Jonathan_219

Mizzen Latten Yard and Upper Lateen Yard: Finished the two mizzen yards and mounted them. Everything seems to be pretty straightforward now that I've got the painting and parrels figured out. Can't imagine trying to attach the yards to the masts with the masts on the ship. Laying the mast down flat and putting the yard across it and letting gravity hold it in place while tying the parrel assembly just seems the way to go. As with the bonadventure mast I put a small pin in the mast and yard to hold it in place, no glue, but the pin along with the parrel assembly keeps it in place. It can pivot a bit on the pin but I think that's good as it should allow me to align all the yards with the rigging.

Redoing the Bonadventure Lateen Yard: After looking at my completed Bonadventure mast and yard for a while I decided the paint job on the yard just couldn't stay. It didn't look neat, and even after three days it was still very sticky and showed no signs of completely drying out. Getting the paint off was a challenge, it was so gummy that sandpaper did next to nothing so I took out the exacto and just started scraping it off. It took a while but finally got 98% of it off and was able to clean up the last bits with sandpaper getting back to pretty much raw wood. I looked for the paint that Jeff recommended but my local hobby mart had every color except flat black and I called their customer service number to see if I could buy some and have it sent to the store so I wouldn't have to pay $8 shipping on a $3.99 item and they told me that their warehouse was out as well. I tried a couple more stores but it seems to be out everywhere that's close to me. I looked at the mast sections that I had spray painted black before and decided that I'd try that again. I worked slowly, spraying very light coats and letting them dry before applying any more, surprisingly it looked really good, smooth and it even and had the semi-gloss look I wanted so I guess I should have done that at first but nothing ventured nothing learned. Of course the parrel assembly had to come apart and be rebuilt but now that I have a plan for that it wasn't hard the second time. Tried to take a photo to show the difference with the first paint job but couldn't really see much difference in the photo, in person it's a massive difference. I'm really glad that I took the time to go back and undo the paint. Sometimes, especially as I'm learning, it seems like I'm just going to try something that doesn't work well and you hope it's a pretty easy fix like this was. On to the rest of the yards.

After realizing that the rope binding the parrel together is a single piece I took another stab at it and I think I've got something that works. Took the rope through the parrel ribs and beads, used 6 ribs and 5 beads on top and bottom for this yard, and then left a loop and went back through the other direction on the other side. Slid the loop over the yard and brought it up into position and put the assembly under the mast. I kept one of both ends of the thread clamped with hemostats so it couldn't come apart while moving things around. I then looped one loose end over the yard and brought it back around the mast in the channel in the ribs so I had one end of the rope on each side of the mast. Went around the yard one more time on each end and the put a square knot in the rope and trimmed. I considered adding another rib and pair of beads to force everything tighter together but I'm a little worried about running out. I would calculate how many I need but I don't think I can really determine that until I start to put the others together. All in all I think I have a process that works on the two set parrel assemblies and I think on the threes I'll just bring each rope back across the channel and they'll be in the right place for knotting, at least I think it will.

Jeff, do you mind telling me what brand of acrylic you use, I've been looking around and would appreciate any tips. I did find that picture of the parrel in my research but was wondering where the two lines you marked ended up. Seemed obvious they get tied off somewhere but I didn't catch that it is one continuous line which makes a ton more sense now that I realize that. I'm going to take a shot at it with the new knowledge and see how it works.

Finishing the masts and Bonadventure Lateen Yard: Finished the 4 masts and started on the Bonadventure Lateen Yard, the masts were pretty straightforward but the lateen yard has been a bit of a challenge. I've had a hard time getting the yard cleats consistent enough in size to not look very ragged on the mast. I've tried different stocks and sizes of wood to start with and finally decided to use stock where the width of the stock was equal to the length of the cleat to try and get a consistent length. Since the cleats are 2 and 4mm long I have stock already that width but I'm still struggling getting every cleat to be consistent enough. They're just so tiny that any differences really stand out and look fairly bad to my eyes. I think I've managed to get an acceptable look by trimming some of them once they're glued on the yard. I just took any of them that stood out as too tall or big and very very gently used an exacto to take some off and bring them down to the size needed to match the others. A few of them popped off but I just glued them back on and continued. With the cleats attached I moved to painting the yard. I haven't been totally happy with the look of spray paint on larger areas of the mast so I decided to try hand painting and tested both a flat and gloss black enamel on a piece of scrap. I decided to go with the gloss black and thinned down the enamel quite a bit before applying but the look still isn't great. It's also been 36 hours since I applied the paint and it still has a slight tack to it that I'm hoping will eventually disappear. I've been reading through the forum painting posts and tutorials and I'd really like to be able to improve my technique painting. I'd like to try air brushing but a compressor is out of the question for my work area so I'd have to use canned air and it seems like that's a less than ideal situation so I'll probably experiment with hand painting some more and see if I can get better results. I'm probably going to need to get some higher quality paint, I've just been using Testors enamel bought at the local hobby store and thinning it down but I'm sure there are probably better solutions for wood. While fiddling with the paint I've also started working on the parrel bead assembly and how to attach the yard to the mast. I've looked through every build and diagram I can find but can't totally decipher where the ropes tie off. I think I'll probably pin the yard to the mast to make sure it doesn't go anywhere and then attach the parrels. It also appears that I should go ahead and make sure all the yards have all the necessary rigging attached and get them attached to the masts before I start with the actual rigging, I can't imaging trying to get the yards attached while working around existing rigging. I'm attaching a picture of the Bonadventure mast and yard, not sure it's a good representation of the pain job but it was the best picture I could get. Black is hard to photograph.

Mainmast: I've finished shaping the mainmast sections and put the mainmast together. The main topmast requires a lot of wood to be removed and has several different areas with different shapes but I continued to work with a knife and now I'm able to do most of the shaping with a knife. That plus a file and sandpaper got it where it needed to be. The wood for the topmast is different than the wood for the mainmast and seemed to be a bit easier to work with being a little softer and less likely to gouge into the grain. I also learned to use my exacto more like a plane and taking only a tiny sliver off each stroke down the piece of wood. I marked the sections where I was working with painters tape to make sure I staying working on the right area and could visualize where the sections started and stopped. I believe I assembled the topmast mast top incorrectly. The instructions seem to show one way but the cutouts in the wood for the cross pieces are definitely cut for turning the pieces on their side and it didn't seem to fit correctly when assembled the way the instructions show. I looked and looked at the results of both ways and decided to go with assembling it the way the wood was cut but when I went to install it on the mast the gap where the top of the topmast slides through and above is quite a bit smaller than the instructions indicate to trim that piece. In probably another mistake I decided to trim the top of the mast to fit through and it all works and goes together but this piece of the mast looks too small to my eyes. I'd have to completely rebuild the topmast or try and splice a new top on the existing mast and it doesn't bother me that much. I'll have to see if I'm going to do the same thing on the foremast for consistency or do it what I now believe to be correct. Everything else has been pretty straightforward, just lots of time with the knife and sandpaper shaping pieces.

Masts Staring Mainmast and Bowsprit: I shaped and added the cheeks on the mainmast and as I starting looking at the main topmast I realized it has a pretty complex shape with a lot of wood to remove and I thought I wanted to get a little practice with something simpler first so after looking at all the masts I decided to tackle the bowsprit next. I picked it because the shape was pretty simple and it only had one piece so just simpler all around. I still found shaping the bowsprit challenging, not so much because of the difficulty but just because it took so much time to take off so little wood. I have tried using my exacto knife, sanding with the Dremel, and hand sanding. All of these methods have their challenges. The knife would be the quickest and seems to work well for blocking out small areas but if I try to do longer sections I'm constantly getting caught in the grain and taking out a bigger chunk that I want. Even if the chunk is going to be removed by subsequent actions it still prevents further knife work in that area which threatens to get me off center. I'm going to continue to experiment as some of the pieces have so much wood to be removed that sanding even with the Dremel would take a really really long time. I don't really have a place to set up a drill or a drill that would be able to hold a 10mm piece of wood. I think the masts are just going to be a lot of Dremel and hand sanding. Everything I've looked up for shaping the masts I've either tried or isn't practical in my setup. Once shaped, the bowsprit was pretty easy to configure with cleats and blocks. I did end up cutting out the cleats that the instructions say to use 1x 1mm wood strip for out of 1 x 2 strip and just cutting to the correct size. My clumsy hands kept splitting the 1 x 1 wood. I wasn't sure how the blocks are attached to the masts (and yards later) but it seem they're just seized on the mast. I found an interesting video showing how to use one seize to create the loop for both the block and mast but for this mast at least I seized the block first and then seized the lines right next to the seizing for the block after wrapping the two arms of rope around the mast once. The results in a little more stand off from the mast and two ropes around the mast, but I don't see an issue with that for now, hope I don't find it later. Here's a picture of the bowsprit just hand placed in the ship to see how it's looking.

Thanks for the information and the heads up on the bonaventure mast, I could have easily missed that as I was preparing the masts and had to do it over. It's starting to come together for me, I just have to realize that sometimes it takes information from multiple pages of the plans to get the specific measurement I want.

Thanks for the information and diagram. It really helps to understand the usage from a real ship as I try to put the model together. I'm still amazed that the fid is the only thing preventing the topmast from dropping down, I would have though it would have been iron instead of wood at least but I'm sure they knew what would work and what wouldn't.

I'm starting to build the masts for my Revenge and I've already run into a couple of questions, I'm including a picture of the mainmast top to help clarify my question. Since the opening the mainmast comes through is 10mm x 8mm and the mast is 7mm x 7mm where it comes through the mast top allows the top some flexibility in position, a couple mm forward or back. I suspect that most of this position will be determined by correct placement of the main topmast where the mast cap determines the spacing between the two masts and the topmast should sit in the center of the hole outlined by the blue square but I'm hoping to get confirmation of the correct positioning of the two. The topmast is 6mm square there and the opening is 8mm square. There's still a millimeter or two of flexibility in the position of the topmast if it's not centered in the opening. I can't find anything in the plans or instruction that indicate how to position these pieces. My gut is telling me to center the topmast in the opening and let everything follow that. My second question is about the fid in the main topmast. In a real ship is at all that would be preventing the topmast from dropping down? It just seems like a huge amount of stress in a tiny area, it also seems like there would be something preventing it (and the bottom of the mast) from sliding back and forth but in the kit it seems it just sits on the mast top supports freely (glued of course). In a model it's going to be fine but I'm curious and if there's a more accurate assembly I'd be interested to know what that is. I've tried to do some research on how these things go but information on 16th century English masting isn't something I've come across yet.

Thanks.

I finished pretty much everything on the ship body, channels, deck grates, etc and I'm ready to move on to the masting for now. I have spent quite a bit of time studying the plans for the mainmast just trying to get in my head exactly what is going on with it and I think I've figured that out but I'm not really sure how I'm going to get there yet but then that's the fun and challenge. I went ahead and built the first mainmast crowsnest (instructions never call this out by name so I'm guessing here). Like others have mentioned in their build logs I used a slightly different method to put all the pieces in. I glued the first support to the bottom and then the middle ring to a second support and then glued that support to the bottom and the first support 180° from the first support already glued in. That gave me the ring supported on two sides and then I just added the other supports one at a time until all were in, some of the final ones were tight but I found I could just position the braces for the ring on the ring and then push the bottom with tweezers until it popped into the slot in the bottom. I haven't added the eyebolts yet which brings me to my one tiny quibble with this kit which is the number of eyebolts supplied, parts 227 and 228. The instruction book states that it supplies 178 of part 227 and 36 of 228 and that's nowhere near enough. It's surprising because all the other materials in the kit are so generous, I have extras of almost everything but I ran out of part 227 and 228 ages ago and still need lots more. I've been using the copper eyelets in their place (200 included) but I'm not sure that I won't run out of them when I find what they're required for. Honestly double the number of parts 227 and 228 would have been nice. I'm sure I used up a lot of those adding outhaul tackle to the cannons, at 8 eyelets per cannon that's 112 of them used up right there, but that's even listed in the instructions as an option. It's an extremely minor issue with a wonderful kit though just be aware that you'll run out if you rig the cannons. When finishing up the crowsnest I couldn't bring myself to paint everything black, I just feel that I want to help my eyes see the details and everything flat black just didn't work for me so I left the supports and the crossties natural. If it starts to bother me then it's easy enough to paint those pieces black. One question about the plans has popped up though, when you look at the mainmast plans there's nothing on them that shows where the main deck line should be, I'm assuming that it's length is set to go through the holes in the main and gun deck and rest on the bottom of the kit but it would be nice to have confirmation of how high above the main deck line things are. Is that typical? All in all things are going very well, I expected some slowdown here as I shift gears to the masts and rigging as there's a lot going on here that needs to be done correctly to avoid issues later.

Thanks, for some reason I though the word was coop, since the person making the barrels is called a cooper, but after looking it up hoop is the correct word. I should look first but appreciate the correct information.

Finishing Cannons and Gunports: All the cannons are in place and rigged, lots of tiny pieces in those but it all came out fine. I just need to finish one side gunports and I'll be ready for the channels. I found some barrels in the kit and couldn't find any mention of them in the kit so I'm assuming they're there if I want to use them and I like that. I decided to make them gunpowder barrels and place them around the cannons. I stained them dark brown and I simulated coops (I think that's the word) on the barrels using thread and just CA glued black thread in two grooves that already existed on the barrels, and then painted the tops of the barrels black to give them some definition. I believe everything that goes on the deck is there now exception masts and rope of course. Some of it is still just hand placed and not glued but I'll probably get to the point of gluing the rest soon.

I'm continuing to work on the cannons and gunport lids. Slow going for me as there's a lot of seizing for each cannon and that takes me a while to get each bit in there. I counted and I have 14 seizings on each cannon but I really like the look of each rope connection seized even though it's pretty tiny. I've added a few other deck details like the hand guns which I gave a light wash with black enamel thinned with thinner to give them a more weathered less shiny look. I thought about trying to build a rig for the gunport lid hinges both for the placement on the lid and drilling the holes but realized that many of the lids are different sizes so to get the right look each one was going to be a little different. The way I ended up drilling the holes in the right place for the hinges was to take the lid with the hinges already attached and put a little white glue on the tip of each hinge and then hold the lid where I wanted it to go and press against the hull. This would leave a tiny bit of glue on the hull and I could then use one of my dental tools to mark the hole and wipe the glue away. Sometimes I had to adjust the up and down a bit to be sure the lid would sit right but that didn't affect the difference. So far that has worked well. I'll just continue to work the cannons and lids and when I finish them I'll be ready to move to the channels, deadeyes and chainplates. I've included a picture of the main deck with the blocks and rings installed ready for the cannons.

Even though I'm deep in my current build I've really enjoyed looking at kits and thinking about what my next project will be and I'm intrigued by the Soleil Royal. I really like ships of this era and am hoping to be able to move up to something this complex after finishing my current build. I've been looking at these two different kits and other than the scale are there any major differences that might make one or the other a better kit? There are a ton of videos of deAgostini builds but I haven't found nearly as much on the Mantua kit and the build logs I've found are doing pretty extensive rebuilds for accuracy which isn't something I'm probably ready to do yet. Builds of both that I've seen look fantastic so I'm just interested in any feedback on these two kits that anyone would be willing to share.

Thanks for all the great information. I'm realizing that understanding how a specific ship rigged their cannons is a dang complex question, which could have several different answers depending on which time period you choose over the course of the ships life. It also seems that the information gets murkier as we go further back into the history of these ships and 1577 is a pretty long way back. I find that researching the practices is pretty interesting but at some point you're probably going to have to make your best educated guess and go with it also considering what will work on a model of the scale you're working with. I'm also learning that ship kits (by necessity) use standard parts for cannons and carriages that might not be completely accurate for a specific ship and it's up to the modeler to decide if they're going with that or they want to do research and construction to try and be more historically accurate. I'm really not sure where I fall in that spectrum of build the stock kit/painstaking historical accuracy right now. I've seen research on some builds that boggles my mind coupled with amazing construction techniques that I'm not sure I could match so I have to find what works for me. I'd like to make things as accurate as possible but not bog down the build for an extended period of time deciding how to rig the cannons. This applies to more than cannons, of course, but that is what initiated this investigation and awareness of the possibilities. For now I think I will forego inhaul tackle on the cannons and concentrate on doing a decent job on the outhaul and stays.

Sorry I posted in the wrong forum thread, got confused where I was.

I've been working on the deck details and also did the two rear cannons and gunport lids. All going well. I had been thinking about how I was going to do the cannons so got to working on the first one to get a look and process down. Couple of things I had to decide about the look, first I have been considering the lack of cannon inhaul tackle, there's an eye on the back of the carriage assembly for one but nothing in the instructions or pictures so I've been thinking about whether to include those or not, I still haven't decided but I'm leaning towards not putting them in right now. Thought I'd get one or two in and I would have a better idea how things are looking and if it would just make clutter. Secondly I wanted to add a wedge to the back of the cannon, most of the pictures I've seen of ship cannons have these and it makes sense that they'd want to be able to adjust the angle some so I cut some scrap and made a wedge to place under the back edge of the barrel. I have to be careful not to push the front of the cannon barrel down since their almost resting on the gunports already so they're cosmetic only. I'll probably check each cannon to see what angle I can put the barrel at. The brass strips on the pivot arms looked to shiny for me so I gave it a wash of very diluted black paint to give it a bit more weathered look. I tried to cut very short lengths of shaft under tack head and use those to pin the brass to the top but wasn't able to make that work so I ended up putting a pin in through the hole in the brass and then clipping it off as close as I could to the plate and then roughing up the tiny but of shaft sticking up to simulate a head. It's not perfect but will do. Rigging took some getting used to, I had to get my rigging thinking back and remember how to work with tiny knots and thread. Including the outhaul tackle was a no brainer for me so I had to carefully count the hardware it would require to add a second eye on each side of every gunport and brass rings on the sides on the cannon and lower eyes for the main cannon rope. It looks like I have enough of everything so I'm moving forward. First cannon is in and I've included some pictures of some of the steps along the way. I will continue to work on the deck details, gunport lids and cannons in a round robin as it really help me to switch tasks after a while. Can't imagine some of the cannon rigging on the bigger ships, 14 cannons seems like a lot right now.

I'm still very new at this so I'm trying to understand why the kit doesn't show adding the cannon inhaul tackle on the main deck cannons. There is an eye added on the back of the cannon carriage where it would attach but it's left empty. Would it make things look too cluttered maybe? It would require adding an eye to the deck for each cannon and then two blocks similar to the outhaul tackle but as I imagine it, it seems like it would look good. The blocks to accomplish this aren't included but that's a minor issue, easily resolved so it boils down more to a matter to me of how it would look. I'm going to try and mock one up without drilling any holes and see if I can get a better idea but even then one will look different than 14 and there might be other issues that I haven't thought of to consider. I'd think that the scale of the ship could influence this decision quite a bit, there's a lot more room at 1:64 than there is at 1:90 or 1:100. Thought I'd see what the thinking is on these. Maybe it's just something you can add if you feel like it.

Gallery Arches: For some reason the supplied gallery arches just didn't look right to me, just clunky so I decided to see what I could do. After experimenting with some similar pieces cut from scrap I thought I could leave them square for a bit and then round everything out to make them look like a curved column. Wasn't as time consuming as I thought it might be, I just trimmed the edges with the knife and then worked them with rough and then fine sandpaper till they were fairly round. I was also convinced that staining them wouldn't look that good due to the way the grain is one way at one end and then at 90 degrees to that at the other end so I decided to paint them. Went back and forth between the green that's on the outside of the balcony and white and finally went with white since it seems that columns are usually while. I also thought it would make a good contrast against the colors of the hull. I still have the other side to shape, paint and glue.

The gratings are brass that I spray painted brown. They're supplied with the kit.

Just working on adding all the exterior and deck details after getting the 1x2mm wood I ordered. Interestingly enough the 1x2 Walnut I received was a slightly different size than the 1x2 that came with the ship. It seemed more like 1.1x2.1 but that was easy to sand down if I needed to match existing work and I'd much rather have it slightly big than slightly small. Everything has gone pretty much as expected and per the instructions, I've made some very minor changes in the interest of making things look better to me. I think I'm going to finish the deck details, maybe not gluing them in place but at least getting everything done and ready to go before tackling the gunport lid assemblies, that looks like it's going to be a bit tedious just keeping them all sorted out and not mixed up so I'd like to have a clean mind and workspace as I start that. As things start to come together I'm amazed and how good it's looking, it just goes to show that even an inexperienced modeler like me can get good results with a good kit and just taking time to figure things out. I think I saw somewhere that the kit should take 250 hours and I'm well past that already, but I'm slow plus I'm taking my time and trying to make sure I have a plan before starting something. My lack of experience shows up sometimes when I don't plan ahead enough on how things will come together at junctions and making sure that the last piece covers up any slight misfitting that might have occurred with previous pieces but overall it's looking better than I had dared hope when I started. A lot of thanks for being as prepared as I could be goes to the previous build logs not only of Revenge but other ships as well as it seems like every one I've read has given me something to learn or think about as it applies to this craft. I really appreciate this resource and the effort people put into documenting their work.

Jeff, that is great advice. Thank you very much. FYI, your build looks great and has been an inspiration to me.

I have a bit of confusion and a question I'm hoping someone can give me direction or an answer. On the diagram showing the top down view of the ship and where components should be located it shows at least 56 locations for the larger eyebolt, part 228, but there are only 36 in the kit. There are lots of smaller eyebolts, piece 227, so I'm guessing that some of the ones marked 228 will have to be 227's but which ones? Looking at it from a rigging standpoint none of them stand out at needing the bigger eyebolt, probably to someone with more experience it's obvious but I have no clue. If anyone has an idea which eyebolts should be large and which should be small or guidance on how to choose it'd be appreciated. I searched through the current build logs but couldn't find where anyone had mentioned this issue. I also considered posting the diagram but after reading a thread in the "Using the MSW forum" thread I don't think I'm sure enough that it's not a violation of copyright that I'll pass on that.