The Bitter End

Would photos of the plans help at all? I am happy to try and take a few and send your way

I couldn't ignore this observation. Some heavy sanding has leveled things out quite a bit and I'm hoping the planking will. Solve the rest. I can't stress enough how much I appreciate the feedback. This is how one avoids looking at a model with 500 hours in it and realising you made a silly mistake at hour 20 Thanks Peter Haiko

Peter my good man! Firstly, thank you and secondly I think you are both observant and correct. The way in which I sanded these seem to have resulted in the concave appearance that you are seeing. I am hoping that I can eliminate this with the 2 layers of planking I must still add over them. I must actually take a look at the Lord drawings and see what exactly the profile should be but it's definitely not like that. I hope this can all be ironed out Cheers Haiko

For Framing the gun ports of the gun deck I began by marking out the locations of the gun port on the strake just below the plankshear in pencil. These gun ports are 3.1ft by 3.1ft at full size according to the Doughty plans, 12.3mm at scale. which is slightly larger than the spar deck gun ports. For all reasonable purposes these are located directly centred between the gun ports of the spar deck. Here you can see the pencil marks as well as the X on the frames which need to be removed to accommodate the gun port. Next I marked the upper and lower sills of the ports in pencil on the frames by measuring a uniform distance down from the spar deck to make sure that the gun ports followed the swoop of the spar deck fairly closely. and clamped a single strake to the frames to create on smooth line and did a final marking of both upper and lower sills. I then double checked this against a gun on carriage built to the naval spec. All these measurements dovetailed perfectly resulting in a cannon which was nicely aligned with its port as well as ports which looked fairly well placed to the laymans eye. I then clamped a single long run of plank to the inside of the frames at the level of the lower sill so that I could mark out where the gun ports would land as well as providing a reference surface to put my main gun port sill beams against so that the barrels would all protrude and equal distance from the hull when the carriage was pushed up against the bulkhead on the gun deck. Next was to take pear offcuts of roughly the same size(these were mostly from my learning phase on the table saw. I didnt need a perfectly uniform piece of wood, it just needed to be flat on one side and slightly thicker than the frame so that it could be sanded back when all was said and done. I began with the lower sill, working from aft to forward, removing the frames that were in the way as I went. This did require a bit of steaming and bending to get the sill to follow the correct lines, particularly where the bow curved and where the frames had been removed. This process was then repeated for the upper sill. Please ignore the ragged egdes etc. only the internal frames of the gun ports will be visible after planking. On to the verticals. I made a small template to build the sides of the gun ports around. This ensured square corners and the right uniform width for all ports. Just a 12.3x12.3mm piece of wood on an angled stick. I then installed the verticals. And then some sanding. (I have a blister) Lots more work to do and cleaning up and sanding on the other side to get this done. Cheers TBE

Hello everyone. After the very demoralising step of pulling off all my spar deck gun ports I managed to make some progress again. I dont know how exactly I managed to mess up the gun port placement so badly. Something about measuring once and cutting twice...I can't quite recall...anyway. I won't bore you too much with the repeat process but here are the basics... I couldnt find any drawings of step 1 in the plans: Then repeating the process that was completed in a previous post but this time measuring very carefully and this resulted in a far longer waist than before and slightly more elegant lines. On to the gun deck gun port framing... TBE

Hello Marcus Thank you for taking the time to present this information so clearly and including additional sources etc. This is what we need. Also as I said before, What a beautiful painting. These discussions really bring a whole new level of joy to the hobby. Cheers Haiko

Hello again! I am referring to the red painted cover all the way forward. Is that not a gun port? 😅 I kind of just assumed it was without thinking too much Chwers Haiko

Marcus my friend! Thank you for yet another very informative and interesting glimpse into the confusing and colourful history of this ship. I am going to go with the gun port layout on the doughty plans while assuming that the quarter deck has bulwarks and perhaps a totally open deck from the quarter deck forward(I will message you directly about this so as to not bore everyone too much with my questions. As you mentioned the doughty plan also seems to show a very neatly spaced set of gun ports on the gun deck which fall directly between the gun ports of the spar deck(this is really why I am now redoing the spar deck ports. Just a side note, I see the very forward gun port on the antczak model(which is supposedly the as built configuration) appears to show hinged single gun port lids(I too think this is incorrect) on all ports except for the forward most port which shows a split lid. A confusing little set of choices. This gun port also appears to be spaced a little closer to the precious gun port than in the doughty drawings or indeed any of the paintings where this port can be seen(Damn cornes cloud of smoke). Cheers Haiko

Hello Hello! Thank you for the encouragement, I am going to need it. I am really trying to get my head around the idea that this is a marathon and thats ok, easier said than done. I am using the traced Doughty plans for my gun port location. This is a very different arrangement to the MS Plans. 7 gun ports per side on the quarter deck and then another 8 open ports forward. I originally had partial bulwarks in the bow but now that I have ripped them off I am considering leaving those totally open....we shall see. Cheers Haiko

A gloomy discovery! This is not the most proactive post but I Just realised that I somehow managed to mess up the spacing of the gun ports on the spar deck and they have to be gutted and redone. The gaps between the forward and aft gun ports are 34mm at scale. When I went to mark out the gun ports in then waist I Realised that The maximum amount of space I could possibly allocate between ports while still having 5 ports is 24mm...essentially a 30% error. I could potentially live with this with some minor tweaking but the problem goes deeper.... The gun ports on the gun deck must be both equally distributed and centred between the gun ports on the deck above. This error on the spar deck means that the ports at the gun deck level would also have to be bunched at the waist area. I did vaguely consider just leaving it as is but I realised that I am still only in the infancy of this build and I will put a thousand plus hours into micro measurements of perfection knowing full well that the bones are all wrong. Wish me luck. I hope this can be fixed without destroying all that has been done so far, Cheers Haiko

Guns! So this has proven to be a real challenge. I turned one barrel on the lathe with reasonable success but I know I wont be able to consistently repeat this with perfect results another 29 times so I decided to go down the road of casting with some very mixed results. Here is the update so far. I wanted to make my moulds with oyumaru or blue stuff but I cannot find either in South Africa. So i went for 2 other options....the first was a 2 part liquid silicon that would be poured around the cannon and then cut away to release the blank and then secured with elastic bands to re pour the liquid resin into it. This did not work at all... Without the benefit of a vacuum pump to extract all the bubbles it created a mould full of imperfections. The elastic bank required to keep the soft silicon together distorted the mould and therefore produced a frankly rubbish result. The resin also left flakes inside the mould that would be very difficult to clean and finally the resin itself was very brittle and weak(this is clearly just the resin I used and I am not judging all resins). Here you can see the results of lots of struggling.... Next up was making moulds from thermal plastic. This process involved heating the product in boiling water. Pressing the cannon blank into the product until it was half in the material, then cooling the product in the freezer and then pressing a second lump of product on top of the cannon to make the second half of the mould...here you can see what this looked like, I then pressed milliput into the 2 halves and joined them back together while it set(note the indexing holes and protrusions in the 2 halves of the mould. This produced a reasonable result as shown below. the issue was that the mould struggles to release the material and it seems like the quality deteriorates after each attempt as the mould degrades. I do have a few ideas to improve this and I will report back. I then made a little jig to file in the notch for the trunnions. As per the suggestion of Marcus, trunnions add an additional layer of complication to casting which I am not able to overcome. I then added the trunnions and primed the 2 sample cannon with a grey primer... 44 I then finished them off with some black paint and this is where I find myself... I did get the feeling that these carriages(built to the specifications mentioned in a previous post) were a bit on the small size. The carriages on the hull model also appear to be proportionally larger but I have also found examples in other research where the ratio between cannon and carriage seems equally disproportionate. Like this example of the constitutions 32 pounders from 1858.. My plan is to keep experimenting and seeing what works. This means: trying to produce a thinner more flexible thermal plastic mould with what i have already. Trying to create a better silicon mould by changing the ratios of parts A nd B of the mix Trying to buy oyumaru and having it imported into South africa Trying a mould made from other materials like silicone and corn starch.... I weill report back soon. Cheers TBE

Gun carriages continued.... After reading through everything that @Marcus.K. so kindly shared I dissapeared down a rabbit hole of sorts. This excellent attention to detail and research has been a huge help for me in this project so far so THANK YOU again Marcus, it added a whole new layer of interst and meaning. I decided that I would go for a "spanish brown"...which was apparently red....but almost a brown...confusing stuff... I did some experimenting and I am not totally happy with the outcome but I am getting to a colour scheme which I will be able to live with when it eventually comes to the spar deck cannon. I think I will go with the same colours and techniques but I will add slightly more red and add a touch of darker brown. Hopefully this produces the results I need. Below is the painted result of the carriages....perhaps too brown and not enough red but the light can play all kinds of tricks, they are significantly more "reddish" in person....clearly mor ework to do on colouring

Hi Jon Thank you for your feedback and it is good to know I am not alone in my struggles. I Will take a close look at your rattlesnake and where you chose to use what woods. I would like to try and get the build done with as much wood from trees on the farm as possible(there is an old plum tree with a dead branch that I think may find its way into the build) but realistically I am going to have to buy in some of what you are suggesting. I must say boxwood is nice and easy to work with if you arent worried about fluff...which I very much am. Cheers Haiko

Hello Again This post is a strange combination of attention to detail and complete abandonment thereof. I Realised that the next step I needed to take would be to establish heights of the gun ports for the gun deck so that I could begin framing them. This required creation of cannon(see previous post) and carriages. The cannon are currently on hold as I am waiting for resin/putty to try and duplicate my sample cannon. So I began on the carriages with a specific focus on those dimensions which would influence the way in which the cannon projected from the gun ports. I decided to use this as yet another exercise in practice for the gun carriages which will ultimately be visible on the spar deck. This process has taught me a lot and I think the results of the visible carriages will be far better. This process was surprisingly simple once I had made a decision on design. There seems to be fairly little information out there on exactly how these 24 bounder carriages looked in 1797 so I settled for a design from the 1768 book “A treatise of Artillery” by John Muller(pages 95,96 and 164). I was pointed to this by a masters thesis on the subject of gun carriages by Katrina Bunyard which I have attached to this post. Please note her summary of the document by muller(page 37) has some minor mistakes which is why I ended up referring to the original . It is worth noting that the Muller guideline has some flaws and there was some variation as can be expected. I have attached a spreadsheet which can be used to calculate cannon carriage sizes according to the Muller measurements if anyone is interested. I also added a Imperial to metric converter to assist with the calculations. (only edit the red cells if you ever make use of this or the formulae will disappear.) Using the dimensions for the short barrel 24 pounder gun I calculated the dimensions for this gun and assembled accordingly. I chose to leave off the truck and simply calculate the height of the carriage as if the trucks were there. I also gave it a solid base as this would certainly not be visible and I omitted the curve at the lower part of the side plates. I also made a mistake with the forward transom and put it too far forward(it is meant to be directly above the forward axletree. I only realised this once I had assembled all 30 carriages and decided to draw a line on the madness and left it as is. ..i would like to add that basswood is appalling to work with at this scale as it is continuously creating fluff which has to be addressed. I did this with a combination of sandpaper and passing the carriages over a candle flame to burn off these fibers. I have yet again failed to create a proper database of photos on this but I began by cutting a series of stock from the basswood supplied in the kit. This consisted of the following 30 bases – 12.7mm x 2.5mm flat stock – cut 20mm long 30 front trucks – 4.15mm x 4.15mm square stock – cut 11mm long 30 rear trucks – 3.5mm x 3.5mm square stock – cut 11mm long 60 Side piece plank 1 – 1.5mm x 3mm flat stock – cut 20mm long 60 Side piece plank 2 – 1 mm x 2.4mm flat stock – cut 18mm long 60 Side piece plank 3 – 1 mm x 2.4mm flat stock – cut 16mm long 60 Side piece plank 4 – 1 mm x 2.4mm flat stock – cut 14mm long 60 Side piece plank 5 – 1 mm x 2.4mm flat stock – cut 12mm long 30 Transom pieces – 2mm x 5.9mm – cut 5 mm long Beginning with the base I cut a template with the correct width for the front and rear of the carriage and transferred this to the base piece. I then placed the first 2 side pieces which cover the whole length of the base by aligning them with the marks I had made using the template and installed the transom. Once this glue has set I marked the correct height of the transom and sanded each one back to match this measurement. Next was to sand back the rear of the carriage and square it off neatly until it was just slightly over the final length(19.5mm) I then stacked the side pieces from largest to smallest stepping the side pieces correctly at intervals of at the rear of the carriage and allowed the front edges to hang over for future squaring off I then installed the front and rear trucks I then sanded the front face to bring the carriage back to final length and neaten off the front face(19mm) and sanded the sides to bring the side plates down to 1.82mm(in theory) and take away the excess material from the base. Next was to make the recesses for the trunnions and shape them out with a round file. I then burnt all the fibres off with a candle and spraypainted them with a black basecoat. At this point I realised that my trunnion recesses were very poorly aligned and redid the upper plank of the carriage to create a slightly better result. The last step will be to paint the carriages. I am torn between the options of Spanish brown(a far more brownish red) and Lead red. I realise this will barely be visible but I would like to start my search for the correct tone in the right direction . All the research I have done indicates to me that the most likely colour was indeed a red colour of sorts but the shade is the issue. Tyron Martin refers simply to “Red” in his discussions on the matter(at least that which I can find) and there is some reference to Spanish brown in the ships manifests and my understanding is that budget was key in these things and Spanish brown was cheap. There does however seem to be contemporary evidence in models and paintings that a brighter red was used and I assume the constitution restoration was done with historical accuracy in mind. In my mind have narrowed it down to the Spanish brown shown of this George Washington era building..... and the red of the carriages as shown on the constitution today. If anyone has any suggestions on what colour or shade might be most appropriate please let me know. I am sort of thinking I will go for a Red with a brown undertone but any suggestions would be swell! As always criticism and feedback is most welcome Cheers TBE Cannon Carriage Calculator.xlsx

Thanks for this info Marcus Its crazy to think that this little difference in barrel length(1foot?) created such significant issues. one thing which does however confuse me is this(extracted from Tyrone Martins Close up).... I read this as to say that the 24 pounders had already been replaced by 1808, hopefully resolving the very short barrel issue. any ideas? Cheers Haiko