ZyXuz

Hey Mike,
Million thanks on your sharing that really helps me a lot! I'll go with the 17mm coat of arm then  the size looks perfect. I was planning to buy the crown too, but worried on the detail.. now you helped me solve my doubt. I'll place a new order at probably by tonight!
 
Thanks again!

Hey Mike,
Million thanks on your sharing that really helps me a lot! I'll go with the 17mm coat of arm then  the size looks perfect. I was planning to buy the crown too, but worried on the detail.. now you helped me solve my doubt. I'll place a new order at probably by tonight!
 
Thanks again!

ZyXuz,
 
Very nice update. Very creative idea. Looks brilliant.
 
Michael

Oh that feels great ...
 
... after being off for that many weeks - job, holiday, job - now back on the drug ...
 
... back in the shipyard again :-)
 
I already showed the carving ...
 
 
 
... I tried long to finally find the right way to display those tendrils on the supports of the side entry port canopy. Positive carving, modeling with clay - nothing worked.
 
Then the idea to carve it in the negative way ...
 

 
... and have a thin cast and glue it together :-)
 
Here the family juwels:
 

 
Left bottom the old casted parts from the carved styrene carvings of the ones on my model. Left top sculpted with Magic Sculpt - not successful - , then the negativ carvings with a thin cast, below left the first test and right the improved carving with the thin face side sculted with Magic Sculpt and right the final casts and black the final cast with primer :-)
 
From near it looks like this:
 

 
And with some paint it is near what i wanted to achieve ...
 

 
... then the small crown underneath the canopy with its flags ...
 

 
... both parts together ...
 

 
... feels good :-)
 
Now just the new canopy ...
 
Cheers, Daniel

Very nice work ZyXuz, glad to see you back

Hi again ZyXuz, hope all is well.  My package from CMB arrived, so now I should have enough thread to finish my Badger.  I also got a few goodies for my upcoming Unicorn build, which I thought I would share with you (and Ian of course), if you don't mind.
 
For the coat of arms, I ordered A5349, which was listed as 17mm (I think you had ordered A5350, the 27mm one).  The 17mm is pretty close as you can see to the coat of arms on the original cast metal stern piece, but much sharper in definition.
 

 

 
 
For the stern galleries, there is crown that sits on top of the cast metal piece.  It all looks pretty mediocre, so I bought AMND166 (CD166), which is pretty close in size, but again, much better definition.
 

 
I also bought a few other items to play around with.  One was the stern decoration for another ship (A5338), which I could use the two ends for decoration around the coat of arms or along the sides of the stern.  I also bought one of Corel's edging strip (CD110, or AMND110), which I might use as accents along the stern.  
 

 

 

 
 
I probably have more posts on the Unicorn, a ship I haven't even started building, than I do my Badger that I've been building for over five years 

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

It's great to see you've returned to the Unicorn, Zyxuz.   Hope all is going well in life and in the shipyard.

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

Cap Square Making
 
Finally, I got sometime on my update after such a long while. This is done like 2 weeks ago, and now I'm slowly putting up my works here...

I started working on it once my copper sheet arrived, and also made a jig to help on. Here's it is.. a short one tho  
 

 
I cut a 2mm strip from it.
 

 
 And with the aid of my jig to create the curve on it.

 

 
To save time, I made them only for those exposing on the deck. Total of 20 guns, so 40 cap square.

 
I also added nail detail to it, and continued to blacken.
 

 
Thanks for viewing! 
 

Thanks guys for your positive clicks, and remarks,
 
I was not too sure about this idea, but Nigel you are right the larger ones will now visually not be as prominent. Ferit your idea has great merit thanks for the thought. I have some smaller brass nails that I will blacken, then look at the 1:1 and the 1/10th and see where it leads. I do fear overdoing this I need to be careful (:-) (:-)
 
PS: My tempting new avatar??
 
Cheers,
 
Michael

brilliant work on the nail details, Michael

brilliant work on the nail details, Michael

Okay, been thinking about Shroud Cleats for a couple of days and decided that the method described above by Colin was probably the most likely to achieve success (thanks Colin )
 
First up, I needed to draw something up with dimensions so that I had a clear picture of what I was trying to achieve, so I knocked up a quick diagram in TurboCAD and was fairly satisfied with the overall size, proportions and shape of this:
 

 
This cleat pattern is 5mm "wide" by 3mm "tall".  I had intended to use this as a pattern, glued to the wood to aid cutting, but in the end didn't use it as such.  The important thing was the dimensions, which determined the cutting process.
 
The next important consideration was getting the grain direction correct on the finished piece to maximise strength and minimise potential for breakage.  For some reason this messed with my head for a while, but I eventually worked it out.  Taking a piece of Boxwood sheet 3mm thick and about two inches wide, I cut 5mm wide strips across the grain.  This means that in the finished product, the grain will run along the length of the cleat.
 
Then having worked out that I wanted the "feet" of the cleats to have a 1mm thickness for securing to the shrouds, I cut a dado using a 0.020" kerf blade in the Brynes saw, 1.67mm deep on both sides of the strip.  These dimensions were important to achieving the final shape.
 

 

 
You can see in the above pics that the stock on one side of the cut is thicker than the other side.
 
The next step was to creat the "anvil" shaped horns for the top of the cleat.  This was done using some curved riffler files, with the stock held in a small vice.
 

 
In the next photo, one side of the anvil has been shaped:
 

 
The stock was then returned to the Brynes saw and a very shallow "kissing" cut was made along the centre of the top side.  This was used as a guide for a round file to then shape the curve across the top of the anvil, and leaving a very shallow recess to assist in securing the cleat to the shrouds.  In the next pic you can see the final shape, with the curve and recess visible.
 

 
The last step was to return once more to the Byrnes saw and slice off individual cleats 1mm thick.  The hardest part of this process was catching the little buggers as they flew off the saw!     
 
Here's the yield from one piece of stock originally measuring 5mm x 3mm x about 2 inches (about 30 cleats all up, a few of which will be further modified to make mast cleats):
 

 

 
And here they are, stained black and ready for installation.
 

 
They still look a little "chunky", but I think I'm happy with them - they seem to be no worse than the metal versions available, at any rate.
 
Now I just have to attach them to the shrouds.      

OK I want to go to THIS party !!!!

High everyone,
 
A small, again retro, update, It seems that I still do not have enough nails in the hull, I knew that (:-). Marktiedens you're certainly laughing....
 
But, I did not want to add many new brass nails. The only black nails that are available are too large. JanV with his brilliant idea using Brass Black on his build log (Big Thanks to You Jan) was able to chemically blacken metal parts, especially brass with this product. Perfect solution for my build as well.
 
I ordered a bottle. Amazing stuff. In less than a minute much smaller, and much more within scale brass nails were turned black.  So I've been adding these to the larger longitudinal timbers along the hull. I might now remove some of the larger ones, and replace them with a bit smaller ones as an attempt to properly re-scale this effort. The larger nails are a bit out of scale, as had been pointed out to me way back when. I know that many of the "holes" are treenails, but for this build that detail is much too late. Hmmm.
 
Here are a few pics of the Lanström drawing, the 1:1, the 1/10th, and a few of mine, a work still in progress, again thanks for dropping by my shipyard.
 
Regards,
 
Michael

Mike,
Thanks for the info. I think I'll go for the Amati's thread then Regarding the windows, I'd vote for the rectangular ones too.. you can save a lot of times on the carving instead of the arc frames and the harder part is that the angle of the windows are different with position, which you might need few jigs to help on
 
Nick,
Thanks for your kind words!

nice work, Ricardo.. especially on the painting job
 
just saw that you cut your finger, hope it's recovered by now
I also cut myself on the first day making my Race Horse.. 

recalled that feeling.. real pain

Hi ZyXuz
 
Nice progress you have made there
Your making on the cannon's are very helpfull for me, and I'm probably going to use your method or similar to it
I will follow your built (which I already did )
 
Cheers
Nick

Hi Ian,
 
Good to know about the windows.  I'll have to take that into consideration when scratching the stern and stern galleries.
 
If you look at the Chapman plans, they do indeed show windows with arches at the top.  I'm wondering if these arches were decorative, rather than part of the actual windows?  It's a bit hard to tell from the Chapman plans whether the arch served as part of the window panes, but take a look at this stern from model SLR0461 of the RMG.  The windows here are rectangular, with decorative arches at the top.  The ship is from 1741, so fairly close in time to the time of the Unicorn.
 

 
Here is the link to the RMG site.  It's a bit hard to tell whether the stern gallery windows are constructed this way as well, but it looks like it could be the approach taken.  It might be a bit odd to have rectangular windows at the stern and arched windows at the gallery.
 
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/66422.html
 
After seeing this model in the Gardiner book, I was thinking that this would be a nice approach when scratching the stern - particularly since it would be much easier to create rectangular windows without arches    Given your research and calculations on the window size, then maybe this approach would not only make more sense, but also be true to the Chapman plans.
 
So, should we contact Corel and tell them to fix their kit?  Think we can charge a consulting fee for all our research?