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dunnock

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Everything posted by dunnock

  1. dunnock
    The hooks have arrived - they are really small, I also ordered some 2mm PE etched eyebolts at the same time. They seem a better match for the hooks than the Amati eyebolts and I will use them for the bulwark fixings. I have used single 2mm block for the tackles which I think is appropriate for a 4-pounder gun and 0.1mm Gutterman thread for the ropes. I’m indebted to @Thukydides and his Alert log for his method of attaching these small hooks and ropes to such tiny blocks which I modified only slightly by tying and extra half hitch on the tackle rope to create the semblance of an eye. I’m glad there are only 14 guns but 56, 2mm blocks and hooks is still quite a challenge and I draw the line at another 28 for the training tackles! To obtain the correct distance between blocks for the port tackles, I set up one gun with tackles and used this distance to make a simple jig to set the distance for the rest. I’m undecided about whether to show the tackle falls frapped as I have before, or to try to leave them loosely flaked on the deck. I’m leaning towards the latter but I still have to play about with making the thread look less ordered. The gun is not fixed yet but a pin as been glued to the underside of the bed and will be glued to a hole in the deck. It seems from this set up that the quoins I made would depress the gun from it’s neutral position in the centre of the port so I will not be using them. I wonder if this is because I chose to plank the deck rather than use the kit’s engraved part? Thanks for all the likes and for looking in. David
  2. dunnock
    Thanks Andrew but I think that I may have got my terminology wrong. Just to clarify, I used the paper disposable lens wipe, not the fabric ones you get with every pair of spectacles. David
  3. dunnock
    While I’m waiting for hooks to arrive from HiS Model, I thought I’d have a go at finishing off the stern with chains and a rudder coat. The rudder was made a little while ago. While I did taper both rudder and sternpost towards the keel I have forgotten to make the chamfer at the edge where they meet. Too late now. The horseshoe collar is cut from a piece of card slightly larger than the opening. I made the rudder coat from a piece of non-woven lens cloth which has a nice leather-like texture when painted. I cut it to an approximate size and shape which after the third attempt, seemed to be about right. Collar and coat are glued together with pva and then glued to the counter. I’ve not done it before but I used @Blue Ensign's technique of stuffing the coat with cotton wool to give it some fullness. It was then just a question of trimming and finishing gluing to the rudder and sternpost. Rudder chains are added to finish off David
  4. dunnock
    Going back to the guns, I’ve added the ring bolts to the carriages and pins to the axles. Ideally the axles would have been slightly longer to allow more room to drill the holes but I managed with only slight damage to a couple of the axles, easily covered up when they were repainted. The breeching ropes are made from 0.7mm rope seized to 2mm ring bolts. I made them 105mm long to allow for room to make the seizings and give a final length of 85mm – slightly longer than 3x the barrel length. The rope is split at the centre, fed over the button and fixed with dilute matt varnish. I did some experimentation with the port tackles using 2mm blocks but the hooks I have looked oversized. I also tried making up some hooks from 24gg wire but again I’ve struggled to make them look in proportion so have ordered some 3mm hooks from HiSModel. While I’m waiting for them to arrive, I pass on to other things... Thanks for the likes and for looking in David
  5. dunnock
    I’ve added the channels, chains and deadeyes. I used the kit parts but scraped a moulding around the edges of the channels which after painting them black, is hardly visible. The brass PE chains and deadeye links were blackened in the usual way with Birchwood Casey Brass Black. I put some tape below the channels and marked off the positions for the chain fixings in the usual way using a thread fixed at the height of the head on temporary masts and leading down through the deadeyes. I was concerned that with all the messing about with the wales that the chains might fall in the wrong place but it has worked out quite well. Now it’s back to rigging the guns that I made up some time ago. I will try to rig them with at least breechings and side tackles but rigging 2mm blocks and hooks is going to be a challenge. Thanks for looking in David
  6. dunnock
    I’ve been finishing more of the outer hull fittings including the steps, cathead and cathead knee. I wanted to use boxwood for the steps to match the outer hull planking. I cut 2 and 1mm strips from a sheet and used these to cut the treads and a ledge for better support. A strip of tape kept the steps in line vertically and a copy of the side elevation with the steps cut out ensured the steps were correctly spaced. The cathead was made up from the kit parts although I left off the pear end cap and just added the PE crown motif. A little fairing was required on the inner surface of the leg to match the line of the hull. I filed out the sheaves a little more and drilled them through. The knee was a little more challenging. I wanted it to look like it blended in to the main rail a little more then a simple bracket. I didn’t have any 5mm pieces of sufficient depth so I hade to make a sandwich out of some 3mm thick sheet and some 10x1mm strip which would give me sufficient depth. It was then a matter of cutting and shaping to fit and blend as best I could into the main rail. Ideally I would have modified the rail too to look more like the side elevation of the hull rather than the front profile on plan sheet 4 but I’m fairly happy with the result as it stands. David
  7. dunnock
    Thanks as always to everyone for the likes. I’ve been working towards completing the outer hull with rails, pivot gun posts and the head works. The upper rail and lower part of the swivel gun supports are all one piece. The length of the hull is covered in five sections with some running across the gun ports making it easier to maintain the correct line. Swivel gun post timbers and the fenders are then added. I tapered the posts towards the base rather than leaving them square. The fenders are pearwood strips which looked too flat to my eye so I made them from scratch with a bit more of a profile. The swivel gun bases finish off this part of the build. Moving on to the stern. I planked the transom with boxwood strip to match the counter. I know it’s probably not as it should be and not as shown in the manual but I preferred to go with horizontal planking. The boom crutches have to be filed down at the base to match the counter side patterns and chamfered on the back to closely fit the bulwarks. Some necessary tidying up of the stern is highlighted by this close up. Finishing the head works was tricky and took quite a while to match the main rails and the head timbers. The rail is chamfered where it fits against the side. Removing the part of the capping rail where the catheads will sit makes this easier to check. The head timbers are PE brass parts that feed through slots in the knee and are bent up to meet the rail. Filing the ends of the ‘timbers’ gets a closer fit to the rail. The catheads are next up. David
  8. dunnock
    Well done Dan, a lovely model and your rigging looks excellent. David
  9. dunnock
    The hair brackets and bow cheeks were added after painting off the model. I felt the hawse bolsters looked a little flat and could be improved, so I remade them from some 6x2mm pear strip to give them a bit more shape. The capping rails proved slightly tricky. I drilled holes for the pins through the rail and into the hull but still had great difficulty in making the pins hold. Once glued, I removed the pins rather than cutting and filing them back. I had to re-glue some sections but all is now holding together well. The counter side-timbers were tricky to place and I was a bit nervous about cutting back the wale. Once done, I realised that the wales were not correctly positioned at the stern. In a previous post, I mentioned that based on measurements taken from the plans, I thought the marks I had made when planking the upper hull to indicate the position of the wales were wrong but when it came placing the stern side timbers, I realised that I was correct in my original marking. In the end, I removed the after section of the wale, fitted the side timbers first and then married the wale to the side timbers. It was a lot of messing about and required some filler between wale and side timber but I’m happy now that the stern looks as it should. Thanks for looking in David
  10. dunnock
    Thanks Andrew. The waterline template is sort of suggested on Sheet 4 - Profile Plans but I think I saw the idea somewhere else on these forums but can't remember where or who so my apologies to whoever it was. David
  11. dunnock
    The rudder comes as a three-part sandwich. Once glued up, I painted the edges copper and the portion above the waterline matt black. The wales and stem were painted black at the same time. Copper ‘plates’ were added and trimmed up. The PE pintles looked a bit flat so I borrowed Andrew’s @AJohnson idea from his Trial and slipped on pieces of styrene tube to flesh them out. The pintle braces were cleaned up and painted copper then glued with small dots of CA. I drilled holes for the pintles in the stern post and temporarily fitted the rudder and used Tamiya tape to work to for fixing the gudgeon braces. I have added eyebolts for the rudder chains and used heat-shrink tube for the bands at the top of the rudder. Finally the tiller was put together from the two pieces of 1mm pear and given a bit of shaping. As well as the recommended pin to fix the tiller into the rudder, I cut a small tenon to match joint. The rudder and tiller are now bagged up and put away for fitting latter in the build. I finished off this part of the build by adding blackened dovetail and horseshoe plates and finally the depth markers. The sharp-eyed might wonder where XI has got too – probably in Severn-Trent’s sewerage system by now. (Note to self to remember to put the plug in the sink when rinsing off these tiny parts). Thanks for the likes and kind comments and for looking in. David
  12. dunnock
    Thanks Andrew, Tape is so much easier and flexible enough that you don't have to make any cuts at the stem. I just trimmed it with a packing knife - the sort with the break-off blades. The tape also sticks well once rubbed down with a smoothing stick. The only caveat is that it seems quite soft and vulnerable to damage during the rest of the build. I might try masking it all off to protect it. David
  13. dunnock
    Thanks everyone for following and for the likes. Copper plating of the hull is complete. Tape is so much easier to apply then the copper plates that I used on Diana and I think that the result is probably better. I don’t think the lack of dimples depicting nailing is a great loss to the overall effect. I was a bit concerned about the appearance of the tape before I started as it was wrinkled down each edge – perhaps some roller problem on the tape slitting machine - and there were a number of folds of the tape along the length. I say this only as an observation and to reassure other builders who might see a similar issue. However, when it came to laying the ‘plates’, all these problems were removed by rubbing down with a smooth rounded stick. Now half-way down the port side Completed hull: Now that it’s finished, my worry is trying to protect the surface during the rest of the build. The copper tape is very soft and easily marked. David
  14. dunnock
    I drew the waterline using a Model Shipways marker that I recently bought to replace my home-made Heath-Robinson affair. I was better off with my own version. I found The Model Shipways marker very difficult to set up. It’s difficult to tighten the pencil holder firmly and it has a tendency to move as you draw around the bow and stern. I don’t think that I’ll be using it again. Having marked the position of the waterline in pencil, I used Tamiya tape to provide a clear line and fixed a batten using 1x1mm boxwood strip along the the topside of the tape. I used super glue gel at the bow and stern and pva midships where there is a straighter run. I’ve cut a good few plates from the supplied copper tape but will probably need more if I compare my pile to the size of the one shown in the manual. The recommended cutter from RP Toolz is out of stock at the few sellers in the UK. Most of the other cutters available all looked a bit cheap and cheerful but I found a similar cutter for around £50. It's well built and does the job. The first two rows are laid on the port side. It’s quite fiddly peeling off the backing paper and lining up the thin foil. Slow work but after a couple of rows, I’m getting into a bit more of a rhythm. David
  15. dunnock
    Thanks everyone for the likes, comments and general encouragement. It’s much appreciated. I did a little bit more work on the waterway, reducing the height and improving the angle to the deck. Before I could fit the inner bulwark patterns I needed to trim the bottom edge to allow for the waterway. It was painted with Admiralty Paints Red Ochre before glueing in place. I made the spirketting from 3mm walnut strip which is a little undersized but I think looks fine. This was also painted before fitting. There is no provision for scuppers and I can’t see them on the Admiralty plans but I’m sure there would have been three or four per side, there being no other way of draining the deck. I'll look into this a bit more before deciding what to do I moved on to the main wale, which gave me a few problems. When I first trial fitted the kit part, it’s natural line seemed to leave it too high at the stern. When I repositioned it, I realised that an earlier error when I fixed the first strake slightly low was now going to come back to haunt me. This is particularly noticeable on the starboard side although port side too, where I thought I had got it correctly positioned, is also slightly out. I don’t want to cut out all the upper planking so I’m going to have to live with it and hope that it won’t be too obvious when all the rigging is in place. So after some considerable difficulties in getting the wales to conform to the shape of the hull they are finally fitted, with the help of superglue gel and a hot iron. The bow section of each wale has been chamfered on the back to finish as close to flush with the main planking at the stem as possible and I've left them long at the stern to be trimmed when the counter side timbers are added. Thanks for looking in David
  16. dunnock
    Thanks Ron and Andrew, very kind of you to say so David
  17. dunnock
    A quick update which takes me to the completion of the deck planking. The forward and mid sections of the margin plank were removed along with the three joggled planks without too much difficulty. And replaced with a new margin plank and deck planks The final plank adjacent the margin plank was wider than I would have liked and once again could have been avoided by drawing a full planking plan. However the overall result I think looks OK. The deck was scraped flat and then sanded with 400 grit before giving it a couple of coats of shellac with a light rub of 600 grit in between. Thanks for looking in David
  18. dunnock
    Thanks to all for the likes. Deck planking was generally proceeding well. I hadn’t been planed some of the strips sufficiently which means there’s a fair bit of scraping and sanding to do. Tapering the planks and cutting the joggled ends into the margin plank was working well. I had to redo one two planks that I wasn’t happy with but otherwise I was satisfied. I only saw a potential problem when I was laying strake 13 and I realised that the forward plank of strake 14 was going to cut across the scarph joint of the margin plank. I can’t see a way of fitting this plank without cutting across the scarph and altering the existing joint doesn’t seem possible. I think I only have two options: carry on regardless or do the job properly. The latter means that I have to remove at least the last three planks at the bow, remove the margin planks back to midships and cut a new one. The lesson for me here is that if you are going to modify the standard kit, you’d better look a good few steps ahead to check the consequences of that change. If I had planned out the entire deck planking before starting rather than doing it as I went along, I might have avoided this problem. Where did I put that IPA? David
  19. dunnock
    Thanks everyone for the likes. Deck planking has begun with a waterway. This is the first time that I’ve included one in a deck. I looked at several references before staring which showed a variety of patterns: some of equal height and width and others wider on the deck than the height. I started with a length of 3x3 mm boxwood because that was the most suitable that I had around. I marked 1mm down from each edge then chamfered the corner off between the marks with a scraper. The strip was flexible enough to bend round the bulwarks and I did each side in two pieces. I wasn’t sure what sort of joint to use and in the end just butted the two parts together. The margin plank was a bit trickier. I made each side in three sections of 4x1 mm boxwood strip which are scarphed together. The bend at the bow is severe but I was able to edge-bend the planks to fit with three cycles of setting out and drying the plank. Rather than join port and starboard margin planks directly at the stem, I made a deck hook cut from some boxwood sheet. There isn’t one shown on the engraved deck and I don’t know if it’s an accurate representation but I like the look of it. I will joggle the deck planks into the margin as I go. I must have had a senior moment when I placed my order for wood because I received a bundle of 2mm thick strips of AYC (as per the confirmation) instead of 1mm that I should have asked for. I have spent an unhappy couple of hours shaving 1mm from each piece with my plane before I can start planking the deck.🙄 Thanks for looking in David
  20. dunnock
    The external planking of the bulwark is completed. Cutting the slots for the channels and drilling for the fixed blocks in the second strake turned out to be easier than I expected despite some of the slots being very close to the edge of the plank. The third strake is only 3mm and would need to be cut down from 4mm so the top strake was fixed next. Again slots were needed for the stools and holes which represent the fixed blocks. Finally the third strake measured, cut and sanded to fit. The gun and sweep ports were roughly cut out as I went along but now they had to be cleaned out with files and sanding sticks made up for the purpose. It took a couple of days to complete this and sand out the surface of the bulwarks. Finally the hull, down to the approximate level of the waterline, has been given a single coat of shellac and rubbed down with 600 grade paper. The shellac brings out the colour of the boxwood and gives it a satin finish. Perhaps not an authentic look but I'm happy with it Thanks for looking in and for all the likes David
  21. dunnock
    Hull planking below the bulwarks is completed. When the third band was completed, I took another, more critical look at the garboard plank I had installed at the beginning and decided that it wasn’t good enough. I ripped it out and replaced it with another made from strips of my precious 6mm boxwood. Despite best efforts, the difference between the two sides that I mentioned before, persisted through to the final band of planking. A half stealer was added three up from the keel on the starboard side but on the port the stealer was worked in at two above the keel. It also had to be about twice as long as would normally required. Starboard stealer Port side The hull was first scraped and then sanded back to something like smooth. I had to glue some joints between strakes perhaps because I had been too enthusiastic in bevelling the edges and they had become thin after sanding. I used a small amount of filler in the gaps between planks and sanded it off. For the time being I am happy with the result but I’m wondering if to apply a coat of shellac as sealer. I nought to test whether it will have any effect on the adhesion of the copper tape first. I’m now working on the outer bulwarks. I want to continue with boxwood but will use the excellent laser-etched layout as my pattern for the planking plan and positioning of channels, fixed blocks etc. The plank width is a median 4mm but the first strake includes the scribed mark indicating the top of the wale and overall needs to be 6mm. But the first plank in this strake at the bow rises t o 7mm so had to be cut from boxwood sheet. The position of the hawse holes were also marked on this plank. Having fitted this first strake I noticed an error in the position of the first pear wood strake of the hull on the starboard side which is 1mm lower than it should be at the stern. It must have slipped when it was being glued up. I only noticed after the first bulwark strakes were laid and looked at their height against the transom ports. It would be too big a job to remedy now and will eventually be covered by the wale. Even so it’s annoying. The second strake to be laid is a bit more complicated as the slots for the channels need to be cut into it. Thanks for looking in. David
  22. dunnock
    Great idea Andrew to serve the anchor rings prior to bending and fitting. I always struggled to make a decent fist of it. With a better serving the seizings must go on better too. I'll definitely try your method on Speedy. David
  23. dunnock
    Well done. a lovely model that you should be very proud of David
  24. dunnock
    The 14 guns have been assembled. The PE eyebolts provided looked a bit chunky to me and replaced them with 2mm Amati eyebolts. I would like to add the axle pin but there is little room for one in the outer axle so will have to think about how this can be done. When the guns are ready to be added to the ship I will add breeching ropes and will attempt the training tackles but 2mm blocks are required and are going to be very fiddly. In the meantime my wood has arrived from Hobbymill.eu. It’s of excellent quality: very well finished and consistent sizing and colour. The boxwood is paler than the stock I bought from Original Marquetry a while ago so I can’t use them together. I requested some maple for the decking but it was not available so I will be trying out some Alaskan Yellow Cedar when the time comes. The first band of planking is completed using boxwood above the waterline and the kit pearwood below. The planks are tapered and edge-bent for the most part with only a couple that are spiled. For the first time I have used superglue gel to attach the planks as recommended by Chris and found that it works really well. Just a small spot at about 2 -3 cm intervals is enough to firmly attach them. I needed to use a little heat to secure where a severe twist is required at the stern. I looks like there is a slight difference the two sides which I will have to watch as planking proceeds It was perhaps unnecessary as one wasn’t used for the prototype build shown in the manual, but I added a drop-plank at the second strake below the wale because the planking seemed to be getting quite tight at the bow. I’ve remeasured the second band of planking. Only a few more planks of boxwood to add and then it’s pearwood all the way down. Thanks for dropping in David
  25. dunnock
    Copy away Andrew. If you had been ahead of me in the build I would definitely have taken a lot of your ideas 😁 David

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