dunnock

Thanks everyone for the likes and Chris, Thuky, Jacques and Ross for your very kind compliments David

On the home straight. The four strakes above the wale are straightforward I made the plansheer from the basswood sheet. I placed the scarf joint a little further back than stated in the instructions, at frame 4 to balance the curve of each piece. At this point I ran out of sufficient sheet to finish the quarter deck outer planking and wale so used some stripwood I had in stock. The outer layer of the wale was cut from a sheet of 1.5mm boxwood. It took several soakings in hot water and bending to shape before it would lie easily around the bow section and I had to use a drop of CA gel to fix it at the stem. I sprung a couple of planks on the hull while clamping the after section of the wale but luckily they were easily re-fixed. The quarter deck rail and transom are made from lime stripwood and a trim of 1mm square section black boxwood completes the build. More sanding and 5 coats of shellac have been applied to finish off the hull. The hull was removed from the building board quite easily , helped by brushing IPA around the frames And the remains of the paper scraped and sanded away. Despite initial misgivings about whether I had miscalculated the position of the garboard and broad strakes, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and is a great improvement over my previous attempts at hull planking. So overall I enjoyed this project and learnt some useful lessons for future modelling. I think that in future I will stick to tapering and edge-bending for the inner layer but, even though more time consuming, I’ll persevere with the spiling technique on the outer layer in the hope of improving further. All that remains is to find a suitable permanent mounting board and frame and get permission to put it on show somewhere in the house. Next up will be Vanguard Models' HMS Speedy. Thanks all for taking the time to look in David

Absolutely stunning Jason. It's good to see you back in the shipyard. David

Absolutely stunning BE. Your models and detailed logs are always an inspiration David

Planking continued slowly. Plenty of discarded planks and removal of poorly fitting ones but hull is now completed up to the first layer of the wale. A stealer was added at the stern at the junction of the first two bands of planking and a drop plank at the bow one strake further up. First layer of the wale Planking now complete up to the wale Looking at the hull overall, I think results have improved as I worked my way up the hull but that is the purpose of the excercise. There will be quite a lot of cleaning up to achieve a half decent result. It would have been better if I had sanded back frame 5a because it has caused a high spot at the bow. There is a similar situation at frame G. Maybe I can make these less obvious in finishing. The instructions say that now would be a good time to begin sanding so I will begin by scraping the hull followed by sanding with 120 and 200 grits. David

Very nice rigging on the guns Andrew. Not horrified at all by the lack of hooks, just impressed that you attempted to rig such small blocks. David

Looking very nice Simon. Good recovery on the planking and the hull now has a very nice finish David

I laid out the tape for the garboard strake and although the line looked good to me, I found that when it came to cutting the strake out and fixing it, the forward end finished too high. I replaced it so that the strake finished just aft of frame 5 rather than forward of it. This position corresponds more closely to Toni’s build log. The broad strake was more or less a repeat of the garboard strake. Initially I made it too wide at the forward end, removed it, thinned it down and replaced it. Most of the planks have been removed, cleaned up and replaced at least once until I was happy with their fit and placement. Perhaps by the end of the build, I'll be getting it right first time! I have also installed the first strake of the first belt of planking. I think everything looks OK however, the bottom of the stern frames look higher up the deadwood than in the photos in the manual.

Thanks James that's a very nice model. Thanks Eric for the nice comment and for putting me right ... My apologies to Toni for making wrong assumptions I fitted the counter yesterday which highlighted the need for a bit more fairing at the stern and marked the position of the wale. I'll post some pictures later. David

I’ve all but finished Vanguard Models’ HM Trial – just waiting for the flag painter (my daughter) to find time to paint the ensign – so I’ve resumed work on the half hull. No improvement in the weather but there’s not too much sawdust being created so I’m continuing indoors. As I work on the fairing, I’m finding that frames that I thought were OK turn out to be low. I don’t think that I have gone too far on the fairing because the back edges are untouched. I added shims to the lower parts of frames 4a and 5. I have also found that some of the brace pieces between frames are not as solid as I thought so I had to re-glue some of them. I think that a lot of the problem is that mounting the hull on foam-board as suggested is not a solid base. The foam-board is flexible and individual frames can move relative to the others. If I were to make another half hull model, I would use something more solid as a building board. I’m happy with the fairing which took a few hours over several days and I can now mark the wale and begin planking. David

Thanks Andrew. I thought that the anchor ring was a bit under sized so made a new one. This necessitated drilling out the hole, by which time there is precious little shank left. If you go with the kit anchor ring, it will be more robust.

Thanks for the likes and all the very kind compliments. Anchors I attempted to make the anchors back in November but broke both of them when trying to fit the anchor rings. The replacements arrived soon after but left it a while before having another go. Despite being as careful as possible, I still broke another anchor when trying to insert the ring. Thankfully Chris had sent me three replacements and the final one was drilled out and the ring inserted without any damage. Puddening of the ring still took a lot of care. I used 0.45mm dark brown rope and 0.1mm thread for the seizings. The cat block is a 4mm double block with hook made from 0.7mm brass wire and blackened. The iron band is represented by heat shrink tubing. The cat block is rigged with 0.35mm rope. It is tied off at the inner eyebolt on the cathead and threads through the block and both sheaves in the cathead and tied off at a cleat on the inboard side of the cathead. The anchor is lashed to a convenient timberhead by the shank painter and at the arm. The ensign will be the final touch which will be added as soon as my Flag Maker has space in her busy schedule! Thanks for looking in David

A quick update. I’ve spent the last few days making hanks and tidying the deck. I have used the method of wrapping rope around pins arranged in an elipse but have always had difficulty making the hanks hang realistically, especially thinner ropes. I now prefer the method published by @carlo_l How I make rope hanks, fast and easy technique - My JIG - Model Tips and Tricks and Making Jigs - Model Ship World™ although I change it slightly by tying off the hank and then making the loop. The coils are made in the normal way by laying rope down on the sticky side of masking tape and fixing with dilute pva. David

Thanks Andrew and Thukydides for your kind words. I will be pressing my daughter into flag making as the very last step, although she doesn't know it yet! Kate made such a good job of jacks and ensigns for Fly and Diana that she is designated Chief Flag-Maker. 😃 David

Thanks for the likes and encouraging comments. Forward Braces Looking at the main yard braces, the plans show they are tied off to the bowsprit bitts but I’d tied off the inhauler to one of them. I reviewed all my bowsprit rigging against the photos of the model in the RMG and other references. In the photo its not clear that an inhauler is present and Marquardt refers to Lever saying that on small ships, an inhauler was not rigged. For this reason (and for expediency), I have decided to remove the inhauler. The main yard braces are 0.66 times the appropriate stay. I used 0.6mm rope. They are spliced around the end of the bowsprit, lead through the brace pendants and back through the outer sheaves of the triple block and tied off at the forward bitts. The topsail yard braces, using, 45mm rope, are spliced around the yard arm, run through 3mm blocks hooked into the eyebolts at the cranse and run back to the crossbeam of the forward bitts. I left both sets of braces slack but some more work is needed to make them hang satisfactorily. I use dilute pva and weight the rope along its length with paper clips. Aft Braces Prompted by Andrew, I considered the aft braces. There are none shown on the museum model of Trial but all the of the cutters photographed by @tkay11 show them fitted and Marquardt also lists them. I decided to fit them. Looking at the photos of the 1763 cutter, the aft braces are shown threaded through a sheathed hole in the stern and I’ve tried to copy this effect. An eyebolt is glued in far aft and two holes drilled in the side forward of the eyebolt. The eyes of ringbolts are Ca’d over the holes to add to the effect. The braces are rigged in a similar manner to the fore braces with pendants on the main yard and spliced to the arm of the topsail yard. The main yard brace is tied to the eyebolt, passes through the brace block, leads through the forward hole in the stern and is belayed at the aft cleats. The topsail brace goes through the aft hole and is belayed to the nearest timberhead. Like the fore braces, I have left them slack. Bowlines Bowlines are not present on the Greenwich model and maybe it’s not appropriate to add them when there are no sails on the model. Marquardt says that the main yard bowlines are threaded through a double block on the end of the bowsprit. Although I tried, I could see no way of adding a block easily with all the other rigging in the way so I decided to added only topsail bowlines. These lead through thimbles stropped to the end of the ‘sprit. The thimbles are difficult to see with all that's going on. The bowlines are hitched to the yard in-board of the yardarm cleats with a timberhitch and lead through the thimbles. I was running out of suitable belay points up front so they are tied off to the winch standards. I used 0.35mm rope. I’ve gone beyond my original rigging plan and the model now looks very busy around the bowsprit. and I’m calling a halt. It’s time to tidy up all the trailing ropes and make some hanks and coils, not one of my favourite bits of the build. I’ve tried various methods of making hanks but I struggle to make them look very convincing. Ah well onwards.. David