dunnock

Lower Masts I considered applying the appropriate tapers as given in Lees (I assume that they are valid for brigs too) but looking further ahead, it would have meant a few other modifications. The mast at the head is given as scale 6mm so cheeks and bibs would have to have been reduced and maybe the tops too. I decided to just go with the plans. The masts begin with 8mm ramin dowel and the 5mm square section for the head is marked up. I use a mini chisel to remove the bulk and then sand to final size, regularly checking for width and squareness. Fore and main masts are the same differing only in length. A flat is added to each side of the mast to take the cheeks. I mark the position of the cheeks and remove a little of the wood with a chisel but mostly I use a sanding stick to reduce the width between the flats to 6mm. The cheeks are glued in place. I have stained the masts with antique pine wood stain mixed with a drop of teak to even out the colour between ramin and pear – not entirely successfully. There are a number of ‘iron’ bands to add over the cheeks which I cut from black card. Further hoops will be fitted once the front fish is added. The foremast is similarly ‘hooped’ I’ve also begun work on the tops but that’s for another post. David

You're too kind Andrew, thank you

Thanks very much Chris and Geordie for your generous comments David

Thanks Bob, that's very kind of you

Completing the Hull The head was looking flimsy with only two head timbers so I added a third cut from some spare 2mm pear fret. The basic pattern is taken from the plan and modified to fit. They are cut in two pieces and fitted either side of the prow. The bow blocks needed some of shaping to follow the curve of the bulwarks and then glued either side of the bowsprit slot. The rest of the timberheads are glued into the slots at bow and stern and all painted matt black. The final bits of woodwork to add are the channels and again these first easily into the slots on the hull. Deadeyes and Chains There are countless parts of PE brass to remove, trim and blacken and then separate into deadeye strops and chains. The strops were opened up before blackening to minimise the damage to the blackening when adding the deadeyes. I used the standard method of temporary mast and shroud to get the correct alignment of the links. The 5mm deadeyes have three parts to the chains. The first and second links were added first; the second link sitting just above the wale, its position marked and hole drilled for the ‘bolt’. The third, preventer link can then fixed and pinned in line with the other links of the chain. The 3mm deadeyes in the aft two holes of the main channel and the stools of the foremast have two part chains. Once all the deadeyes and chains are in place some touching in with matt black was needed to tidy up the chains, bolts and wale. This completes Harpy’s hull and it’s now time to move on to masts, yards and rigging. Many thanks to all those who have been following and for the likes and kind comments I've had while reaching this stage of Harpy's build. David

Ship’s Wheel Sorry Chris but I could not get on with the PE brass wheel supplied in the kit. The handles are extremely thin and don’t have any definition. I lost one just removing it from the matrix and I found it impossible to work on without bending the handles. As a replacement, I bought one of Syren’s boxwood kits. The rim is put together in the supplied jig. The outer ring is in three pieces and is glued in place according to the markings on the jig. When dry the assembly is carefully pushed out of the jig and the spokes added. Gluing the second outer ring on top completes the assembly. The rims need to be sanded back to a thickness that is more in scale and that’s it. There’s a lot of pieces to this kit and consequently a lot of laser char to remove. Shaping the spokes is probably the trickiest part but there are plenty of spares supplied for practice. I found it easier to begin shaping using a file and sanding stick before finishing off in my Dremel. The spokes are cut to length using the pattern etched into the assembly jig. As recommended, I made all 15 spokes supplied and then selected the best 10 for the wheel. I used Vanguard’s parts for the stanchions and hub but even after sanding back, the wheel is still thicker than the kit version. To compensate, I sanded back the rims of the hub until the overall length fitted the 13mm axle length given in the plans. Rigging the Wheel I used 3mm blocks and the PE eyebolts supplied. The blocks are rigged with 0.35mm rope and I calculated that I needed 326mm to allow for four wraps around the hub. I cut 420mm to allow for splicing on to the first and last eyebolts and was happy to find that this worked out nicely. With the wheel rigged I continued along the ship adding all the other centre line fittings. With the shot garlands added, this completes the internal hull and fittings and a significant stage is reached in the construction of Harpy. Thanks for following and the much appreciated likes David

Deck Fittings Gallows and Bitts These fittings are simply made. A little bit of chamfering on the cross-beam of the aft gallows and the bitts is all that’s needed. I made sure that all was square by fitting the standards into the slots in the deck or hatches and then gluing the cross-beams in place. I’ve created the ‘bolts’ using dabs of pva painted with Iron Black. Capstan The capstan is assembled around the post, a 6mm piece of dowel, everything slotting in cleanly and easily. Winch The winch is made up of pear standards with PE etched cogs, pawls and handles. The drums are 3D printed. The parts are painted or blackened prior to assembly. Again to ensure squareness and that the bars are set at the correct width, the standards are fitted into the slots in the deck and the winch assembled in-situ. Elm-Tree Pumps These pumps are more robustly constructed than many. The body is made up of three hexagonal pieces glued together around a piece of 3mm dowel. I waxed the dowel to prevent any excess pva from sticking. The stanchion is 4-piece brass PE assembly first blackened and then glued together with CA. To finish off the pumps, I added a discharge port cut from 2mm styrene tube. None of the fittings are finally glued in place. The final two pieces to to complete the deck fittings are the wheel and binnacle David

Just catching up on your Erycina BE. Love the mods to the fish hold and cabin. The stove is excellent. Is it made from styrene sheet? David

6 Pounder Guns The gun carriage sides and cap squares are all one piece, so one half of the carriage is glued to the axles and then the barrel is added before completing the carriage with the other side. I wasn’t sure about this set up on Speedy but it is much easier and no fiddling with separate cap squares. The bed is provided but there are no quoins to change the elevation however they are simply made. I used some 2mm pear and spare belay pins from Speedy as handles. The axles only require a light sand for the trucks to make a snug fit and the carriages are finished with 2mm eyebolts for the tackles. A ring bolt is added for the breeching. Because I’d rigged the carronades, I couldn’t get away with just breeching on the guns. The breeching is 0.45mm rope. I believe the tackle blocks should be scale 2 or 2.5mm but I decided to use 3mm blocks for the sake of my eyesight and rigged them with 0.25mm rope. At least there are only two 6 pounders to rig. Before going any further with the mid-line fittings I decided to fix Harpy’s armaments in place. Part way through... Thanks to all for following and for the 'likes' you leave. David

Completing the Carronades I worked my way through the carronade tackles, making up first the double block and hook and then the single block with hook and tackle. I used 12.5mm of 0.35mm rope. Finally I threaded the two together using a simple jig of two pins in a block of wood. I set the separation between the two pins at 18mm. The excess rope is frapped around the tackle, tied off with a half hitch and a dab of dilute pva to fix it in place. Once in place, the excess rope will be trimmed. The small hooks need opening slightly to hook into the eyebolts and are then closed to keep them from dropping off. The carronade slides are pinned with 0.8mm brass rod and will eventually be glued into the deck. The carronade and bed will then be fixed in place and the rigging glued into the pre-drilled holes in the bulwarks. I have found doing it in two stages to be easier than fixing the completed carronade to the deck. David

Carronades Continued Following on from Thukydides advice, I made up a set of port tackles using 3mm single and double blocks with 0.35mm RoS natural rope. It’s still quite fiddly, especially rigging the single block with 3mm hook (not 2mm as I said previously) and the tackle rope itself. The first carronade is completed and looks a lot more in proportion. I’m continuing to make up the blocks and tackle but it is a long and somewhat tedious job so I may do other bits and pieces in between. I need to rework the frapping but compared to the 2mm rig... it looks a lot neater. Thanks again for looking in and the helpful posts. David

Thanks Daniel. I missed your post on the Perseus draft, I will go back to take a look David

Thanks Daniel that's very helpful. I've been looking for exactly that information but I'm not familiar with the source reference. I'll try single and double 3mm blocks as well. If they don't look too big, it will make things much easier. Thanks Andrew. Yes I I use an Optivisor with 5x magnifying lenses. I'd be hopeless without it

Carronade Rigging I used 0.6mm RoS rope for the breeching. This is a little undersized but even so, I still needed to ream out the breech ring and to go further would risk breakages. I have seen a number of methods in books for attaching the breeching to ring bolts. I used a thumb knot with the tail siezed back on itself, one of the simpler options, as illustrated on p116 of “Irene” by Petrejus. I set up one carronade on the model to determine the length of rope required to provide some slack when the gun is run out and would come taught when recoiled. For my set up this is 70mm from ring to ring. I’m now considering the tackles. A 32lb carronade should probably be rigged with double and single blocks on the model and this is the set up shown as an option on the plans. I only have 2mm single or 3mm doubles in my box so I have made up one tackle with the 2mm blocks to see how it looks. In the end, I will frap the falls around the tackle so the single rigging will be less noticeable. These are really small blocks and with 2mm hooks from HiS Model, the whole set up is a recipe for eye-strain and frustration but I think larger blocks would look overcrowded. I’ll make up the other side and see how it looks on deck. David

Carronades Still some of the deck fittings to completed but I thought that it was time I made some armaments for Harpy. There are 16 carronades to make up and Chris provides sufficient wooden and PE parts for 17. I start by making up the slide and bed and then painting them red ochre. For the ‘ironwork’ I used the kit breaching bolts with Amati 2mm rings. All other ringbolts and eyebolts are Amati 2mm. There are two ringbolts on the slide for the port tackles and two on the bed for the training tackle. The trucks are 3D printed and are painted black before gluing into the bed. When fitted, the tops of the trucks stand proud of the bed so need sanding back and retouching with red ochre. The barrels are also 3D printed and again painted matt black. I snapped one of the elevating screws but it was easily replaced with a length of 0.8mm brass rod. I finished the barrels off with some rust red and dark brown weathering powder and glued them into the slide. Slide and bed can now be glued together but first I asked the boss whether run-in or run-out: so run-out it is then. I will be adding breeching ropes, which will be done off model, but I’m still thinking about whether to add port tackles. David

Deck Fittings As an antidote to headworks, I have begun to make up some of the deck fittings or to be more accurate; to pick them up again. I made a start a few months back while waiting for some wood and fittings to arrive but had put them away to continue with the hull. Many of these fittings are like little mini kits and are fun to make. I started with the bow platform. Made from four parts: two front panel pieces, grating support and grating. I needed to shape the front panel to fit around the waterway and chamfer the edges slightly to obtain a reasonably tight fit. I painted the panel red ochre and left the grating natural. Next up the rudder housing. Again some sanding and shaping was required to fit the planked deck. I will add a spray cover once the housing is glued in place and the tiller arm fitted. The bread hatch is a simple one-piece item. I used Syren hinges and kit brass eyebolts for the handle. The companion hatch cover has some scope for some tweaks. I decided to leave the doors and hatch in the open position and used the kit PE brass parts for hinges and handles. The lid needs a ledge on which to rest when in the closed position made from 1mm square strip. Support brackets are needed to keep the lid in the open position and these were made from some brass fret bent into a curve and CA’d in place Finally the skylight. The kit version with its four glazed panels looks quite chunky. I cut out the centre bar from the lids and replaced it with three bars of 1mm square strip. They are glazed with pieces of clear PES. Syren hinges complete the covers. All these pieces are placed in position but I will leave fixing them until the carronades and guns are in place. Thanks for looking in David

Head Works All of the parts involved in making up the head are very delicate as I found out. The hair brackets are first to be fitted after painting them yellow ochre. Don’t try to remove the char from the edges, they only break in two. The PE etch decoration is next also painted yellow ochre. The cheeks only needed a little sanding off the top edge but I found that the bolsters required a couple of mm removing from the bottom edge. Too late I realised that the bolsters are handed because the hawse holes are at different levels. The head timbers and knee caused me the most headaches. Minimum sanding to remove char is best because the slots for the head timbers are weak spots. I ended up with several more parts than I when I started. The knee was glued back together with thin CA which also hardened the whole piece. Eventually I was able to glue in the head timbers (after using the spares provided) but then I found that quite bit of gentle fiddling about and fettling was needed to make the assembly fit the prow. When it was finally in place, the main rails were added after a bit of sanding but without more drama. Finally the cathead brackets are added. The outer edge is given a slight curve to blend with the main rail. I was tempted to follow BE’s lead and add a third pair of head timbers but maybe after I have recovered from the headache of the head works. As a bit of light relief, I have added the boat davits; pinned and glued for extra strength. Thanks for looking in David

The Rudder The rudder is a three part piece with a 2mm core sandwiched between two 1mm facing pieces. The pintles are integrated into the core piece and three lugs plug into the stern post. This makes for easier fitting but as has been noted elsewhere, loses something of the look. I rounded off the forward edge of the rudder but in doing so, knocked off two of the locating lugs. After a couple of failed attempts at glueing them back, I eventually drilled and pinned the rudder in place. The copper plates come as three complete sheets: one for each side and a strip for the rear edge. I also applied some copper tape to the forward edge. The straps are black laser-cut board. There are small holes in the copper plates as a guide to the position of the pintle straps. When the rudder was pinned in place, I used masking tape along the hull to align the gudgeon straps. The bands are cut from heat-shrink tubing. I like the contrast of the black straps against the copper plates but for authenticity, decided to paint the straps copper. The spectacle plate is a one-piece brass photo-etch piece that fits into a slot on the rudder above the hance. In my continuing clumsiness, I dropped it down the sink while I was rinsing it off after cleaning it ready for blackening. I made a new piece from two eyebolts. The final addition is the rudder coat. I made an initial paper pattern using the fret to draw around, cut it roughly to shape and then cut a piece of fabric from that. Three iterations later I had got it about right and painted it with brown mix of acrylic paints. The ‘iron’ plate is cut from some black card overpainted with iron grey. Once in place, some final trimming was needed. Cotton wool stuffed in from the top keeps the coat filled out. Finally I have added the horseshoe plates at the bow and the butterfly plates at the stern post and painted them all copper. Thanks for the likes and kind comments; they're all very encouraging. David

Outer Hull Fittings Before moving on, I wasn’t happy with the look and position of the stern and my gun port sills. With the help of some IPA and a #18 chisel blade, the stern pattern popped off without a problem. I did some further sanding of the counter and glued the stern board back in place. I’d used some spare 4x1 box strip for the gun port sills but it looked to thick and too yellow. It has been replaced by some 0.6mm pear fret. With the stern replaced I added the quarter pieces and the capping rail. The quarter pieces are in two parts. One piece to go between wale and upper sheer rail and a covering piece. A little bit of wetting out and bending with finger pressure helped shape the latter to the wale. The stern capping rail, which had first been painted black, was soaked and bent to shape before glueing in place. The mid sheer rails are in two pieces: one at the bow and another runs the length of the ship. They are nicely curved and aligned with the gun ports, making fitting very straightforward. Next the fenders and chesstrees. These are square and chunky looking pieces when first removed from the fret and benefit from a bit of sanding and shaping before fitting to the hull. Finally the steps. Each step is made of two pieces of 0.6mm pear, which are glued together before fitting to the marked positions on the hull. The Lowest step is fitted to the top edge of the wale and I’m worried that it looks vulnerable while there is still some manhandling of the hull needed. There are some spares should it come to that. Now that most of the fittings have been added to the exterior of the hull, I will clean it up and apply some matt varnish as a finish. Thanks to everyone for the likes and for following David

Gunwales and Rails I’m back from a very nice two weeks in Scotland so not much progress made until yesterday, when rain provided a good reason to stay in and resume work on Harpy. I’d missed out the stage in the instructions that said fit the outer sheer rails. They were painted matt black while still in the fret and then dry fitted and left clamped to the hull overnight before gluing them up. I painted the gunwales before cutting them out and touched up the edges with a black Pigma pen. The hole for the bowsprit was enlarged and a piece of 6mm dowel lined up with the bowsprit stop. The presence of the bowsprit gives the correct positioning of the forward pieces of gunwale which are now glued in place. The stern cabin roof, stern davit and cathead all need to be considered together to ensure that each fit correctly. @ECK and @Blue Ensign’s logs are both helpful in describing this. The top edge of my stern cabins were only marginally lower than the bulwark sides and needed to be sanded back and shaped so that the roofline met the gunwale. I also needed a little filler piece on the starboard cabin. The basic arms of the catheads are made up to give the correct forward position of the gunwales. The gunwales were clamped and glued in sections to give time for correct alignment. The cabin roofs were trimmed to reduce the overhang and then soaked and shaped around a jam jar to make fitting and glueing simpler. I cleaned up the excess gunwale and outer sheer rail at the stern and fitted the assembled taffarel and it’s frame. This piece was also soaked and clamped to give the required curve to make fitting and clamping a bit easier. Here it is all masked up ready to paint the ports and also the stern cabin sides. Originally I was going to leave the cabin walls natural but now think that I prefer them to be painted red ochre. It's a pity I didn't do this before because I think it's going to be an awkward paint job. Thanks for looking in, the likes and kind comments David

Thanks Maid of the Mist. Vanguard Model copper plates are of much better scale and thinner than those found in other kits and I found them easier to cut and apply. You can find more information at entries #30 to #33 in this log David

Thanks Chuck, that's very kind David

Inner Bulwarks The doors to the stern cabins are fixed first and the bulwarks fit up to them. I used Syren’s hinges and door handles. The side walls needed some work to make them fit to my planked deck but I was able to use the supplied parts. The ends of the planking at the stern looked a bit unfinished. I used a piece of the ply pattern from the stern panel as a guide to trim the ends and then added a piece of 1mm square boxwood to cover the cut ends and finish it off. The inner bulwarks were dry fitted and left clamped overnight, as suggested in the instructions, to relax any tensions in the wood. I had misaligned the plywood patterns so had to carefully align the inner bulwark with the outer etched pear patterns. This meant sanding and filing about 1mm off the ply at each gun and sweep port. The spirketting, like the bulwarks, are painted in Admiralty Red Ochre and were carefully aligned using the holes for the carronade rigging in the bulwark. The inner sheer rails were painted before removing them from the sheet and again carefully positioned along the upper line on the bulwark. I think I will add gunport sills to cover the edges of the three patterns but first I need to check that it won't affect the position of the carronades. I added a waterway to Speedy and have done the same with Harpy. I used some 3.5x 2mm AYC that I had available and split it in two. A bevel was scraped across the cut side and fitted to the seam between deck and bulwark. The waterway has the added benefit of closing any gaps between spirketting and deck. Although glued, I still have to finish off the scuppers. Still enough deck to support the carronade bed. Thanks for looking in and for all the encouragement, likes and comments. David

Thanks very much Ron and Andrew for your kind comments David

Very impressive. I'm thinking about this as my next project David