finding material that matches the kit cloth is slim so I'd probably end up making a whole set.

I found an interesting site online earlier dedicated to historic naval fiction here which looks interesting. I don't think it has been updated for a while but it may introduce you to some new authors or series of books.

Thanks Bob. Yes, the instructions are pretty woeful regarding the rigging. I am hoping the collection of diagrams in the plans gets me through it. I have one or two other guides to help but not being a sailor does mean that sometimes these don't make a lot of sense when you aren't sure exactly what things are for in practice. 

I have been continuing to work on the hull, adding more filler in specific places, sanding and repriming to check progress. There have been a couple of rounds of this since the last update and I am getting closer to being pleased with the finish.

After the last sanding session I sprayed the hull with the white paint I will use as a top coat to see how this went on. I added a couple of light coats and it seemed pretty good but there were still a couple of places that I thought could be improved. I have since sanded back these areas a little and will respray with more coats of the white paint over the coming weekend.

As a change of scene I have also now started work on some of the deck fittings. The Artesania Latina written instructions basically give up at this point and simply indicate that you should follow the pictures to see how everything goes together 😃 Luckily it is all fairly straightforward and the images are clear enough to follow along. The deck fittings are precut in a couple of sheets of sapelli and the first task is to remove all of the char. I found the Proxxon pen sander to be very good at this - I have some of the Proton sanding pads but you can easily use normal sanding paper in an appropriate grit by using double sided tape to hold it on the sanding head.

I constructed the forward hatch and gave it a coat of wipe on ploy which brought out a lovely deep colour in the wood. The manual images suggest just gluing two thin pieces of brass strip to the hatch to simulate the hinge but I decided to try to make this a little more appealing by gluing a thin brass wire across the centre of the hinge and drilling a hole at each end of the hinge into which brass pins were inserted. Hopefully it looks a little more like a working hinge - if you glance at it quickly!

There is a round skylight fixture that needs inserting into the central hole in the hatch but the kit supplied version is a grey metal piece. I will need to paint it a brass colour to match the rest of the metalwork on the deck fittings so I will have to source some Vallejo paint to do that.

I then moved onto the butterfly hatch and also decided to enhance this a little too. The AL instructions simply indicate that you should add the two rectangular skylight frames to the top of the hatch framework. However, because the hatch framework is angled you are left with a little v shaped gap down the middle of the hatch where the skylight frames meet at an angle. Looking at images of the real Pen Duick it was clear that the actual yacht has a central bar running the length of the hatch into which the two skylight frames are fixed by three hinges - it is a butterfly hatch after all! I therefore added this central struct to my frame and beveled the edges of the two skylight frames so that they butted up snugly to the central strut. I will add hinges in the same way I did for the forward hatch but I can't do it in exactly the same way as the real yacht simply due to space constraints caused by the fact that on the model the wooden pieces holding the brass bars are greatly over scale. I will add 4 hinges to my model hatch rather than the 3 on the actual yacht - 1 inside each of the end bar holders and 1 either side of the central bar holder.

The 1mm brass bar supplied with the kit comes in a coil (?) but luckily I had some straight lengths in my stash of materials. It was easy to cut the brass bar to length using the bar cutter and a razor saw - and that method also ensure the lengths are consistent and avoids the problem of the ends getting squashed when side cutters or other similar tools are used.

I imagine it would be possible to straighten the coiled bar supplied with the kit but it was certainly easier to just use straight pieces to begin with! The butterfly hatch needs a coat of wipe on poly and then I will insert and secure the brass bars.

Great work - using jigs like that really helps make everything look consistent which adds a great deal of professionalism to the build.

Welcome !!

I find flytying thread to be very useful for this sort of task. There is lots of choice of colour and thickness and it is pretty easily available from online fishing stores. Size 8/0 or thinner seems pretty good for this scale. Guterman Mara thread is also useful too.