Mirabell61

Coppering using copper tape from Hobby Lobby for Tiffany glass windows. Unfortunately, used the wrong size tape for the first 40 hours...then realized a 1:48 scale should be 1/4 inch tape for 1ft x 4 ft copper sheets (reference book). Used a wheel to imitate the rivets. 
 

Hi
Started the painting of the upper part of the hull.
 
Cannon templates have been fitted but only 2 coats of sealer.
 
Denis.

The stem and the ribbands

Robert your work is absolutely stunning !
never seen such before, thanks so much for sharing
I Knew from "bone-ship" exponates in Museums sometimes said to be built by prisoners some centuries ago, because they had no other material in their dungeons.
Your art and skill with this material is unbelievable. You shall have a real treasure you can be proud of !
 
Nils

The main mast is now stepped into the ship. Next up is completing the standing and running rigging associated with this mast. It is a lot of rigging.  My favorite part.   
 
Vince P.

Last night, I started tying knots.  I found this picture somewhere on Model Ship World.  (I'm sorry, but I forget where...)  And I liked the looks of these knots.
 
Two things became clear pretty fast.  First, it was hard to tighten the cow hitch.  I'd put some tension on it and it'd look good, but as soon as I let go, it loosened up.  Second, I'm not sure how to tie those clove hitches.  Mastini recommends simple overhand knots in his Ship Modeling Simplified book.  Those are certainly simple, but they don't look as good as those clove hitches.  Not sure which way to go on those two issues.
 
Also, Mastini recommends using tan thread for the ratlines and that's what's shown in this picture, but most of the models I've seen use the same color for the ratlines as for the shrouds.  I think I'm going to go with the darker color, but I'd be interested in the opinions of others.
 
Finally, getting the right tension on the ratlines between the shrouds seems to be a challenge.  Anyone got a good method for that?  Or is this just a task that requires a lot of fiddling to get right?
 
 
 
Dan
 
 

The main mast is finished. As I said before, when working on the masts, I am completing as much as possible before stepping them on into the ship. This may seem unorthodox to some, but for me it is a matter of necessity. When assembling the masts and rigging them, especially with sails, it is necessary to rotate them many many times in order to access all sides. With the sheer size of this model and the fact that my work bench is in a corner of the room, rotating the whole ship with the masts in place is very cumbersome and somewhat hazardous. Having the mast in a movable table vise makes it very easy to rotate in any direction, even tilting if necessary. After the mast is stepped, it will still be necessary to rotate it some in order to finish the lower shrouds and attach the running rigging to the deck belay points, but nowhere as much as with the masts assembled on the ship. For this model, this methed has worked very nicely for me.
 
Next up is to step the mast and finished it's rigging. That is a fun part that I really enjoy.
 
Vince P.

Working on the lavish stern ornamentation.

Hello
 
Started this about 2 years ago. Building this was only possible by learning from all the great builds on this forum - so thanks to all of you.
 
To date have done the Yards with Stirrups and Footropes. Pictures soon.
 
Regards
 
Doug
 
 

Free watch on deck

After the ship was finally planked, I could attach the side pockets.
Here are a few detail shots that have arisen during the progress of construction.
 
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
 
 
 
After this work and 4 months later the pockets looks like this
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
and five years later like this
 
 
                                                      
 
 
 
 
Have fun
 

mylords and ladies,
enough with wood glue, sawing and sanding ....... Bone-ahead signals the lookout.
 
A close view of my workbench
 
   
To get to the processing of the bones feeling I have made the Upper deck.
So make a template from plane plywood (again wood * grmmmpf *) transferred the outline on it ;Sawing planks;
(but now - from bone) ..... the sawdust was indescribable.
I looked like a miller .. and also my workshop!
So first all systems on standby!

Extraction system built from old sucker rod and again from the beginning ......... after 2! Days.

Without vacuum cleaner you should consider the bone saws. I could continue to work clean workshop after 2 days.
To get an idea, just for the big deck were 15! Bone tubes processed. The usable portion of planks from a bone tube is fabulous 15 - 20% of the rest goes through the kerf and waste.
Was sawn and is still a "Mödl-saw" with ordinary 2.4 hp motor;

The bars on the copied template glued on top (waterproof glue).
Openings for gratings; mast guides; etc. release or produce naturally.
The deck is cut in half lengthwise amidships, - So the deck to fit seamlessly later-
The finished deck with blank template on the plywood gluing (glue)
Unless it was still quite good ... but the grind-smooth the surface-to be practiced.
Luckily I had enough material to do so.
The second lucky circumstance was the lively sympathy of my modeling buddies. (Augsburg and Munich modellers group)
The experienced there tips and suggestions have contributed to the success of the start-up phase.
The most important tool is the abrasive belt grinding of Boehler (now "Kaleas" minitool)
 
http://www.kaleas.de//kaleas.cgi?action=show&sessionID=17508566136639363317508566〈=de&page=shop-produktliste.html&cat=32&subcat=3230&catname=Schleifen,%20Hobeln&arcode=x).
The second most important "Smoothing" are glass; ... yes glass.
I use a very long time after the removal of wood! the final sanding with 600 grit sandpaper, glass blades.
The best glass blades obtained from slide mount. The glass in the frame can squeeze out quite easily. One can also use this laboratory glassware. Available in every medicine trade. The glass is held at an angle to the direction of pull and pulled under LIGHT pressure on the wood surface. (Practice, practice, practice, practice, and again ...... practice, practice). So that the wood surface is smooth as a babyskin
And this system works amazing on bone surface!
 
   
Therewith, the main question was answered: The famous smooth surface bone models.
 
The deck in the deck cabin has received a special medallion.

On the drawings in the AOTS book "Royal Yacht Caroline 1749" by Bellabarba is a highly complicated deck to see. However, the author did not mention that a carpet! is.
To lay a carpet there was too profane for the model. So I incorporated a circular medallion with eight-pointed star in the center of the deck.
The rest goes around the outside radiating off to the sides.
The rays and the angular elements within the circle were made on the circular saw.
For the rays I made a saw mask.
This template is ensured that the individual strips are cut at the same angle.
Thus, the interior elements are easier to see, the edges are blackened before the glue along with Plakafarbe. The curves were the first challenge in this model. (Seen after the inside., Ridiculously.)
That this deck is not created in an afternoon, is obvious
 
 

 
 
   
 


The deck in master cabin needed five times more time. The black elements are made of ebony.
Chic ...or?
 
 
 
The comment from my Admiralty:  "will be whole model so elaborate?"
Answer:  No, that's nothing compared to the rest of the yet to come.
Admiralty  "must be?"
Answer: You were such a model, so calm in the forepeak.
Admiralty: "Do you want a coffee, I think it takes longer"
yeah... yeah.... the very best of all wives has a humorous slant............

After the top surfaces were finished were also the side walls are covered and also the outside paneling was mounted above the mountain woods
 
      

Already at that time I was absolutely overwhelmed by the bone material.
One does not believe that fine tuning can be done with bones. However, any blunder is clear to see. With quasi Note arrow on the "malus operandi"  as the Finn would say ... or was it the Swede?
Since then helps only back to the workbench and the defective part inside the box of Memories - (at times when the hand was faster than the artisan mind).
 
 
 
Back to the topic.

Thanks Tim.
 
Some time later, lower gun deck partly planked >
 

 
At the outset I had determined that the ship would be "closed" ~ by which I mean that nothing below the upper gun deck would visible as, for the sake of making this a simpler build, all gunports (with lids) would be closed and only 14 guns on the upper deck, 2 on the quarter deck and the 2 bow chaser guns would be visible. Accordingly the lower deck was only partially planked as only a tiny part of that planking would be visible by peering down a couple of companionways.
 
In my opening post I neglected to say that the build is being done (as close as is possible for me) according to the plans and drawings by John McKay in Rif Winfield's "The Fifty Gun Ship". Anyone familiar with the book will be aware that the accompanying plans are at a scale of 1:96. I felt that scale was a little too small for me to work with, and while I would have been happier with a scale of 1:64 (or bigger), because of display space constraints I decided on a compromise scale of 1:80 so had the plans expanded to equate to that scale.

Little by little she looks like a ship.
 

 

 

 
 

Lantern La Belle is made by a method of brass moulding

This time, I put the pan in the microwave and hot already, I put the lead.
goes perfect. not grab anything and can be reused. (I thought the cast was single use)
I'm thinking of making a new mold, as this has shot a lot and has imperfections in the union.
surely spare you work.

well then broke the two sheets of the band saw, and tried to make the figure of the mirror.
faithfully tried to copy the picture. but even in pencil, on paper, could not. so I've done a bit modified. but I like how it looks.

I think all the measures go well ... for now.

they do not know how, the notches of the keel, not well ... I cut all the pins, and I started from the teacher out, and with the squad, I have repositioned. I think it should do so first.

Thanks for stopping by, Nils.
Well, Pickle is my first wooden ship after many many years. I think it's better builing her out of the box without sails.
 
Hamilton, thank you very much for the nice comment.

This is my build of the Lady Anne (named after the wife – bonus points).  If you squint real hard and tilt your head you may recognize the hull as the AL Harvey.  Other than that it has been a whole lot of kit bashing.  This model was given to me by someone who had just glued the bulkheads on and decided this just wasn’t the thing for him.  Over time (as a break from the Druid) I have done a little bit here and a little there.  I planked the hull as a standard model hull to demonstrate to someone else it wasn’t that hard, so there are planks that taper to points and no real attempt to mimic real practice.  I had ‘assumed’ it would be built out of the box and continued in that direction.  Then things started to get fuzzy. 
I knew that Harvey was a fictitious ship and things really started to bug me about how realistic it was.  The deck furnishings especially just seemed haphazard and in some cases wrong.  This is where I stepped out of the box and this fast build took a hard right into kit bashing.  Over the years I had made a point of keeping pictures of ideas on real ships and models of things I really liked and I started to look at what I could add / substitute in this build.  I started perusing books about clippers, especially ‘The American-Built Clipper Ship, 1850-1856’ by Crothers to look at deck arrangements used by Clippers (and believe it or not, I did find those outhouses shown on the Harvey.  I don’t like them, but I found them).
 



 
I cleared the decks (literally), made paper cutouts of potential deck furniture, and spent a lot of time pondering the imponderables.  A big decision was to rig her as the Pride of Baltimore II was rigged, a true Baltimore Clipper.  This defined the needed pinrails and deck tie downs required (as well as block counts which were a LOT more than the kit supplied).  I moved the pumps aft to where they could actually do some good.  The forward windlass was replaced with a windlass actually capable of bringing in an anchor.  The capstan was moved to a position where it could actually be used, a below deck access was added and on, and on, and on.  The last addition I added are cavels to allow easier docking.  To retain its original heritage I created a 1:48th scale workman that I named sailor Harvey to verify heights as I proceeded.
 



 
The deck currently has a configuration that I am happy with.  The last original piece is the aft deckhouse and it just seems out of proportion for sailor Harvey to navigate through so that will probably be scrapped and an alternate built in its place.  Oh, I retained the cannons since my son insists that cannons are cool and I couldn’t possibly take them off.  I did, however, modify their locations, retain only six (continental breeched) and will probably have two of those stowed parallel to the bulkhead.
 


 
As time allows I will post past pictures of the process I used to build various pieces and the rationale used for including them (which may just be I liked the look).  I am really trying to focus on the Druid and get’r done, but this ship will be warming up.  As usual, any comments are welcome.
 

 
Mark

Right, I am re-posting the build I am currently undertaking of the Royal Caroline from Panart. This is a strictly kit build, no modifications.
 
I started on this build just after Christmas 2005 and I have had a couple of Hiatus periods between then and now. I am working on deck work and the ornamentation on the hull. It is time consuming and very difficult. The biggest criticisms of the kit that I have are the cut plywood pieces over the windows. It neccessitates cuttling a circle in half, trimming off some little pieces and getting them to look good. Not easy.
 
Overall though I like the kit, italian translations to hand make mantua / sergal / panart kits much easier.
 
Anyroad, I have attached some pictures and will update as I go.

Hi Sjors,
 
You're just in time my friend, here are my latest updates 
 
 
While drawing my bulkheads, I've experienced some difficulties tracing the middle-most stations as they have incomplete lines (red boxes):
 
 

 
This caused some head-scratching for some time, until I recalled my previous findings:
 
1. The hull that I currently have has modified aft and fore bulkheads based on the "as proposed" Modified Mermaid Class Body Plan, which upon juxtaposing on CAD, is spot-on with the "as built" Triton Body Plan I am using now.
 
2. The deck levels and overall length of the MSW profile plan, which I used to create my centerboard were also pretty close to the as built plans.
 
To check for accuracy, I printed the fore and aft-most bulkheads that I drew on CAD and compared them with those on my current hull..... law and behold, they were very close indeed with a maximum difference of about 1mm in some areas.
 
These results, plus my hesitance to "guess" the shape of the middle-most bulkheads,prompted me to just continue working on my current hull, which is a mix of NMM-based fore and aft bulkheads and MSW-based bulkheads at the midship area.
 
I did some final tweaking to all my modified bulkheads using the cardboard cut outs of my CAD drawings then proceeded to drawing the stern frames. I decided to make only the innermost (green) and outermost timbers (blue)... a lazy shortcut I adapted from most of the kits I have built 
 

 
With the time consuming drawing-work finally done, it was time to make some wood dust in the workshop 
 
Of course, since this is an "experimental hull", I decided that I will double-plank her, starting with an initial layer of lime planks at the lower hull just to see how fair she would be.
Furthermore, since this is only the first planking, I will not strictly follow all the "planking rules" and just accept the "pointy" plank ends for now 
If the hull shapes up nicely, I will give it a decent second planking, if not.... well, let's just say that there will be a lot of extra wood for cooking barbecue 
 
As a review on why I went through all the above intricacies, here is the "bulge" in the lower hull that had me worried hence my decision to modify my bulkheads:
 

 
 
Here now is my "haphazard first planking" to show how the hull is shaping up... so far no bulge is rearing its head but I'll know for sure once I'm finished
 

 
I made the extensions of the bulkheads and stern frames thicker for strength... I will trim them down to proper size once I'm finished with the planking:
 

 
Here is my "kit-inspired" stern with only four stern timbers reminiscent of my Caldercraft and Amati kits..... note also my violation of planking rules giving rise to numerous "pointy" stealers 
 

 
 
 
Sigh... each time I see my NMM Plan alongside my model, I realize that I have a loooong way to go before she even starts to look like a ship
 

 
I thought I'd also make a size-comparison with my 1/64 Amati Pegasus Sloop:
 
They seem to be almost the same size.....
 

 
 
.... well, maybe not exactly the same size
 

 
 
That's it for now, my next update will be upon completion of the lower hull first planking, during which, I will decide if the hull shape is acceptable enough to warrant some decent second planking or if it is better suited as kindling for the barbecue grill

She will be fully rigged Kevin.
 
Danny

Forecastle and Quarterdeck Carlings
 
There are only a few Carlings on both the Forecastle and Quarterdeck, unlike the lower decks. These mainly support such things as Steam Gratings on the Forecastle and the upper Capstan Step, a Companion and a few Scuttles on the Quarterdeck.
 

 

 

 
  Danny

Here are some photos of the Freezer Paper in use.  
 
First, I cut out some freezer paper in 8x11.5 sheets, and flattened them by wrapping them around a piece of pvc a few times.  When the curl wasn't so pronounced I loaded it into the printer and then copied part of a plan sheet (Mayflower by Chuck, purchased from Model Expo) and printed it to the freezer paper.
 

 
Then I cut out the bulkheads I was interested in, positioned them on a sheet of 1/32 plywood, and laid a medium-hot iron on top of them for about ten seconds - done.  I can now cut out the bulkheads on my scroll saw.  The freezer paper is adhered well enough that the saw doesn't pull it off the wood.
 

 
Hope this helps.
 
Frank