DavidEN

Stunning workmanship and attention to detail as usual Jason. Regards, David

Thanks B.E. I have picked up a lot of handy hints from your various small boat logs. Regards, David

Thanks Jason. I am hoping that the other boats will be easier now that I have invested all of the time and money on the first one. I hope that we will not have too long to wait for an update on your Jason model. Regards, David

Thanks for the the kind words of encouragement Dave. Do not worry as there are plenty of challenging parts left on your Diana build that will provide a perfect opportunity to jump back in and finish your Endeavour for a change of pace. Regards, David

I foolishly stopped working on the model and I have had a real problem starting up again. This is the second time I have fallen into that trap. I should have learnt my lesson the first time. To get back into the swing of things I decided to have another stab at my nemesis, the 18ft cutter (jolly boat). I think that I am into double figures with my jolly boat attempts. I have picked up a thing or two from the previously discarded prototypes so I went back to the CAD model and made some modifications. I found that trying to insert the individual futtock heads into the formwork was a real pain so I joined them all together at the top with a sacrificial beam and then modified the formwork so that it could accept these beams which will allow the futtocks to line up with relative ease and they will hopefully remain evenly spaced. I went out and purchased some engineering grade resin to try and overcome the failure of the futtocks when releasing from the support structure. I found that it is advisable to put off the curing stage until later as this gives the material some additional flexibility and reduces the chance of sudden fracture. It is more of a faff to use as the model must be cleaned with alcohol rather than water. Once printed out I married the two components together and installed the wash strake first to overcome the futtock distortion problem I previously encountered. I then placed the rest of the keel, garboard stakes, and continued the rest of the planking in my usual haphazard manner. I start out with the best of intentions but soon lose my way. I had some real problems at the pointy end but I realise where the mistake lies and could modify the CAD model to mitigate this in future builds. I decided to just press on with this one as I could not face starting again. The good thing about the new sacrificial beam design is that I can remove the model from the formwork from time to time to see how it is looking from the inside. Not great to be sure mainly due to my munificence with the CA. Despite deploying the engineering grade resin, the dimensions of the futtocks give them the same structural integrity as the bones of a well boiled kipper and they snap off at the slightest touch. I had to replace some parts by organ harvesting from previous model prototypes but I am hoping that a thick layer of paint will keep everything intact. I gave the exterior of the hull a few coats of acrylic paint. I have fallen into the trap of going for a too white paint but I used something called parchment this time. I think I could probably go for one more shade shabbier, which was linen, as it still looks quite bright to my eye but that will hopefully dull over time as it picks up dust and grime from constant handling. I continued my tradition of the admiralty blue identification stripe and added a rubbing strake picked out in white to give it a racy feel. I kept the washboards in a natural walnut finish rather than carrying on with the blue just for some visual interest. For the interior I started off by laying down a few coats of light ochre colour. I found this in the model figure painting section of the hobby shop and it is apparently the colour of the bones of some mythical beast but it had a nice utilitarian look although I was rather taken with the light blue that BlueEnsign used in his pinnace on his Indefatigable build. I was not happy with the grating that I had 3d printed as the perimeter timbers were too wide. The geometry is quite complicated as it needs to fit snugly in the as-built space but I bit the bullet and redrew these to come up with something that was closer to the drawings shown in the AOTSD. I used maple for the keelsom and footwalling. I left this a natural colour with a golden oak stain to highlight the complicated planking layout that took me a while to achieve although the joints are messy and the shape somehow got distorted. This position of the footwalling was the whole reason for embarking on the jolly boat journey as it was sitting too high in the kit supplied version with no way of lowering it. Thwarts, knees, sternsheets, risings, gunwales and decking were all made from the golden oak stained maple to match the rest of the interior timber work. This also ties into the deck colour of the ship so it hopefully does not stick out like a sore thumb. I slightly bumped up the thickness of the thwarts over the dimensions shown in May as the scaling down of this element caused it to appear too insubstantial. I added ringbolts and other bits and pieces. I 3D printed the mast clamp as it is a very delicate piece. I even had to exaggerate some of the dimensions as the dimensionally accurate one was so fragile that it tended to crumble to dust in my fingers. I 3D printed some oars with a view to making them out of timber but once I had them in my hand, I realised that they are too delicate and would therefore be too frustrating to construct from any of the timber in my stock. For fiddly pieces that need to be produced in multiples, the 3D printing process is so much easier. I used the dimensions from Steel based on the 6ft breadth of boat but the length of the oar at 19ft turned out to be longer than the boat which was not what I expected. Further investigation revealed that the oar size can be in a range of 2.5 to 3.5 times the breadth of the boat. I noticed in May that he states the oar length for an 18ft cutter should be 14ft. This is however for a 19th century boat. I knocked out some a few 15ft examples for comparison, as they do not take that long to draw, and I am much happier with the proportions. I made the looms round as Steel notes these were often made round for the ship’s boats. Along with the oars there are other bits and bobs scattered about the boat. One of these is the anchor. Quite a while ago I had purchased the smallest grapnel anchor that I could find on the CMB website. This was a 20mm long version. I had to rummage around before I managed to locate it in the back of a drawer. I glued it together and tossed it into the boat and found out that it was much too large. I drew something up on the computer loosely based on the drawings and dimensions in Steel. I went with the four flukes rather than the five fluker he has drawn (and he does note both are acceptable). Even the slimmed down version was probably too big for the jolly boat and more suited to the pinnace. I scaled the original down in two stages based on what I thought might survive the printing process and came up with three different sizes. Steel notes that the weight for these anchors ranges between 112lbs to 30lbs. An advantage of working in CAD means that I could get the volume of the model and thus calculate the scaled-up weight. The three versions I produced theoretically weigh 106bs, 78lbs and 54lbs which puts them right in the ballpark. For the jolly boat I plan to use the smallest of the three. While this is not down to the 30lb weight, the anchor is so insubstantial that when I had an ant infestation in my workshop the other day and I was worried that they might carry it off to decorate their burrow and I would never see it again. According to Steel the anchor rope is just under an inch in diameter and 40 fathoms of long. This scales to about 0.37mm in diameter and over a metre in length. In an attack of frugality, I decided to only equip my jolly boat with 20 fathoms of anchor rope, which still looks like a lot. I just need to practice making a convincing looking rope coil that stays in place which is a skill that I have yet to master. I repurposed the rudder from version X and. I guess the rudder should be stowed in the boat until it is deployed so I may not fix it in place. I have yet to decide on which route to go which will determine how I construct the rudder fixings so I will leave that for now and stick it in place using blu-tak for the time being. The finished boat is the best one of my prototypes to date. There is still room for improvement but I am going to call it a day on the jolly boat odyssey as I have, more or less, achieved the goal of producing something that is a bit of an improvement on the kit supplied item. It is high time that I returned to the ship itself. I have made a real botch in the rigging department and will have to get busy with some dismantling work.

Thanks Gregory. Interesting was what I was going for. Regards, David

Thanks Ian. When I was buying the printer, I noticed that they had some laser cutters on display and I was sorely tempted however I do not need one to finish this model and to be fair I have also run out of counter space for equipment. I am going to have to redesign my workshop layout before buying one. Regards, David

Not much of an update but after idling my time away playing with the printer and then doing nothing for a month, I felt in need of building something using tools. Nothing too ambitious mind you which ruled out the yards. I had a notion to display one of the ships boats being hoisted aloft in the rigging as though it was being launched. If I did, I thought I should include some cargo for added interest. A few barrels sprung to mind as the ship’s boats were often used to ferry barrels ashore to be replenished with fresh water. Lavery notes that the ships were provisioned with 6 month’s worth of food but only 3 months of water meaning the captain would have to stop off near some handy water source to fill up his barrels. May has a copy of a contemporary drawing showing a 33ft launch filled with 14 leaguers. These are the largest standard barrel carried and have a capacity of 150 gallons. I have often wondered why only some thwarts have knees and it seems that those without are removable to allow the loading of cargo. The whole arrangement looks somewhat like a theoretical maximum as I cannot imagine it would be all that easy to pilot that boat through heavy seas with that amount of cargo. At least it gave me a dimension for the barrel which was a start. Lavery has a handy contemporary drawing showing the placement of casks in the hold of the frigate Artois, sister ship to the Diana. This shows that it did indeed carry leaguers and confirmed the dimensions shown in May. Given the leaguers dimensions of 4ft. 6in. height and a diameter of 3ft. round the middle I started off with a 15mm diameter beech dowel. This was inserted in the lathe and then reduced to a 14.2mm diameter and divided up into five 21.4mm sections in the hope that I would get at least one barrel out of the five. I then bevelled the ends at 7.85 degrees. This was the first failure as the markings on the lathe that I thought were degrees turned out not to be. Angle corrected I proceeded with the rest. These sharp angles were then softened into a barrel shape with sandpaper. I scored lines along the length of the barrel using a scalpel to imitate the staves. There should be upward of 30 staves to a barrel but as the beech was quite hard, I only included 15 as it was tricky to accomplish and you are guaranteed to jab the scalpel into your palm every 12 or so staves. I milled out grooves to countersink the metal hoops which I made from styrene strip painted black. A recess was milled in the top and bottom to simulate the lid and I rubbed charcoal dust into the stave grooves to give them more prominence. I gave the barrel a stain of walnut and stuck in a cut off toothpick for the bung. Once it was placed into the Jolly boat prototype the crew were heard to comment that they needed a bigger boat. There is a drawing in Lavery that shows a layout of a launch carrying 12 of the smaller butts which are only 108 gallons. They note that a first rate launch can carry 14 butts but a third rate only 12. I decided that perhaps butts were the way to go. I found a table in Steel where he gives the overall dimensions of the various types of casks stored on a ship so I used these for the smaller barrel which turned out to be 20.6mm in length and 12.9mm diameter around the middle. As the beech dowel was quite hard to work with, I used a different wood for the butts. I found it in a drawer so I do not know what the timber was but it was a lot softer. Probably too soft. It was easier to score the grooves for the staves though so I increased the number to 24. The barrel was made pretty much the same way as the leaguer but I used a smaller styrene strip for the metal hoops. I really needed something a bit smaller and thinner but they do not seem to make strip of the dimensions I required and cutting them out of larger sheets proved to be too frustrating and inconsistent. The end result was a bit shaky but sat more comfortably in the Jolly boat so should be even better in the launch if I ever get round to building it. I do not think that twelve casks would be all that practical though and a rough measure with the scale rule would seem to suggest that six is crowded enough.

Well done David. It is an impressive addition to the room. I like the way you have incorporated your reference books into the display. Your build log has proved very to me as it has to others I am sure. Regards, David

Thanks JJ. I am quite impressed by the level of detail you can get out of these machines. It is a bit like airbrushing though. Good results but you end up having to do a lot of equipment cleaning afterwards. Regards, David

Thanks for the reassurance Chris. There was one unit left in the shop and I saw another customer making a beeline towards it so I quickly bought it as I did not want to go home empty handed. Regards, David

Still dithering about with the Jolly Boat. I eventually bit the bullet and splashed out on a new resin 3D printer. I got the Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra 12k and the Anycubic Wash and Cure. Not a great amount of research went into this as it was the only one that was available in the store at the time. I think that it is a fairly good machine though and should be more than good enough for my needs. I am now feeling like one of those old dogs that is forced to learn some new tricks as I try to work out how to produce an acceptable print. You know you are in for a whole lot of pain when all the articles you read start off with the phrase that resin printing is more art than science. The first foray into the resin world was not a great success. I thought that I should have a stab at the Jolly Boat as it was this that caused me to buy the set-up in the first place. I thought I should take some advantage of the new capabilities and try to print the entire set of futtocks and keel at the same time thereby saving myself a few assembly steps. I had to revisit the CAD model and put it together virtually so that it was a complete structure rather than an assemblage of parts. I also took this opportunity to thin the futtocks down from the chunkier versions that were necessitated by my previous printer. I modified the detail around the sacrificial tabs so that I could snugly fit the wash strake from the get go and hopefully prevent the futtock non adherence issue I encountered in my previous prototype. The finished model was exported and imported into the new slicer program. I then had to try and orient the model to ensure a successful print and achieve the optimum print quality and support location. I suspect that this stage along with the myriad of settings is where the art lies. Once all that was out of the way I transferred the file over to the printer, loaded resin, pressed start, and went out for a beer as this is not like a paper printer where the result shoots out in seconds. Several hours later I went back and it looked like a mess of spaghetti but I could discern a model amongst the support structure. Then it was over to the wash station and after that was finished it got a quick blow dry using the airbrush and I then had it rotating in the cure station like a midnight kebab. After removing the supports and giving it a cleanup, it was ready for comparison with the previous version. The resin print is a lot sharper and the ability to produce results on a much finer scale is commendable. I wish I had access to this a couple of years ago. I would have improved the resolution of a lot of the details where I had to compromise due to the limitations I was labouring under. Unfortunately, the futtocks are so delicate and, while the material has some flex, it is very brittle. I snapped off a whole lot while trying to free the frame from the support structure. I have subsequently found out that I would have had a better chance if I had removed these supports before curing but I need an alternative method as the futtocks are too small to be glued back on and just one failure would set me back. I also noticed the keel does not possess the required stiffness a keel should possess which may result in some unwanted distortion. I replaced the lower section with some walnut which solved that issue. I did some googling and found out that there are other resins available that have different structural properties. I have sourced one that is for engineering purposes and seems to have better performance specifications although I think that the cross-sectional area of the futtocks is too small to be completely resistant to sudden fracture but it should give me a fighting chance until the planks are in place. Before heading out to the shop for new resin I thought that I might try and hone my skills by printing out various other bits and pieces of deck furniture that I have already constructed namely the barricade, belfry, and skylight. This will give me an idea of what is and is not possible and how much detail I can include before it becomes invisible at the scale I am working with. As these are structures that I have already completed I will have something available for comparative purposes. I had a go at drawing these up and then running them through the printer. The speed of the print is determined by the vertical travel distance so I can cram in a whole lot into the horizontal footprint of the print bed without affecting the print time. The pre-print drawing does look like a tornado travelling through an antique shop though. The first element that I attempted was the quarterdeck barricade. I had already built a CAD model of this but I needed to do some work on this to make it printable. It came out OK with fine a lot of fine detail preserved. I am not sure if I will swap this out as I have grown fond of the crude homemade workmanship of the original. Another piece that seemed to be suited to the printing technique was the belfry. This led to more CAD work based on a combination of the drawings in the AOTSD, details from the NMM plans, photographs of the HMS Victory belfry and my own interpretation. I could have printed this all out in one model but I decided to split out the bell beam and the bell so that I could introduce a more natural joint. I drew up two versions of the Bell. One as per the AOTSD and the other with more exaggerated articulation as I did not think that the original detailing would show up at the 1:64 scale which turned out to be true. I should have also increased the wall thickness of the bell as the printed version was so thin to cause it to collapse under its own weight. The first print of the belfry was not bad in terms of the detail included but the roof looked a bit flat so I exaggerated the proportions slightly for the second go around. I had used copper sheathing on the roof of my original timber attempt but I was never happy with the scale of the patina that I ended up with. For this version I decided to go with a lead sheathing. While the current HMS Victory belfry appears to have copper, I suspect that they would not have been that extravagant back in the day and lead would have been the go-to material. Not having access to suitably thin lead I tried to mimic it using stainless steel sheet but that was hard work so I resorted to plain photocopy paper that I painted grey to try and look like lead. I cannot show a photo of the bell in place as I shattered the bell beam trying to force the brass supporting rods into holes that were slightly too small. The material does not have the forgiving flex of styrene. The other piece that I was never happy with was the skylight on the quarterdeck. My first effort was quite clumsy as I could not get the members fine enough. I have not been able to find any detailed drawings of an 18th century skylight so I had to rely on descriptions in Lavery as well as what can be seen on HMS Victory and HMS Trincomalee. I used a lot of artistic licence and treated it as a bit of a test bed by introducing some articulation. This was to make it look more like a joinery item and to see how small I could go before the details become invisible to the naked eye. The first prints did not work as the gap that I had left for the glazing closed up during the printing and the mullions were too thin to maintain structural integrity. I redrew this using thicker sections and a new method for incorporating the glazing by printing the entire frame assembly in two separate pieces with the glass sandwiched in between. The new chunkier sections are not a million miles from the sizes I used in the existing model. The 3D printed version has a lot more detail than the original and has a bigger glazed area so that it might be possible to get merest of glimpses to the deck below so I may go ahead and swap this out. There are visible details at 0.2mm which is finer than I can manage using traditional techniques. I seemed to have lost a lot more time while faffing about with my new toy so I should really get back to working on the model as it has been stalled these past few weeks.

Hi Dave, It is present on two of the contemporary models of the Diana. I carved mine out of a block of timber but it was quite a tricky piece and it took a coupe of goes before I ended up with something that I could just about live with. Beef Wellington's is the one to aspire to. Regards, David

The beams are offset from the frames as they are glued to the sides of the bulkhead rather than on top as shown in the photo below. It is how they are meant to be installed as per the instructions so it should not be a problem. I did modify my beams though so that they did not run through the hatch openings but that would be hard to achieve in your case with the deck already installed. Regards, David

Thanks for the kind words Ross, B.E., Allan and Dave. I think that I have identified a few areas where I can make improvements so I am going to go for one more attempt. Of course I could just be kidding myself. Regards, David

A bit of a hiatus between posts but I had some vacation time and after coming back I found it hard to overcome the inertia. The mizzen mast is much like the fore and main but with some subtle changes which means I will have to be on my toes lest I miss them. The sling is the same configuration but the diameter of the rope is only 0.5mm. The jeer blocks are lashed to the head in a different manner and must be installed after the shrouds are in place so that they sit snugly on top of the shroud pile. The first bit of rigging encountered are the burton pendants and these are a pair of singles rather than twin doubles. The rope is 0.5mm served dark brown. Luckily, I had used the 0.5mm diameter rope while bungling the fore pendants. These were replaced using a larger diameter rope that allowed me to recycle and repurpose these first attempts for the mizzen. Once I had fixed the top with strong epoxy, I noticed that it had a bit of a slant to port. I somewhat optimistically thought that I could correct this by giving it a good twist but just succeeded in demolishing the crosstrees and the whole assembly came tumbling down. I managed to salvage the pieces and then added a shim to the top of the port bib to straighten things out. I had to rebuild the top insitu but, with lashings of CA and structural paint, it mostly went back together again. Shrouds were added in the traditional manner although they were 0.8mm diameter with 3mm diameter deadeyes. Steel calls for the lanyards to be 0.32mm so I used 0.35mm rope which was the closest I had. I struggled to get the deadeyes to line up and I had to cut out some lashings and retie on multiple occasions. Still not perfect but good enough. Ratlines were slightly less onerous seeing as there are only two pairs of shrouds and a swifter to attach to which is a great saving in clove hitches but the same amount of cow hitches which I find are not as fun as a clove hitch. I had to order some more rope from Ropes of Scale as I had not initially planned on using the 0.25mm diameter for my ratlines and the fore and main masts chewed through my existing stock. I thought that I had enough for the mizzen but ran out half way down so there were more delays as I waited for Canada Post to bring reinforcements. The rope duly arrived which allowed me to finish the lower mizzen ratlines. Futtock staves, futtock shrouds and catharpins were all similar to the other masts albeit in smaller diameters and fewer numbers. Futtock shrouds are 0.5mm diameter. I used 0.85mm diameter black annealed wire for the futtock staves compared to the 1.0mm I used for the fore and main masts. While I was waiting for the rope to complete the lower mizzen rigging, I started to repaint the window frames at the quarter galleries. I had originally painted these white but it was a bright titanium white that was not in keeping with the overall look of the ship. I am going over these with a white that has been coloured with a splash of yellow ochre. I have just started this task and it already looks a lot better but painting these in situ is not the easiest. It is further complicated by my not being able to turn the ship upside down now that I have the masts in place. I am still not happy with the faux caryatids but I am at a bit of a loss as to how to improve these. I will extend the base down to the lower moulding though as that seems achievable and will make them look more grounded at least. To break the tedium of window frame painting I thought I would have another stab at a ship's boat. I had covered the trials and tribulations of my first efforts in an earlier post but I was not happy with how they turned out. I was looking for futtocks that were closer to the actual dimensions used but had to go with larger sections due to structural concerns and the limitations of my current 3D printing setup. I was reading a book about whaleboat construction and they had a photograph of the futtocks being shaped over formwork. I figured I could use a similar arrangement for the small boat construction. If I introduced a form at each futtock location that would give the thinner member enough support while I finished the planking. Once the planking was in place it would theoretically have enough structural integrity to hold its shape. The poor quality of the printed members would have to be lived with unless I invested in a new resin printer. I could possibly disguise some of the shortcomings with lashings of paint. I got CADDing and knocked out the parts for the jolly boat as this is the smallest boat which would theoretically be the most challenging. I made a base that would accept the formwork pieces. I added a number/letter to each of these so that I would not get confused and insert them in the wrong slots. The printed futtocks are incredibly delicate and I dare not give them a hard stare less they wilt. These were then inserted into slots milled into a 1.5mm thick walnut keel. Once they are draped over the temporary formwork though they are quite robust and can stand up to some vigorous planking. The ears that secure them to the base will be cut off once planked to allow the hull to be lifted free from the formwork. I think that it is a viable construction technique for those that are better hull plankers than I. As this is a 18ft cutter (jolly boat) I had to approximate the clinker construction. For accuracy the actual planks would scale to around 0.3mm x 2.2mm in section. I used some pear I had lying around although this is slightly thicker at 0.4mm and I cut the planks around 2.5mm wide. Close enough for my clumsy tolerances, however, using these tiny planks did not go as smoothly as it did in my mind. After the first few planks there was noticeable asymmetry and for me it was not practical to go down the tick mark and spiled plank route given the tiny size and my short attention span, so I resorted to eyeballing things which resulted in a bit of a mess. I ended up with one more strake on the starboard side compared to the port much to my embarrassment. Once I cut it from the formwork, I noticed that the planking had fought against the tight radius of the hull and was pulled away from the top of the futtocks. I attempted to mitigate this by introducing a thicker wash strake but it was not a complete success and would still require some distortion to be applied to the head of the futtocks to close the gap. As it us a prototype I applied a rough paint job and fitted the inside with gratings and footwalling salvaged from a previous prototype just to see how it looked. I added the thwarts and various other bits and bobs to see how the rest of the details worked and to test out some colour combinations. I did not bother finishing it and some of the elements are held in place with blu-tack. I suppose it is not the jolliest of boats but it is quite cute. I have lost count but I think this is Jolly Boat prototype number five. I have noticed that each of these prototypes has been an improvement on the previous version so given an infinite amount of time and patience I would theoretically eventually end up with an acceptable product. I think that going forward I will either have to bite the bullet and get a new printer or just order one of the Vanguard mini kits. The 1:64 scale is not my friend in this endeavour. A lot of running in place but some progress nonetheless. I do not know if I should continue with the masts or mix it up with some yard construction or perhaps even have another stab at another ship's boat prototype. Given how long it has taken me to progress the first ship's boat I think that I will limit the complement to three boats down from the five mooted in May. I am thinking the jolly boat, the 26 ft yawl and the 32 ft pinnace. That would give me a one of each type and I could mount two on the skid beams and have one hoisted in the rigging as if being launched. That way I will not totally obscure all the detail of the upper deck with shabby looking boats but I reserve my right to change my mind at the last minute.

Congratulations on finishing your excellent build David. The additional details that you have introduced really lift the model to the next level. Regards, David

Thanks for the kind words JJ, Dave and Allan but it is early days yet and you should not underestimate my ability to spectacularly botch it from here on in. Regards, David

The installation of the quarterdeck hammock cranes allowed me to carry on with the main mast lower rigging. I had to switch out the deadeye strops from my homemade ones. I bought some new deadeye strops from HiS models. These are PE and blackened which saves me a step or two over the Amati ones. The shrouds themselves are pretty much the same as the fore mast. They are 1.2mm diameter RoS dark brown rope which is closest to the 1.14mm diameter noted in Steel. They are rigged in the same fashion in pairs fore to aft alternating between starboard and port. The first leg is served all the way with the others only in the section around the mast until just below the futtock stave. It is a bit of a chore having already laboured on the fore mast but it would look funny if I left them off. The task is made all the more laborious as my homemade serving machine is beginning to wear out and the joints have become a bit loose. Seeing as I built it myself, I did not think about including a lifetime guarantee. I will have to do some maintenance or make some replacement parts I suppose. Once all the shrouds are in place it is back to the ratline tying. I mixed this up with the installation of the main stay and main preventer stay. The main preventer stay was 1.2mm dark brown rope but for the main stay Steel gives a diameter equivalent to 1.76mm at scale. I did not have anything of that size in the dark brown but I had some 1.8mm diameter beige cable-laid rope so I mixed up some ink to approximate the dark brown colour and dunked it in. Not a perfect match but it looks OK to my eye. I used the mouse I made previously, covered with the same woven sticking plaster, and painted with the same ink mixture I used for the rope. Serving was completed till about 29mm past the mouse and the other end was wrapped around the homemade heart block which was then lashed in place. When I returned to the model a couple of days later, I saw that the main stay had gone all floppy. I suspect that the process of soaking in the ink had caused the rope to shrink which then relaxed once tension was applied. I resorted to hanging some weights from the end and I will leave this arrangement in place for a while in the hope that it will eventually return to its original length and the long term creep will stop. While photographing the mouse, I decided the sling looked too puny. I rechecked Steel and discovered that I had bungled and it should have been made using a 1.14mm diameter rope rather than the 0.8mm that I ended up using so I remade both the fore and main mast slings with served 1.2mm diameter rope. As well as being historically accurate, the look of the robust version is more pleasing to my eye. The futtock stave, futtock shrouds and catharpins were all as per the fore mast. The futtock stave is 1.0mm diameter annealed black wire lashed to the shrouds using Gutterman thread in a simple 3 move lashing. Looks a bit of a mess in macro but my eyes are not that good in real life. I struggled a bit with the catharpins this time around and tied them too tight causing the shrouds to distort more than I liked. I eventually completed all the ratlines which turned out a bit more ragged than those on the foremast. I guess I should complete the lower shrouds for the mizzen mast before I start on the upper level of rigging. I still have some work to do before I can fix the mizzen top in place. It is a slightly different configuration to the other two masts so I will have to check the various sources to make sure that I do not forget to install an essential piece of rigging hardware or miss drilling a vital hole.

Thanks JJ I am still quite a beginner in the rigging department but I have found that upgrading the ropes helps draw the eye away from the clumsy knots. I just had a browse through your HMS Winchelsea build which looks fantastic. I really like the look of the admiralty board style but judging by the work on your cannons it will be a piece of cake for you to rig it beautifully. Regards, David

I did attempt to snake between the fore stays. As I feared the result was not great. It is very hard to get all the legs tensioned enough without pulling the two stays closer together so it ended up looking very shoddy. I will probably keep it as it will be hard to remove without damaging the stays. Perhaps I can tweak it a bit using dilute PVA glue and tweezers to get the snaked rope to sit in a more convincing manner. I will have to come up with an alternative solution for the main stay. In the spirit of experimentation, I decided to have a go at the crows feet. I always liked the look of crows feet so decided to include them on my model. Touch and go with the date they fell out of use by but I think it still sneaks under the cutoff. I constructed the euphroe block from some walnut. It was cut to the approximate length and width and then freehand shaped using the dremel and a sanding drum. The block is a little bit longer than the dimensions indicated in Steel otherwise I would have had trouble accommodating the required number of holes. The holes themselves are 0.4mm diameter which should be a delight to thread. I added the blocks which are 3.5mm singles from HiS Models. These were seized to the euphroe block using 0.5mm ROS tan rope. For the crows feet I used some 0.1mm rope I had lying around. I think it is Caldercraft. Steel gives a scaled diameter for this element at 0.12mm so it is close enough and I have heard that thinner is better when dealing with crows feet. I rigged it according to the diagram in Lees. I had 23 holes which equates to 11 per side and one in the centre which gave me 12 holes in the euphroe block. This agrees with Lees who states that the euphroe block generally had between 12 - 14 holes. Once installed I realised that I had bungled the counting and I have 25 holes. I should have drilled 13 holes in the euphroe block. I am just going fill in the unused holes in the top as threading this was a real pain. It was quite the tug of war to get everything taut. I did not know how far down the stay to fix the euphroe block but looking at historical models it would appear that in early 18th century ships it sat quite far down the stay but this seems to have retreated further up the stay as the century progressed. In the end I just picked a location on a whim and then moved it twice until I was vaguely happy with it. I somewhat naively thought that a good tug on the euphroe block would cause all of the crows feet to snap tight but I soon found that this was not the case and each line has to be pulled taut in sequence cycling through line one to line twenty three several times over which caused much grinding of teeth. The result is still a bit floppy but I think I will let the ropes rest for a bit before giving them a final tensioning. I started looking at the hammock cranes as I realised that I should get some of these installed before I fit the shrouds for the main and mizzen mast as there would be access problems once these were in place. The PE kit supplied items are quite serviceable but to get the thickness they have sandwiched two layers of brass sheet and the join is visible along the side. I was also distressed by the fact that they are rectangular in cross section rather than square. Minor points I know but once you have an itch you must give it a good scratch. A spot of research showed that there was quite a bit of variation in the design of these items so that gave me a free hand in coming up with something I could manufacture in-house. I thought about using the same thin-walled brass tube that I constructed the handrail stanchions from. I then used a 1x1mm section of styrene to complete the bottom member but the styrene did not have the required stiffness and tended to flex too much. I then went out on the hunt for some 1x1mm brass square section to replace the styrene but this proved elusive. I eventually found a model supplier in the UK that sells it online so I ordered some. It is quite small but probably slightly larger than the real section used however this is the smallest I could go before it became impractical. Once I had the 1x1mm brass section I realised that I could form the hammock crane by simply bending it into shape. Getting a nice tight radius was quite problematic as was drilling the holes vertically into the ends to accept the eyebolt. I may use a modified version of this method for the waist hammock cranes but continue with the brass tube method for the quarterdeck locations. The kit drawings show 15 hammock cranes per side at the quarterdeck while the AOTSD indicates 17 per side. I ended up with 16 which made sense for the spacing of gunports that I have. To install these, I inserted a section of 1mm diameter brass tube flush with the top of the rail. This will theoretically be able to receive a 0.5mm diameter brass rod that I will insert through a hole in the bottom member of the hammock crane and should hopefully keep them in place although it seems a bit tentative. Drilling the 0.5mm diameter hole in the brass sections really tested my patience but I had started so I had to finish. I snapped quite a few drill bits trying to force the pace. They were all held together with epoxy and given a bit of a grinding with the dremel to smooth the transition between the vertical and horizontals and hopefully, but ultimately unsuccessfully, make them look like they were beaten from an iron bar by an angry blacksmith. I inserted a 1.5mm diameter blackened PE eyebolt from HiS models into the top of the legs. I made a bit of a mock-up showing different rope sizes for the top rope. The tables in Steel are a little ambiguous as to the size of this rope. It could either be equivalent to 0.5mm diameter or 0.35mm depending on how you interpret them. I suspect the 0.35mm is the correct one which would be the 3inch circumference rope to the "stantion in the wafte" noted in Steel but I do not mind the heavier rope. It is quite the task to complete these and I did them in batches of eight as I found that this is the maximum I can assemble before the epoxy hardens. It is another one of those endeavours where there is a lot of work for a marginal gain on the kit supplied material. They are finished with a coat of matt rattle can black, some weathering powder to make them more iron like, a coat of polyacrylic and then glued in place. They are a bit chunky looking but that is as small as I can go without learning some new techniques. They would look better on a 1:32 scale ship. I will now have to hit the textile shops to see if I can source some convincing netting material.

Thanks for the kind words Dave. When you live close to the equator every month is a summer month. Regards, David

Now that the bowsprit was positioned, I began to look at the rigging for the stays to the fore mast. Turns out I have neglected to include a slew of thumb cleats that keep the collars in place. To be fair they are not that well highlighted in the documentation but it now means I will have to be mangling my finished paintwork to get these installed. I constructed them using the same method as the gammoning cleats and again milled slots in the bowsprit to locate them. I did some research into how the stays were rigged and turns out it is quite a complicated exercise. I realised that I had made a strategic mistake in not ordering replacement heart blocks when I upgraded the rest of the blocks. The kit supplied items seemed quite OK at first glance but looking in Lees these seem to be from a slightly earlier time frame than the Diana and the fore and fore preventer stays appear to be rigged with a combination of open and closed heart blocks. The Vanguard blocks look like a good offering but I have been experiencing delays with the UK postal service of late so I foolishly decided to have a go making my own as I did not have the patience to wait for a delivery and I thought there were only 6 of these. Steel indicates a different size block for each of the four stays scaling to 7.6mm, 6.7mm, 5.5mm and 4.7mm but the smaller sizes were too challenging for my clumsy hands so I rationalised them into two sizes (big and small) and exaggerated the dimensions slightly to give me a fighting chance (9mm and 7mm). I based these on the drawings in Lees but the end results are a bit agricultural however I was able to get a double groove in the open hearts to accommodate the collar configuration. Once they are festooned with rigging, they should be fairly anonymous. I used the first of these in the collar for the main stay. For this I served a 1mm diameter rope. It should be a little bit larger but I had drilled the hole in the gammoning knee a very long time ago and it is no longer accessible to make larger. It was not that easy getting the rope in there to be sure. I thought it would be wise to install as much rigging as I could on the bowsprit before I fixed it in place. The bobstays were the first to go on and first dilemma. I suspect that these should be closed hearts but deadeyes seem to be an acceptable alternative. After having made the initial batch of hearts I was loathe to have to make a whole lot more especially as these are 3.5mm in size which is smaller than I dare attempt. Still, despite swearing that I would not make these I ended up having a go anyway. I used some dowel that was lathed down to 5mm in diameter. I then drilled a hole down the centre. I then lathed a series of grooves at 1.25mm centres which would give me a 2.5mm thick block with a centre channel. The final shape was milled out and then finished off by file. The result was not the best and I had a high failure rate due to the relatively large grain of the beech dowel. I really needed a different timber type to be able to make these successfully. I noticed that the ones on HMS Victory look almost circular in shape so I thought that drilling out a deadeye might make an acceptable compromise. These deadeyes are boxwood so much more robust when working at the small scale. I also decided to mix it up and use deadeyes for the bowsprit shrouds. I think that the deadeyes will also be easier to rig. Installing these blocks onto the bowsprit was harder than anticipated. I decided to use served rope as per Lees which further complicated matters. I had a real problem. getting the length of served rope correct and managing to seize the blocks as close as possible to the bowsprit. Trying to produce the double served rope that holds the open hearts in place was a real low point. Time to fit the bowsprit permanently. I had seen some very neat gammoning before but that was beyond my skill level. I used 0.8mm rope and despite several attempts I was unable to achieve the elegant spiral depicted in Lees. In anticipation of fitting the stays, I had a go at making a mouse. I could not find much information regarding the size but scaling off the drawing in Lees I came up with a proportional formula where it appears that the largest diameter should be around three times the diameter of the stay with the length three and a bit times the diameter. Which I have just realised could be Pi and the length is equal to the circumference of the stay which would be quite an elegant formula if true. I inserted some beech dowel into the lathe and carved the mouse out freehand using a file. I then covered this using some sticking plaster to get the woven pattern which was painted with an ink mixture that tried to mimic the dark brown colour of the stay. Quite a performance given the waterproof properties of the sticking plaster. My first effort looked a bit odd but I subsequently read in Steel that the mouse should be shaped like a pear and not like the black pudding I ended up with. I decided to have another go where I reduced the diameter at the thin end to achieve a more pear like shape. Each stay is a different diameter and thus a different size mouse. Once I had the whole family of mice assembled, I positioned it on the stay and then served it in place. The fore stay was 1.65mm diameter cable and the preventer stay 1mm diameter rope. I installed the preventer below which seemed to be a modeller's choice type of decision. The colour variation of the mice seen in the photographs is not as apparent as it seems. My phone camera loves to over saturate the images. I suppose I could improve it though. I fixed the stays in place using the homemade hearts and seized them together with some 0.5mm diameter lanyard. Now that they are in place, I feel the urge to add some snaking but I am reticent as I think that it will be very difficult to achieve an acceptable end-product. I may give it a go though as I am treating the fore mast as a test bed for rigging elements.

Thanks for the kind words Jason but I am sure that, even if you have a bad day, your carved timber heads will make my efforts seem quite clumsy Regards, David

I decided to tackle the bowsprit. I had been avoiding it as I was unsure as to how I was going to be able to construct the geometry at the bees. I eventually followed the same method I used when building the masts and I constructed the bowsprit shaft and head as separate entities. This meant that I would not have to redo the entire assembly if I botched one of the many cuts that comprise the end section. I then dowelled the two sections together using some 2mm diameter brass rod and the join was covered up by the woolding. As suspected the end section was quite tricky transitioning from a tapered cylinder to a tapered square with an angled cap tenon further complicating matters. I milled out some slots for the bees. The bees and bee blocks were made from walnut. It will all be painted black so the wood does not need to match. I noticed from several sources that the sheaves in the bee blocks are one each side and staggered however the AOTSD drawings show two sheave holes per side. I went with the one either side staggered arrangement. A 1mm diameter brass rod was inserted to simulate the bolts through the sheaves. The end cap was cut out of some 5mm thick walnut. Getting the holes at the correct angle was quite challenging but I ended up eyeballing it. I drilled a groove down the starboard side of the cap to accept the jack staff and added some simulated bolts as shown in Steel. I should have used a smaller diameter wire for these as they are somewhat oversized. I spotted in Steel that there was an eyebolt midpoint at the top of the cap. I do not know what this is for but saw that HMS Trincomalee has the same arrangement. This does not seem to be in use in its parked-up configuration but I decided to include it anyway as it was no great bother. I scratch built all the saddles and cleats that appear on the bowsprit as I had followed the dimensions in the AOTSD which resulted in the kit items not fitting the larger diameter I ended up with plus the kit items were made from the dreaded walnut ply so were not that appealing. The saddles were all cut out of 15mm diameter dowel sections. I drilled a hole in the center corresponding to the diameter of the bowsprit at the saddle location. The height and profile were then formed using some shaped mill bits. They are quite delicate structures but should be OK once glued in place or so I thought until I realised that I had glued the fairlead saddle askew and then managed to crumble it to dust while trying to remove it. I formed the cleats from some 2 x 1.4mm walnut planks. I clamped eleven planks (9 + 2 spare) together in the vise and then milled them all at once for consistency. I then put the bowsprit into the dividing attachment and milled recesses corresponding to the cleat locations. This allowed me to get an even spacing of the cleats though it was quite a fiddly exercise. For the jibboom I started off with an 8mm diameter dowel. I needed the additional girth so that I could mill the octagonal section at the heel and form the stop at the other end. I had painted the bowsprit in the ochre colour with black at the overlap. I decided to keep the rest of the jibboom natural to mimic the mast configuration and I used the miniwax Puritan Pine stain to match the masts. I am now wondering if I should not have painted it in the ochre colour. I think I will wait and see if the natural colour grows on me. I added a strip of stainless steel sheet to simulate the lead sheathing that sits forward of the spritsail sling saddle according to Lees. It is a bit shiny so I will have a go at dulling it down using some paint. The woolding was made using 0.5mm diameter dark brown RoS rope which is the closest I have to the diameter indicated in Steel. I used cherry shims to form the protective hoops as per the main mast. I still must decide if I am going to paint these black or leave them natural. I decided to stop the process here and remove the jibboom as I will be working on the rigging which means that I will be spinning the ship around from port to starboard and the delicate jibboom assembly will not survive a hard clonk against the desk lamp. I may install the bowsprit though as this will allow me to further progress the rigging and add the fore stay and preventer stay.