Kevin-the-lubber

Thank you, I really appreciate the encouragement and interest.

I hadn’t heard of that before your mention, above. Also downloaded it and had a quick look. It seem intuitive but possibly a bit simple compared to F360, maybe one step on from TinkerCad. Anyone used it in earnest that could tell us more? I’m always on the lookout for a good alternative to F360, in anticipation of the day when it stops being free.

I found I was doing the same Ian, I was spending too much time reading and responding to build logs, which was often much more entertaining than the task at hand, until I switched to a weekly summary instead. That did the trick though it does mean I often miss stuff. The galley is coming on nicely, looking forward to seeing it evolve.

Photo set 2 is on dropbox, this is the link https://www.dropbox.com/s/qzgifbreac8850s/Set2.zip?dl=0 If you can't access/download I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about it, you just have to try again on another day. Dropbox temporarily stops allowing downloads after X many, then allows them again after a day or two. They would like me to buy lots of storage space to avoid this, but that's not happening!

Photo set 2 is on dropbox, this is the link https://www.dropbox.com/s/qzgifbreac8850s/Set2.zip?dl=0 If you can't access/download I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about it, you just have to try again on another day. Dropbox temporarily stops allowing downloads after X many, then allows them again after a day or two. They would like me to buy lots of storage space to avoid this, but that's not happening!

That's very kind of you Bill. The world cup has been fun to watch, disappointing for England but, as I tell my colleagues, it's only a game 😁. One thing I never understand is this - when teams get knocked out, they pack up and go home. If it was me I think I'd quite want to stay and watch the rest of the competition!

Hi Bill, thanks for looking in. I see you're still racing ahead on the SR, at this rate (and I'm serious when I say this) you'll complete the two most difficult ships in the heller series while I'm still plodding away on the relatively simple CS! Having both the CS and Victory so close is a huge luxury and I ought to make more of it. I've just bought a new camera this weekend (well, second hand actually, but very good) and may do another visit to the CS very early in the new year. Now that I've worked on the foremast and yards in detail I have a much better idea of shots or areas that I missed. I don't think I'd visit Victory again now unless I really needed sight of some particular details. Without masts and rigging she's a sorry sight at present, but I guess it has to be done. I saw the most beautiful model of the 1765 (I think) Victory in the maritime museum while visiting the CS, but the area with the clipper models was shut that day. I'm not so sure the average person would even notice the difference between OOB and kit bashed, apart from the rigging, but in any case, from the photos way back, you did a pretty good job on it. And remember a lot of the time this is the 4th or 5th time I've built this kit as that's how many goes it often takes to get to the 'final' parts. I'm able to learn from my mistakes on the fly and make improvements as I go. You don't get that luxury if you only have the one kit part! Honestly, you guys would be horrified if you saw my scrap bin, in fact here's just some of the CS tests. The wastage does get less and less as I progress, I hasten to add. I've almost finished designing the foremast assembly now, it's taken a long time but the rest should be quicker as there's a lot of shared principles. I may take a little break or at least slow down even more after Christmas, as I may be getting a couple of 1;24 vintage car kits in my stocking and if one of them is a Tamiya I'll want to start on that straight away. I've wanted to try one of their kits for a while as I understand they are fantastic, and it looks like cars are much more 'paint and stick' than ships!

Like this https://youtu.be/ipibBzaByIU

Allanyed, as I understand it, it's like this: there is a bandwidth allowance which gets eaten into by each download. For my free account I have 2Gb of storage and an allowance of 20Gb of bandwidth, meaning the upload probably consumed 2Gb and downloads a further 2Gb each time. The inference is that the files have been downloaded 12 or 13 times since dropbox tells me I've consumed 26Gb of bandwidth. (Bored already by the tech stuff? Me too!). But it seems I can workaround this by renaming the folder and creating a new sharing link. This is fine if one really wants or needs to share with specific people but is probably a bit too much hassle for what you & I want to do, which is simply make freely available a load of reference material. And to be honest I don't understand or even care how dropbox monitor or apply the constraint - is it daily, weekly, forever? There is obviously some demand for a 'central library' for donations such as yours and mine but, setting aside all the copyright-type issues that would need managing, I expect this would need enormous amounts of server storage. Shipman, I think many would echo your sentiments about having to jump through hoops. To some extent I'm the same, but just accept that I have to do some jumping or forego freebies. I briefly considered asking if the rigging climb was open as there didn't seem to be anything happening in that respect, but given my level of decrepitude I went and had a cream tea instead. Really, it needs someone to go round and round with a drone camera at stepped heights but drones are forbidden. Though I wonder to what extent i.e. is that within a mile or just 50 feet.

Sadly Dropbox has suspended sharing of my account due to too much traffic. The suspension apparently lasts for 24 hrs, so anyone who didn’t manage to get the files may have more success later. If not, send me a pm and I’ll do workaround. I may need to handle the remaining photo batches a little differently, I.e. smaller sets. I suppose we can’t complain, it’s free!

Hi Shipman. These are all full fat photos, typical file size = 4Mbs, plus a few videos. When I follow the link myself it all seems to work as expected, I can download a copy of the original. There's no zipping at this end. maybe you have to submit to having a dropbox account in order to access them properly. I'm quite happy to upload to a different free portal if someone has a suggestion, it just has to be quick and easy. The folder is about 7Gb in total.

I made another visit to the Cutty Sark last week and took around 1000 photos. For obvious reasons these are all detail photos aimed at helping me with aspects of the model. They are largely focussed on the masts, spars & rigging. I'm uploading these to dropbox for anyone to download and do with as you will. Due to free storage limitations I'll need to do this in three or four. The first tranche is accessible via this link https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5xnj0nrvpfztcnj/AAAAgu-W1ZY5fpTL8c3hYcKHa?dl=0. I'm not at all au fait with dropbox so if that doesn't work I won't know how to fix it! I'll delete these and upload the next load in about 2 weeks time, and so on. If anyone reads this, say next year, drop me a pm if you want them.

I made another visit to the Cutty Sark last week and took around 1000 photos. For obvious reasons these are all detail photos aimed at helping me wit aspects of the model. They are largely focussed on the masts, spars & rigging. I'm uploading these to dropbox for anyone to download and do with as you will. Due to free storage limitations I'll need to do this in three or four. The first tranche is accessible via this link https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5xnj0nrvpfztcnj/AAAAgu-W1ZY5fpTL8c3hYcKHa?dl=0. I'm not at all au fait with dropbox so if that doesn't work I won't know how to fix it! I'll delete these and upload the next load in about 2 weeks time, and so on. If anyone reads this, say next year, drop me a pm if you want them.

Bill, you’re getting through this at such pace! I can see all that learning on the Victory paying off here and it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out with the rigging. I’ve always assumed the SR would take ages. I love the paintwork by the way, both on the hull and decks. You’ve really nailed that.

Rob, I wouldn't at all disagree and I'm having to learn the mechanics whether I like it or not, as I always need to understand the 'why'. But it is a slow, piecemeal process of two steps forward one step back and, sometimes, the other way round. No matter, I'm a problem solver by nature and will plug away in my own way. I am just becoming a bit frustrated at having several other models that I would like to work on, having hoped to be finished with this one by now; whereas I realise I am probably not even halfway yet. And this isn't through some quest for perfection, just a need to have done as good a job as I reasonably could at this stage of the hobby. I know the next ship will be done much more quickly, and the one after that even more so, but there's always a need to feel tangible progress is being made. Anyway, enough whingeing, work to do and the CS can wait until the weekend.

I’ve been diligently following plates 5 & 6, steel lower masts! Now I see there’s even a very nice sketch on page 39 and narrative on p.40. I guess this is the danger of using something generic as a reference, coupled with not wanting to read the whole thing. I have a copy of Campbell on the way, hopefully that will be more definitive. ps. And just to complete the 'idiot' look, I now also see it's there in the revell instructions - they are called cranes. I think it really is time to stand back and get my ducks in a row around these references, I'm getting in a right old muddle here!

Gosh, it sounds like your ED is just like ours Ian, painfully long waits if you’re going to live. Good that you didn’t actually detach any digits though. Those rams will print fine in either FDM or resin. I couldn’t entirely understand the description of the hull development but, for what it’s worth, the most important lesson I learned when doing my little boats was to use the fewest stations possible.

Thanks Rob, that gives these old eyes a better chance. I most likely will go with how it should be and say a fond goodbye to the double, centred block. I notice the fairleads are quite long as well. Any idea what that rod, running down from the lower topsail yard truss to, it would seem, the foot of the topmast, is all about? I don't see this on any of my reference material. It looks like a bracing rod. I cant quite see, due to the black yard, what it connects to. The cheeks are much thinner than I thought as well, I'd guess that they are nevertheless 1/4" plate which is more than thick enough for that job. I might have to take another look at modelling the trusses. On the real thing they are relatively fine, rather nicely wrought pieces and can be that way as the chains take most of the strain; on a resin model, at scale they are an accident waiting to happen. This might be where I get out the soldering iron. I'll probably pause again for a bit now. I'm finding it painfully difficult to piece together enough knowledge to make progress, something I can probably address with a day trip up to Greenwich.

That's a very good shot Rob - do you by any chance have a larger version? There's a lot of good detail in that shot that I haven't seen elsewhere.

Thanks, Scott. I think you'd be quite hard-pressed to get a good result with FDM. Last year I tried printing cannons using FDM (in fact I think it might have been that which tipped the scales towards buying a resin printer) but I couldn't get at all close to something useful. If resin hadn't worked out so well I would have resorted to wooden dowels and metal, like Bruma's lovely examples. For me it's not so much the tolerance, more the hassle of cleanup - I can print to less than 0.2mm every time in FDM, but printing thin tubes vertically is almost impossible and split tubes horizontally on the plate will work, but you'd have to support the bore and then sand the outside smooth. With resin, I can print them vertically as tubes and with just a little external support (to keep them centred) do quite long lengths i.e. 150mm. But in practice I've found it's better to split them into 2 or 3 sections, using the fairlead bands as cut points so the joins don't show. I've half made a Cutty Sark hull in F360 and at some point will progress it to a stage where it's worth a first draft print. If it's any good I'll most likely use that, along with everything so far on the CS, as the basis for another clipper, quite possibly the Thermopylae. That said, while grazing some background material the other day I found a drawing of the 'Vision', which really appeals.

Yes Marco, the whole yard is currently based on Underhill rather than Campbell, which is also why there are two fairleads. I find there isn’t enough detail in the Campbell plans to rely on these and I don’t think I have Longridge. I may change these details at the last minute. I would so like some proper engineering drawings! I still have a few weeks of designing, I think, and may try to fit in a quick visit to Greenwich to get some better photos of the rigging.

Shipman, https://www.pagesoftools.co.uk/

Doh! That’s what I meant.

Oh that's entirely possible. I think I'm doing pretty well to not just be calling everything sticks 🙄. I don't have to drill through solid bars, I just have to open out the barrels slightly as they tend to close up down the tubes. It's relatively quick and painless, especially with these long drill bits. I think I've given up any ideas of ever marketing any of this stuff. It would be nice to make a little pocket money and all that but I'm coming to realise something I've probably always known about myself when it comes to making things. I love the design bit, the problem solving, but get very bored with repetition. For those familiar with Belbin, I'm a stereotypical 'Plant' with a bit of 'Shaper' for good measure. Here's an example; At the back, lower deadeye sets awaiting glueing and painting.... but I was three short. At the front, a batch that need re-drilling and pinning. They've been sat there for about 4 weeks. Making the foremast assembly is much more interesting. Cheek blocks at the back - as you say, it now makes perfect sense. So the fairleads then align to the cheek block. (I quite like that too!). Thank you once again Ian. If Messrs Underhill and Campbell were still around I would give them both a very stern lecture about the utility of proper isometric drawings.

Folks, there's a question/plea for help in this further down, which I'll underline Second draft. The R&D department has been busy over the last two or three weeks and found a decent method of manufacturing the masts and yards as whole tubes, aided by some very nice, extra long micro drills; below, standard 1mm bit and 100mm long bit - you don't see many of those about, do you. By happy coincidence the lady who sells these on ebay is only a couple of miles away from me and has a veritable cornucopia of modelling tools, many of which will no doubt become mine over time. Anyway, these long drill bits allow me to bore out the barrels of tubes, which close up a little during printing, in order to slide in a CF stiffening rod. The results, in terms of being able to make even the thinnest of yards, are really very, very good; this is a 3mm or 4mm stiffened resin-printed yard-arm taking the full weight of my vernier caliper. with this amount of weight it'll bend, but not break, and returns to shape instantly. The mast and lower yard simply don't bend or break, solid as a rock. So we're in business from that perspective and here are a few detail photos of a 'dress rehearsal' of the lower foremast, largely so I can ask my questions! I find it is sometimes easier to see what changes are still needed if I do a quick'n'dirty paint up of the assembly, even though this iteration will end up in the scrap bin. Stiffeners are the magic ingredient here, well that and getting a resin mix that balances stiffness with flexibiity. You won't see it but I inserted two tiny brass pins in the truss that links the yard to the futtock band, which stops this weak point from breaking. However, I am not confident in my interpretation of the fittings on the lower yard: in particular, I am not convinced that the orientation of the sheet block, fairleads and cheek blocks relative to each other are correct and would very much appreciate a steer on this. I'd also be grateful for any pointers around details I've missed - bear in mind I've treated both the lower mast and yard as steel rather than timber, though the yard-arms are treated as timber. Getting this right at this point is key, because this mast and yard will essentially be the template for most of the others. Hopefully the two photos below show the current setup well enough. Looking at the yard from a side view, as per Underhill I've made the sheet block parallel to the mast. The cheek blocks are perpendicular to the mast. The fairleads (two on each side) are roughly halfway between parallel and perpendicular. I decided to orientate them like this because otherwise they would seem to foul the yard arms, or sit behind the same which seems illogical. My arrangement means the lower topsail sheets are going to slightly 'twist' their way around the yard as they pass from chain block through to sheet block. Is that correct? (Ignore the misalignment of the yard arms, they aren't glued in place)